Back to Unreality

I spent a long weekend at the cabin....from Friday afternoon through Tuesday morning...but am now back at the apartment in Boulder and 94F degree temps!  

I had to drive to Longmont yesterday afternoon to the chiropractor.  The chiropractor's office is about a block from the Longmont Goodwill so, although I avoided last Saturday's 50% off sale by driving to the mountains, I just had to stop by the Longmont store after my appointment to see what they had.  

Actually I am quite practical these days and, because of the temperatures, purchased this cute little fan and some interesting ice cube trays...

I only had two ice cube trays and thought long rectangular fingers of ice might be a fun addition to my lemonade.  Hey, it's the little things that make life bearable and I got both of these for 99 cents less my senior discount.  

The fan sort of has that "in" industrial look and I've been wanting another fan to supplement the box fan I bought from my friend Olive earlier in the summer, something I could actually have blowing right on me at night that wouldn't be as forceful as either the box fan or the fan on the window A/C unit but would still lull me into thinking there was some air circulating in the bedroom.  

Why I didn't plug the fan in at the store, I don't know, but I got it home, plugged it in and saw the blades turning so thought everything was a go.  Later in the evening I went back in the bedroom, put my hand in front of it and there was no air movement being generated at all.  I even put my hand behind the fan thinking maybe they had the blades in backward!  A rodent on a treadmill could have moved more air.  

I thought the clerk at Goodwill might have had a little smirk when she told me to leave the tag on anything marked E&M (electrical and mechanical?) until I was sure it worked.  I wonder how many times this thing has been purchased and returned.  It was only $3.99 and I got my everyday senior discount, so it wasn't a huge expense, but I'll return it and get a toaster instead, which was something else I was looking at and they had several that were this same price.  I'd rather have a more versatile toaster oven, but haven't seen one of those at a thrift shop recently.

I had hoped these temps in the 90s were over for the summer and I was spoiled because the temperatures at the cabin are about 20 degrees cooler.  It was in the 70s during the day and the 40s at night the entire time I was there.  

It seems as if the temperature on what is called the Diagonal Highway between Boulder and Longmont...you see the start of it here in the upper right hand corner of this map...
 
Map courtesy of AaccessMaps.com

...is at least ten degrees hotter than either Boulder or Longmont, both of which are old towns with lots of big shade trees. 

This highway, which follows a busy railroad track, cuts through prairie that looks like the prairie in every Western movie you've ever seen.  Think Cheyenne in a wool cavalry uniform.  And, of course, I have no air conditioning in my car. 

Inevitably, on my return from these afternoon chiropractic appointments, I hit Boulder and every red light just at rush hour, my car starts overheating and I have to turn on the heater to bleed off some of the heat.  I was really glad to get back to the apartment.  Even though it wasn't that cool, it was a lot better than a car with the heater blasting in an ambient temperature of 94F degrees.

I had a productive few days at the cabin.  I'm finally almost finished with all of the little decorator touches I'd wanted to make before my sister and her husband come out if they finally decide to.  They've been doing a lot of traveling since spring so aren't that anxious to leave home again I guess.  I still want to make the draperies for the bunk area and paint the floor, but both of those will take some funds I don't have available right now so I'm contenting myself with small projects that cost nothing.  

I knew when I decided to paint the interior of the cabin dark charcoal brown that the color would hide any damage from the blow-back smoke from the wood stove that's such a problem when the winds are high in the winter and would provide a great backdrop for my thrift store porcelain finds, but would also require lots of reflective surfaces to keep it from being too oppressive.  I had several mirrors in that storage unit I cleared out when I moved into the apartment and one that had been in the cabin from the beginning in 1939 I think.  I finally figured out during this last visit where I wanted all of them.  

I hung this thrift store find...

...on the east wall.  The frame is a very heavy metal and I like the oak leaf and acorn motif.

I hung this frameless, probably a five-and-dime, mirror from the 30s on the west wall next to the secretary/hutch....

There's nothing like enlarged photos to reveal every wart and pimple.  I see I need to have another go at this with the Windex.  I was going to hang the rectangular mirror here, but decided it and the hutch were too much the same shape.  Oh, and the little dials?  Well, they turned out to be kind of a fun solution to this...

...Blue Light Special that someone brought out to the cabin.  I kept trying to figure out what to do with this...no White Tails here although I did see my first Mule Deer just as I was leaving Eldora on Tuesday morning...so I popped the three dials out and hung them under the mirror sort of like miniature international clocks.  I'm saving the frame so if someone is absolutely in love with this thing, they can restore it.

