Monday, October 08, 2007, 05:23
How Hot Is It?
I cannot hardly believe how hot it is for October. And humid. It feels more like August than October. I do not expect the temperature to be 85 or 86 degrees in October, and I don't expect it to feel so sticky outside that it is like trying to breathe through a warm, wet, wool blanket.
We haven't gotten any more thunderstorms since Friday evening, which is kind of surprising, I think, since it has been so warm. Or at least, we haven't got more thunderstorms yet.
I went to the Farm Toy show in Stanley on Sunday with my books. Attendance was rather sparse, but of the few people who wandered through, many commented on the heat and humidity. After I carried in my books and other items, I was drenched with sweat. It took about two hours for the back of my neck to finally dry off. I thought it was just me because I still don't have my strength back after that nasty virus, but another vendor said the same thing -- that it took about two hours for the back of her neck to dry off after she had carried in all of her things.
I went to a craft sale on Saturday, too, and by the time I had carried in my boxes in the morning, my legs felt as if I had run 20 miles and I was really drenched with sweat. The craft sale Saturday was at an old mall building, and the air conditioning was on. As the day wore on, other vendors were getting out jackets and sweaters, but since I think I'm still running a fever, it felt fine to me.
If it weren't for the fact that other people in the area who have gotten the same virus and have said the same thing -- that it makes a person feel awfully sick and awfully weak for a long time -- I might be alarmed that Randy and I still don't feel all that great after two weeks. I am thinking that it is an influenza virus. A cold virus would not create so great a feeling of fatigue, fever and general illness. I had an influenza virus like this once about 30 years ago. I ran a fever of 102 every day for two weeks, and then it took about three months to get my strength back. I hope it doesn't take that long this time. . .
The leaves are still working on turning colors. Some of the leaves have started to fall off the trees so there's a certain amount of leaf litter lying around. It is downright weird to have fallen leaves scattered on the lawn but yet it feels like August. It doesn't even cool off at night but stays right up around 65 or 70 degrees Fahrenheit.
Isabelle and Kajun have started to grow their winter coats. The horses always become uncomfortable when it turns hot after their hair has started to grow thicker. I hope it doesn't stay warm until very late in the fall. Horses start to grow a thicker coat when the days grow shorter -- but they also grow a certain amount of their coat in response to the temperature. If it stays warm, they won't get all of the coat they would normally get, and then when it turns very cold, they won't have as much insulation as they ought to.
And here I thought I'd have my sweaters and sweatshirts out by now. I had no idea I'd still be bumming around home in my cutoff shorts.
LeAnn R. Ralph
Friday, October 05, 2007, 21:25
The Exterminator
I can see that I am going to have to get the vacuum cleaner out again. The lady bugs . . .er. . .the Asian Lady Beetles are crawling on the ceiling and walls of my office. They are crawling on the ceiling and walls of the dining room, too. The vacuum cleaner has become my partner and exterminator in this business of getting rid of lady bugs.
Thursday afternoon I got the vacuum cleaner out to suck the little pests off the door, the wall, the window and the ceiling in the dining room. I sprayed around the door to help keep them out of the house. The lady bugs will crawl through any opening they can find. Of course they are only looking for a place to spend the winter.
The temperature rose to 80 degrees Thursday afternoon, and that's just exactly the time when the lady bugs start to congregate around the house -- on a warm fall day after there has been a couple of frosts. So far, there are only maybe 20 percent of the number of lady bugs that I have seen in years when we had a very bad infestation. I sprayed around the basement door Thursday afternoon, too, and then in the evening, I swept up a dustpan full of them.
Anything short of sweeping lady bugs up by the snow-shovel-full does not seem very significant to me. During the worst infestation we ever had a few years back, I sprayed around the garage door during the day when they were the worst, and then in the evening, I swept them up with the snow shovel and dumped the dead bugs outside.
The lady bugs are incredibly sensitive to permethrin or pyrethrin insect spray, and only a few squirts around an opening where they can find their way in will either keep them from coming in to begin with, or, if they crawl over where the spray has landed, they die fairly quickly. And the effect of spraying once, surprisingly enough, lasts for a week or two. I really am not out to kill as many of the lady bugs as I can, though. I only want to keep them from invading the house by the thousands.
As soon as I pulled the vacuum cleaner out on Thursday, my little black kitty cat, Snowflake, took to her heels and hid under the bed. She is terrified of the vacuum cleaner. Last year when she was a tiny kitten at the end of the October, I purposely avoided vacuuming because I didn't want to frighten her. Maybe I should have gone ahead and vacuumed. She might not be so afraid of the vacuum cleaner now.
Then again, maybe Snowflake would be afraid of the vacuum cleaner anyway. She doesn't like loud noises of any kind. One evening during the summer when Randy had put the fan in the bedroom window to help pull cool evening air into the house, our little gray kitty cat, Sophie, knocked the fan out of the window.
Snowflake, who was in the bedroom investigating what her friend Sophie was doing, came tearing down the hallway toward the kitchen, tail fluffed to four times its normal size. She flew into the kitchen, straight up the cupboard doors and landed on top of the air conditioner in the kitchen window -- wild eyed and wondering what other high place she could get to for safety. It took her a couple of minutes to calm down after that.
By contrast, our little Shetland sheepdog, Pixie, was delighted when I got out the vacuum cleaner Thursday afternoon to suck up the lady bugs. Pixie loves to bark at the vacuum cleaner. It is her job to keep the household safe from such a noisy thing, and when I vacuum the carpeting, she loves to "herd" the vacuum cleaner as I move back and forth across the room.
The vacuum cleaner, I am happy to find, is a fairly good way to eliminate the lady bugs. Especially if I squirt one puff of bug spray into the dust cup before I start vacuuming. The lady bugs are fairly tough, and even being sucked through the vacuum cleaner might not kill all of them. And if they are not dead, they will find their way out of the vacuum cleaner, in just the same way that they find their way into the house.
More Mud -- We've got even more mud around the horse pastures now. It rained another inch again Thursday night and Friday morning. Thursday was a bright sunny day with a blue sky. I certainly did not think, even though it was warm, that it was going to storm during the night.
Still coughing -- Randy and I are still coughing and under the weather although it might just be possible that we are starting to come out of it a little bit. I hope so. It's been almost two weeks. I went to the clinic on Wednesday, and the physician's assistant thought I might benefit from some antibiotics. I would rather not take any, though, if I can avoid it, seeing as I have had quite a few problems with allergic reactions to antibiotics. I told her that if it seemed like I was getting better and then went back downhill again, I would come back to the clinic.
Flat! -- A flat tire was just what Randy needed on Thursday. One of the other people who works in his office came inside Thursday morning and told him his tire was low. Later on, another person told him that the tire had gone downright flat.
So, even though Randy was not feeling in particularly good physical condition, after work on Thursday, he had to crawl under his truck to get the spare tire down. And then he had to take it to a gas station about a quarter mile away to get it fully inflated. After that, he had to struggle through putting the spare tire on.
I told him to call me if he needed me to bring some tools or to help him get the tire to the gas station or to get the spare tire on. He managed without my help. As luck would have it, a small auto repair shop in the town he drives through on the way home was open. He stopped, and they patched up his tire while he waited. A rusty nail, with the head broken off, had penetrated the tire. Of course, after he arrived home, he had to once again change the tire and take the spare off. As my dad always used to say, "If you've got vehicles (animals, tractors, machinery) you've got trouble."
LeAnn R. Ralph