Man it's been a busy summer. Got rid of the older Volvo, the 'newer' one has 180,000 miles on it. The gardens have been expanding with all those plants fighting for space. I tend to plant in such a way that some plants have to relocate, like my bugleweed is a ground cover and other plants try to get in or overshadow it, so it sends out runners and looks for a better neighborhood. I also like to plant a shitload of sunflowers of all sizes and colors. Not only are they great looking but when the chipmunks eat the heads they lose some seeds and we get new sunflower next spring. The thing is since they are usually hybrid flowers, the children flowers are often very different, not unlike humans.

The other thing I did was go get my left sciatic nerve burn in half with high frequency radio waves. Now I don't get a blast of pain down the leg every time I move wrong. They eliminated 90% of my pain in the left leg in three sessions! Of course now I can feel my right leg much more, but the pain there tends to be more local, like a white faced hornet in the middle of my calf.

Recently I developed a mucous cyst on my left index finger. I have osteoarthritis in my hands and that joint was the lumpiest. Well the damn thing grew, got infected, grew some more, spread down the hand. Finally Saturday I went to the urgent care place and got it looked at. They gave me antibiotics and said I needed to see a hand doctor. Sunday the pain was so bad, in spite of my pain meds for the back, and we went to the ER. They were very nice and got me right in because I was close to screaming. I gave it a big 9 on the pain scale. They shot me with Novocaine, ignoring me telling them that I am mostly immune to the stuff and I would need like 9 shots to get numb. Then they sliced it open and got about a half cup of blood. I couldn't look, I'm such a baby. Margaret looked for me. They took a needle looking for pus, driving it into the wound while I gritted my teeth and gripped the side bar of the table. No pus. So they talked it over while I shook and whimpered on the table. Then they got a bigger needle and drove it into the joint! Well I tried not to alarm the guys waiting in the front room so I ground my mouth shut and screamed bloody murder. Remember that one shot of Novocaine? Might as well been given an aspirin. They wrapped it up with antibiotics and said go see a specialist. Monday we went to see a specialist and he put me on the mother of all antibiotics and told me to come back in a couple of days. So, today I go back and the swelling and pain had retreated to just that finger and just the last two joints. He said we should "stay the course" so I asked him what he thought about Iraq? He grinned and shook his head. I said I have an "Impeach Cheney?" cap and I wear it down town but nobody wants to talk to me about it. Either they are all afraid of secret police or they all agree with me.

So I can't work in clay because of the botulism in it, I'm on 3-4 times the normal dose of pain meds so driving is problematic. I'm finally taking enough to kill the pain, but who knows what it's doing to my kidneys! I can't go see Jon because I might infect him or he might give me his MRSA, or highly resistant to most antibiotics bacteria, in which case I might die or he might die. Either way it sucks.

The tomatoes are ripe, as are the grapes, although I haven't seen too much wild grapes. I have ferrel concord grapes. The elderberries have been magnificent this year, huge black clumps of berries! I made some jelly and gave a lot away and I plan some more elderberry mead, maybe grape mead or even a mix. When I went to the ER for my hand my finger tips were stained purple from pulling off elderberries and the nurse gasped and said she thought it was some terrible disease. Well it did look odd.

We are changing furniture and making the house more Danish modern with a mix of country cottage, since this little cracker box of a house is really a cottage. Margaret found a great sectional couch in Craig's for $100 bucks! It's teak and in fine shape, although the cushions smell strongly of urine. We bought some new couch foam cushions and now Margaret's going to sew up some covers. It's great having two couches because we turned them at an angle, so as to NOT make the TV the end all and be all, and we plan to move all my dvds into the guest room. That's the dinky room where the previous owners stuck their kids.

And that's what I have been doing lately. That and taking photos of my art so I can up load it here. I have a studio filled with greenware but I can't fire my noborigama until I hook up a propane burner to let me use propane for 12 hours and finish with 4-6 hours of me tossing in wood and salt. If I could get a helper I could fire much longer, especially if they had an intact spine.

Well that's it. Next time I can use my left hand and I will discuss more significant doings.