The All-New Bunrab

The Montgomery County fair is the first one Larry and I went to together, once we were dating, and it's definitely the one we measure all others against. At the time we first went to it, we didn't realize that it is the largest county fair in MD, and somewhat larger than the State Fair in several respects, so that it's rather unfair to expect other fairs to come close. But there you are - it's what we think of as a real fair.

( The largest county fair in MD )

Week of August 2: Carroll County Fair. We went early to this one - Sunday the 2nd was early in the fair. Some of the animals weren't even there yet, if their judging was later in the week. However, there were more activities on the schedule on Sunday, than on any weekday, so off we went. First thing to note: this fair does NOT have a carnival. If the carnival rides are what you go to fairs for, this one's not for you. Second thing: admission is free all the time; parking is free as long as you arrive before 4 p.m. So the price is certainly right. And from where we live, it's less than half the distance to this fair than to last week's fair, and a very pretty drive it is, too. We got there a few minutes before 11 a.m. - first scheduled activity was for noon, but all the animal barns were open (we had telephoned and checked on that, because the fair website http://www.carrollcountyfair.com/ does not anywhere list what time the "gates" open for the public; it just lists when special events and entertainment are.

When one enters the fair from parking, one is in the vendor area - mostly farm equipment vendors. There was also a mechanical bull ride set up there (with super-easy settings, so no minimum age or size limit other than being able to comprehend the instructions without a parent holding onto you) and a few farm-related, non-equipment booths. And a couple of churches. Anyway, one walks up a ramp to the "midway," the main paved corridor through the fairgrounds, and right in front of one is the first building. This one is actually three long buildings in a row. The left-hand one is the dining hall, which is one of the really nice things about this fair. For one thing, staff had told us on the phone, it's open even for breakfast, so if we had arrived at 8 a.m. Monday to see the rabbit show, we could have eaten breakfast there. We decided to go through the largest, middle building, first. This fair is entirely a 4-H & FFA fair, so all exhibits are by kids - no outside adult entries. There were pieces of restored farm equipment being judged, and lots of furniture, both made and restored/refinished (in fact, the restored/refinished was a very popular category.) Lots of the standard 4-H dioramas. Their theme this year is "Feeding Carroll County in More Ways Than One" along with a sub-theme of "4-H is open to all." By the content of the dioramas and displays, they mean that they are handicapped-friendly; nothing to do with diversity. Carroll County is, if I remember my census bureau stats correctly, the least diverse county in MD, over 90% pasty white, non-Hispanic, non-Asian, non-African-American, non-Pacific Island, etc. And certainly our time spent at the fair bore that out. So 4-H may be open to all there, but all is still going to be pretty homogenous. Anyway, at the end of that building, one could exit out the side and down a few steps to the Poultry Barn, which had a nice assortment of poultry. I love the various Wyandotte Laced, that's such a pretty breed. Some of the silkies, the ones that don't even look like birds. Some impressively sized Orpingtons - that's a large breed. Walking all the way through poultry brought us back to the first end of the first building we had been through, and it was almost noon, so we went into the dining hall for lunch. Now mind you, there was plenty of fair food along the midway. But we had heard about the dining hall and wanted to try it. It's a big, air conditioned hall, seats about 150 at long tables, and has a cafeteria line right in front of the kitchen. (Staff refer to it as the cafeteria, rather than the dining hall.) An $8 platter got us some excellent fried chicken, 2 sides (we both chose corn on the cob and baked potato) and a roll and a drink. They had unsweet iced tea in the big dispensers, as well as sweet tea. Larry reports that the sweet tea had lemon flavor in it, something he's not fond of and that wasn't mentioned on the signs. Other than that, we can say that that was a really good deal, and it's run by the fair - all the proceeds go to supporting the 4-H and FFA, rather than to commercial vendors, and the servers include some of the older kids, as well as a few supervisors. Friendly and chatty people. Given that admission is free and parking is free, if you happen to be in the area, go over and have lunch in the fairgrounds dining hall to support them, why not?

After lunch, we headed down the other end of the grounds, to the Shipley building, the largest one - it contains an arena and is the main livestock barn. What we noticed right off in livestock is that there were a lot more sheep and swine than we'd seen at the first two. Goats are still the most numerous livestock; at least in MD, 4-Hers seem pretty big on goats. But there were a good number of sheep. The swine were mostly asleep; pigs sleep as much as cats do, it seems. Not all the cattle were there yet, but the area for them wasn't that big - goats would be more numerous even were all the cattle stalls filled. When one goes out the far end of the Shiply building, one comes to the Rabbit Building, and since the rabbit show is Monday morning, all the rabbits were being checked in this Sunday afternoon. Really a large bunch of them, biggest we've seen so far, and I think probably at least as big as the rabbit selection at the MoCo fair. I don't like the cages they use - not enough ventilation - but they had a lot of them, and all in good condition, and the building IS air-conditioned, so not going to get as hot as some. We saw a few lionheads, and a couple of Rhinelanders, as well as the usual assorted lops and so on. As I say, looked like it was going to be a large rabbit show. Walking out of that, we came to the truly large farm equipment, the stuff too large for the vendor lot. The stuff that costs in the six digits. That was the largest combination furrower-seeder I have /ever/ seen, and Larry wondered, what farm anywhere around here is big enough to need that big a piece, and who can afford it? It's not like the Midwest where there's miles of corn on one farm.