The third mirror project had been hanging over my head since last fall when I bought an oval mirror on sale at Hobby Lobby, along with some black velvet ribbon with which to hang it.  I wanted it hung over the wash stand and knew it would have to hang in front of an existing shelf.  The old round mirror had been hung from the shelf and even I had to bend my knees in order to see myself in it.  Hanging the new mirror in front of the shelf would mean hanging it from a ceiling hook and I thought I'd need to drop a plumb line in order to get the hook in the right spot.  

I had purchased the ceiling hook at least two months ago...

...I got the swivel hook because it was the only black one Home Depot had...but still I procrastinated because by that time I'd hurt my arm and the thought of attempting this just seemed daunting.  

Monday I bit the bullet and got it accomplished.  I marked the middle of the shelf and then just put a yard stick flat against the shelf and ran it up to the ceiling to mark the spot for the hook rather than dropping a plumb line.  

Then I started "reading" the instructions for the hook...

...almost no actual verbiage, just illustrations and large X's indicating "do this, NOT this" and showing you how to reinsert the hook to the base, but not how to remove the hook from the base to start with.  

So I did my chimp-being-observed-and-recorded-for-science routine thinking maybe the illustrations were in French since Cobra Anchors Corp. appeared to be in Montreal as well as Temple, PA.  I finally figured out, after starting to screw the provided anchor into the ceiling (shown magically keeling over horizontally after it passes through the surface), that it only needed to be used if the hook was being inserted into dry wall.  Otherwise, the hook base could simply be screwed into "madera" which must be wood in French, something I didn't recall after three semesters of the language.  

The next big challenge was figuring out how to remove the hook from the base and this really did make me feel like a monkey with a puzzle, but I finally deduced that one side of the base was flat and that had to be turned to slide out of the slot that was the same shape.  Yep.  Sure enough, it worked.  So, I screwed the base, sans hook, into the wood ceiling and slid the hook on.  

I decided I didn't want to rely on the ribbon to hold the weight of the mirror, which is fairly heavy, so used some picture wire.   Then I decided I didn't like the look of that so set about making a sleeve for the wire...

I thought I could "turn" this ribbon tube, once I got it doubled over and sewn shut by hand, but absolutely could not get it started.  I could have taken out all the stitching and folded it with the velvet side out, but by that time I was getting pretty well burned out so decided to just leave the flat side out, fed the wire through the sleeve and re-affixed the wire to the mirror.  Then I used the rest of the ribbon and made a little rosette to cover the hook...

  Here's the finished product...

...and I can actually see myself without bending my knees.  If some day someone gets bored, they're free to remove that sleeve and sew it with the velvet side out!

That's it for today.  I took 91 photos while I was at the cabin, so will post some more tomorrow showing additional shots of cabin life and chores, some Rocky Mountains scenery in late August and an update on the foxes.  The latter not good, I'm afraid.  Teddee

Eclipsed

Do you live in an area where the solar eclipse was supposed to be visible this evening?  Did you get your eclipse glasses?  I did last week when I stopped at McGuckin Hardware, a famous independent Boulder hardware store....

They were selling them for $2 a pop at all their cash registers.  I wonder how much money they made?  Especially because it appears it is going to be so overcast the eclipse is not going to be visible.  There are a couple of hours to go.  It has been cloudy most of the day.  This is what the western sky looks like right now...

That's gray with clouds, not blue with clouds.  The sun bursts forth every once in awhile, but I just heard thunder.  I think it may be coming from the east, though.  This is what the sky looks like over the plains...

...so we wait.  And while I'm waiting I decided to do a little light sanding on some rough areas on the secretary I brought home a week ago from the Longmont Goodwill, remove the hardware, tape off the glass in the doors...

...and settle on a paint color.  I had considered selecting something really splashy since I'd gone so dark with the interior cabin paint.  Shades of marigold are one of the "in" colors right now and I thought about a very dark hue of this color palette...

...but I kept wondering how I'd feel waking up being slammed with what would have been a very eye-catching object in this small space.  Might have been a brave choice, but I backed off and selected this shade of palomino yellow that I still like...

