Winter puttering

I'm making dumplings for some of C.'s canned veggie soup (two quarts soup, one of tomatoes). The dumplings are a doubled batch from the classic Betty Crocker loose-leaf cookbook that everybody got for a wedding present in the '50s and '60s (and maybe even today).

Still waiting for a decision on the disability claim with Prudential (due to start next month!). Then I'll have to rush around and find health insurance.

I did a little puttering around the rabbit room – the condos now have a third story, and ramps from the first to second floors. I think they might be able to jump to the top floor, so am waiting to see. Ramps take up a whole lot of room.

I even put a few tools away. Weird, I know. C., out of kindness or a sense of defeat, has started gathering them into a bucket as she comes across them. I tend to shed tools wherever I do any work. My strategy for dealing with this sloppiness has been to buy many, many of each item (we probably have a dozen hammers, and had 67 pairs of scissors at last count). But, eventually, all 12 hammers are lying around our 11,000-square-foot building, and you have to use a ball-peen or rock hammer to smack a nail in. Not ideal.

I pick tools up for cheap at estate sales. Tools and screws and nails and bolts and lumber.... I love the kind of sale where an old guy spent a whole lot of time out in the garage, sorting screws into baby-food jars, smoking cigars and looking at his 1962 girlie or car calendar. I imagine his wife encouraged this, keeping him and his messes out of her nice house. I wish could hire that old guy to keep my tools sorted and sharpened and hanging neatly on pegboard – but he'd never put up with the way I treat them. Sigh.

I'm feeling like doing a little more. I've been brooding for months, pissed about coming down with MS, even though I know that bad shit happens to nice people and that many, many people have it hard. And that there are no guarantees that good luck or good health will happen or continue, yada yada yada. I know all that, but it's still hard to accept when it happens to me. After all, I'm fond of me. And don't I deserve the best? Apparently I'm not over the brooding. Anyway, I need to get past it and back to work on this place and on making some kind of art.

Willie the Pomeranian has been diagnosed with advanced diabetes, and sent home to die in peace. The vet suggested the Big Shot, but C. prefers to spend more time with him at home, as long as he is having a little fun. She bought him ice cream and Tofurky weiners, which made him really happy. We aren't sure how old he is – at least 15 and maybe as old as 17. He's nearly blind and very frail, but not in pain.

We haven't caught a mouse in ages.