I have an entire shelf unit painted in a similar color in storage in Missouri.  It had been that color for almost two decades and I'd never tired of it.  This thrift store metal basket served as another "inspiration piece."  I have some dark colored paste wax (my purchase at McGuckin last week along with the eclipse shades) and I'll attempt to use that over the painted surface to get a similar antiqued effect.  The long-range forecast is either showers or breezy for all of next week, so I don't know whether I'll be able to even get the primer applied.


And the fox came to eat for the second time today but her little body is still looking the worse for wear...

She gets a cup of kibble and, most recently, after she finishes that she's helping me get rid of an entire package of pork chops that had gone off in the cooler despite the fact that I still have part of a chunk of ice in there.   

She had finished her kibble and come up on the deck for her treat here.  She really was that close...and with her eyes on the prize...what a sweet little face...

In the interim, we got a little rain shower while the sun was shining.  I thought there might be a rainbow...solar eclipse and rainbow...get out the goat entrails...but no rainbow.  So, it's 6 p.m.  According to an "eclipse calculator" I pulled off the internet, the eclipse is supposed to start a 6:22 p.m.  Right now it's hazy, but sunny, so I don't know what we might be seeing.  I'm going to try to take a photo without blinding myself.  Just point and shoot I guess or put on my eclipse glasses and see if I see anything in the viewfinder.

Well, I needn't have worried about sun blindness.  Somewhere behind this veil of clouds miracles were occurring...

I had to settle for this "painterly" shot of a smaller miracle closer to earth...

Have a wonderful week!  Teddee

Sow's Ear

Yesterday I decided to go to Longmont so I could hit both Goodwill, which was having a 50% off Saturday, and Walmart.  Dixie had ended up staying all night and I was undecided about taking her along.  It was sunny here and NOAA was predicting a high of 60F degrees in Boulder.  I loaded her in the car and stopped to get my mail at the post office in Nederland.  By that time she was already panting, so I drove her all the way back to Eldora and dropped her at her house.  She didn't want to get out of the car and, as it turned out, it was more overcast in Boulder and Longmont than it was in the mountains and I think she would have been fine, but I had numerous stops to make, so it was a relief not to have to worry about her getting too hot.


I went to Goodwill first and found a little secretary that I think will meet many of my storage needs.  I got both pieces for a total of $15! It's a bit of a sow's ear, but I think with some filling, sanding and paint I can make it acceptable if not a "silk purse."  I couldn't get it in my car, so they gave me until Monday to pick it up.  After giving it some thought, I decided I'd unload everything out of my car this morning and drive back today to see if they could fit it in.  If not, I'd know that I'd have to rent a truck tomorrow.  I had decided that if I did have to rent a truck I would take advantage of the opportunity to try to get someone to help me load this black Naugahyde hide-a-bed into the truck for the return trip where I would drop it off at the Goodwill in Boulder.

I had discovered Friday when I did laundry that Dixie had thrown up in the car as well as throwing up in the cabin.  I'm sure she got too hot Thursday morning while she was curled up in the back seat where she loves to rest.  I had opened both back doors, but the wind had blown the west door shut.  To access the east door she had to clamber over my dirty laundry with just one hind leg.  She'd managed, but not before she got so overheated that she vomited in the car and then, after drinking a lot of water, again in the cabin.  I felt horrible for not paying more attention.  With temperatures rising I will have to start putting something in the west car doors to prevent them from blowing shut or just stop allowing her to rest there.  I have no shade.

I had purchased some upholstery cleaner yesterday so I could clean off the back seat.  The combination of unloading everything from the car, which I use as a second room, and shampooing the back seat, got me started and I decided to clean out the car, which I hadn't done in, well, too long.  I kind of use my car as a pickup truck.  I'd hauled kindling in it and just living here had left enough gravel on the floor on my side for a dish garden.  I don't have a vacuum and will take advantage of a car wash vacuum one of these days.  In the meantime, I used a whisk broom on the floors and seats and a damp cloth on the dash and other vinyl parts.  Couldn't let those guys in the back room at Goodwill see what a mess I'd let my car get in!  

I knew it was supposed to rain...

..so I just left my floor mats under the eave to wash while I was gone...

...outfitted with rocks to keep them from blowing away in case the wind came up.  Then I hopped in the car and drove to Longmont.  Thank goodness, Dixie had not shown up because I knew there wouldn't be room the car for anything but this secretary if they could even fit it in.


The man working the back room at Goodwill was able to fit the base in the back seat.  While he was wrangling the top into the front seat I asked, "What do you think?"  He said, "I try not to."  Back room humor.  He managed it.  I could just barely change gears.  I couldn't see anything but furniture in my rear view mirror and my right side mirror was obscured as well, but I made it back to Boulder from Longmont and up the canyon to the cabin without incident.  

Here are some pictures I took of the two pieces still in the car.  I'm not sure I can get them out by myself, and since it's rainy, this is the best place for them right now. 


This is the base.  It's on its side and the the legs are on the left.  Some kind of laminate.  Based on that hardware, would you say 1960s, 1970s?  Keep in mind, $7.50 for this piece and I get three big drawers for towels and sheets so I don't  have to unload everything off the top of the trunk every time I want something out of it.  No, the damage to the headliner on the car did not occur during this excursion.  That's left over from trying to get an unwieldy piece of metal lawn furniture into my car in Phoenix and that's not the worst of it.  Like I said, pickup truck.

Here's the rest of the base and what makes it a secretary...

 

...the hinges are on the left, pull the knob to let the desk down and it has the requisite cubbies inside.  It's apparent this got a lot of use based on the wear around the knob.

Now this is what originally caught my eye. I thought it was a separate piece for which I was willing to pay $15...

 ...a glass-front cabinet with two shelves, glass intact, that sets atop the other piece.  Not much character at this point, but I think I can give it some and it will provide more space to display porcelain.

So, now the fun part.  I plan on painting it and think, since I went whole hog with the dark charcoal brown paint on everything else intentionally to make it disappear, I need to paint this another color.  So there will be paint swatches to peruse and then, of course, there's new hardware. I think I'll even be surprised about how cute this may turn out.

Animal update.  Fox feeding is ongoing at least twice a day.  Vixen actually came inside the cabin briefly this morning to grab a piece of chicken out of her bowl that I had set just inside the door.  I think that girl telepathizes.  I'll get the "itch" to check to see if she's out there and, sure enough, she's lying in the yard.  I notice that there's a U-Haul at the cabin where Apollo's owners live.  Maybe we won't have to contend with him for too much longer.  That would certainly take some stress out of everyday living.

That's my Sunday.  Teddee

Hidden Treasure

Today I decided to paint a mirror I'd purchased last year at the Goodwill in Lafayette.  My original intent when I purchased it was to use it as a top for this old wash stand that is serving as an entry table... 

The top is not only cracked and warped, my mother had covered it with some faux wood-grain tile which I attempted to camouflage by painting it last fall...

The mirror turned out to be too large and I'd had it propped against the wall over this wash stand all winter.  We were having a lovely day.  Sunny, almost hot with just the mildest breeze, so I decided I would be able to paint the mirror frame.  I hadn't decided whether I was going to keep it or try to sell it to Tim at The Wild West Mercantile, but didn't like the dark green and faux wood of the frame...
 

I cleaned the mirror and used a damp cloth to clean the frame.  There was a bit of a rough spot on one side and I decided to sand that down before I painted.  As I was sanding, I started to see some interesting color and what looked like incised vines...

...I kept on sanding and found that the green paint, if dampened, came right off, leaving the surface below intact...

I ended up with this...

Paint shreds were everywhere and I had to use a paint brush to get them from between the frame and the mirror...

That wood color does a rather nice job of picking up the darker color in the grape leaves, but I could see on the corners where it was worn that it was actually that really cheap paper from which some inexpensive frames are made so decided it needed painting.


Because of my discovery, I had to tape off not only the mirror, but the painted bit in between the faux wood bits...

I decided to paint it black.  I won't know until I take the tape off whether I'll like it with the grapevine motif.

I'm using Krylon Fusion...

I thought it was just for plastic and had bought it so I could spray paint some white plastic hangers I have that stick out like a sore thumb against this dark paint I used on the interior of the cabin.  But I noted it could be used on wood so thought I'd give it a try.  They got the lid right on this one.  Easy off.

So now I'm waiting for the second coat of paint to dry...and Dixie is pouting...

Not only did we not go for a ride today, but I made her stay in the cabin while the fox and I ate lunch outside.  I was reading at the picnic table and the fox stayed around quite a long while, eating and even coming up on the deck.  I have concocted a scenario to make sense of her reappearance and apparent need for company.  I'd been wondering why all of a sudden she was able to spend so much time away from her kits.  Today I noticed that something had almost chewed her gorgeous tail in half and I'm now wondering if something killed the kits and she got injured in the fray. 


I have got to try to get some photos of this funny thing that's happening with Dixie and the fox.  Dixie is outside and the fox comes to eat.  Dixie starts barking and tries to pursue the fox on three legs.  The fox trots off, staying just in front of her.  I call Dixie back and when she turns around and starts to return to the cabin, the fox also turns around and starts for the cabin so then we have the fox pursuing the dog!   Up to now my first thought has been to stop Dixie from possibly injuring the fox, but I can see the fox has that part well in hand so I'll have time to stop for the camera on the way out the door the next time it happens.


OK.  So it's done.  I think I like it...

I sanded some off here and there on the black part so a little of the brown shows through and touched up the grapevine bit with Tim Holtz's Distress Ink in Walnut Stain because the sanding had scuffed it up a little.


What do you think?  Teddee

Playing and Planning

I've been playing animal umpire the past few days, trying to "feed up" the skin-and-bones nursing female fox who is getting almost too comfortable around the cabin or is so hungry she's throwing caution to the winds and playing with fate around the dogs whose owners allow them to run loose...

She seems confident she can outrun all of the dogs and really plays with Dixie's head, seemingly aware that Dixie's missing hind leg leaves her at a disadvantage, walking to within a few feet of her, jogging away just fast enough to keep in front of her if Dixie tries to give chase.

Yesterday morning when I got up and pulled back the curtain on the west window the fox was was lying in the yard waiting for me to get up and provide food, which I did.  She was enjoying the fact that Dixie and her running mate Jimmy...

...were nowhere around.  Dixie's owners had left her with me until 10:30 p.m. Saturday night--I'd closed up shop and turned off all the lights but my reading light thinking they'd just decided to let her stay all night when they finally showed up to claim her.  I guess for that reason they decided to keep Dixie and Jimmy in yesterday even though it was a nice day.  So the only dog we had to contend with was Apollo who lives across the road to the east...

I'm surprised the fox doesn't have an ulcer, being in fight or flight mode at all times, but she seems to be an escape artist.  Apollo keeps her on her toes, sometimes coming around the north side of the cabin, sometimes the south, and I'll hear the skittering of nails and claws on the wooden deck, barking pulling away into the distance and shortly Apollo comes back, panting, tongue lolling.  I keep my fingers crossed and eventually the fox returns when she thinks the coast is clear, having worked off most of the calories I've fed her, ready to eat again.  So we go along.

I'm planning, if these winds quit, to complete a project I started last week.  When I was cleaning out the woodshed trying to dig out my summer tires, I came across a plastic bag in which I'd stored two generous lengths of oilcloth I'd bought last year at Goodwill for $1.99 each that I want to use on the picnic table and benches this summer...

Last year I used a plain beige and white check...

I managed to get the table and one bench covered before I left to spend the month of July with my brother and his family in Tacoma, thinking my sister and her husband were coming to Colorado, only to find out after I arrived in Tacoma that my brother-in-law was having a heart valve transplant and they wouldn't be coming.  I never got the other two benches covered and now the oilcloth I put on last summer looks like this...

...and this...

...the severe weather here in the mountains and the ultraviolet light are very damaging, and I really need something to cover the wood and prevent injury from splinters...

I got a square of oilcloth cut for the table top last week so can proceed as soon as the weather cooperates.  My thermometer is climbing toward 60F degrees, but with an overnight low of 30F degrees and wind gusts of up to 26 mph this morning, it has seemed chilly.  Perhaps I can get out this afternoon.

I actually did something rather thoughtful last fall when I stored the oilcloth.  I put the hummingbird feeders in the same sack! 

Thinking all the time.  With the quixotic weather we've had this spring, I'm not sure when the hummingbirds will return, but am looking forward to it.  In the spring it's their call based on the meadow flowers starting to bloom I suppose.  In the fall, we are cautioned at this altitude to put all of the hummingbird food away after Labor Day because we can get freak snowstorms that will freeze the birds in their sleep at night.  If we remove the food source, they are forced to move to lower altitudes to find food and, hopefully, won't get caught by a cold snap. 

It's hard to do because they are feeding at their most frenzied at that point getting ready for the long trek south and I feel terrible removing the feeders.  They line up like jets waiting for clearance to land.  I think I see five in this photo, counting that one in the distance...


Here there are four feeding, or trying to, simultaneously...

They can get pretty aggressive with each other.  Here's a more bucolic photo...

...something to look forward to.

What are you looking forward to this summer?  Teddee