From there, I hopped a ride back uphill on one of the many "gators" (small  cross between a golf cart and a pick-up truck) and Larry walked up, back to the midway ice cream booth. Where we had a BIG serving of ice cream, better bargain for the money than the Cecil County one, of the same Turkey Hill flavors. We then walked into the last third of the long building, which was the Home Arts stuff, and it was a small selection. Every single jar of canned something had a ribbon - it was a little silly-looking, so many ribbons it nearly obscured the shelves. I'm not sure about that as a teaching tool. And we walked over to the pig races, back in the vendor lot, and watched a couple of those - cute. It turns out that the main motivation/training tool for the pigs is: Oreos. That's right, the pigs love 'em. Then we went back over to Shipley, to watch the pet show - the juniorest division of 4-H is called the Clovers, and they are little kids new to exhibiting, so a general pet show is easy on them. Everyone gets an award and their picture with the King and Queen of the fair. Cute stuff, nothing cuter than a five-year-old hugging her pet chicken for dear life. We could have stayed for more shows after that - there was going to be poultry judging, and then an animals-in-costumes contest - but it was getting quite warm for us. So we took a short-cut across the track/stadium/thing-where-big-outdoor-entertainment-will-be, which was more level ground than going back up the midway, and a last pass through the vendor area to the handicapped parking. It was very easy to spend some 4 hours there, and we would have been happy to spend more time if we weren't getting too hot. If one wanted to buy tickets to the big-name evening entertainment, one could easily arrive shortly before 4 and find several hours of things to do before the show starts. (One could also buy a LOT of kettle corn, from various vendors, though we resisted.) Verdict: the price is right, and if you're in one of the nearby counties, certainly worth a visit, as long as you don't mind the lack of carnival rides.

One of the reasons I had been working so hard to unpack the condo was that I was expecting guests May 31, which I had. They were here Thursday-Sunday that week, took off for a few days to other spots on the east coast, then back for a few days starting the 7th - just after I had my v-tach episode. So L was able to drive me to one of my follow-up doctor's appointments, very helpful. We had planned this visit of theirs before I even started fixing up the house - in fact, the first bits of this visit of theirs from Austin were before I even thought of selling the house. But much of our planning was during the winter. My thoughts at that point had been, well, I'd be lucky to have the house ready to put on the market by May 1, and of course it wouldn't sell for 3-4 months to get a decent offer, so no problem, they'd be staying in the house with me, and it would actually be cleaner and neater than usual because I'd have stuff in storage while it was being shown for sale, right? Who knew that the house would be fixed and sold and I'd be all moved a month before their visit? So it was important to get at least the guest room cleared up enough to open the bed and for people to be able to open suitcases up in it.

( More about visits )

Now I can take my time moving the computer and printer over to it, and unpacking several of the boxes marked "office" which may contain genuinely useful office supplies, or may contain ancient torn-out-of-magazines knitting patterns, or may contain some of Steve's vast collection of pens, pencils, pencil holders, and spiral-bound notebooks from college, which I managed to get rid of some of before I moved, but some of it got packed because the house sold so fast that I had to finish packing in a hurry, throwing everything into boxes without making any decisions. With luck, at least half of what's in those "office" boxes will be destined for Goodwill or other similar efforts, and only half, or less, to stay here. The quest to unload STUPH continues.

( Stuff about the pets )
I am still not completely used to the higher dose of carvedilol, but I have had it pointed out by my cardiologist that I am some 9 years older than the last time I titrated up on this stuff, and hey, guess what, adjustments DO take longer when one is fifty-mumble than when one is forty-mumble. So I am being patient, and I'll grant that it's a little better now than it was 2 weeks ago. Some of the heat we had for a few days last week did NOT help, but today is a lot cooler, and I think I'll take advantage of that by doing something exciting like, oh, maybe taking out the garbage!

Today I was going to have gone to see my niece Hanna in her spring play, but I woke up this morning sneezing like mad, and even if it's allergies rather than the cold I thought at first, it wouldn't be a good idea to drive 130 miles there while either sneezing or under the influence of antihistamines, (The non-drowsy antihistamines do zilch for me.) So I let them know I wasn't coming, fed the critters, and went back to bed. When I woke up again in the afternoon, Gizmo had not finished his food and was not able to move properly. It seemed as though he had had a stroke. He hasn't, and at the emergency vet's, he's doing better - staying overnight and getting IV fluids, antibiotics, etc. But right at first, when I tried to see what was wrong, I was just saying shit, shit, shit over and over again. Because today is also exactly 8 months since the ventilator was disconnected after the organ donation people were finished - technical date of Steve's death. And I was already a bit teary-eyed. But, I had been thinking about writing a post about what I feel like now, and so I think I still will.

Here's the thing. The grief isn't any less - I still wake up every day thinking how unfair it is that I'm still alive and Steve's not. I still find that something brings me to tears every day - including writing this post. But what is, finally, diminishing to a detectable extent is the panic and anxiety that goes with the grief. Although I still wonder, every day, how I'm going to manage without Steve, I also notice, every day, that I have managed to muddle through. When I'm driving, I'm no longer so greatly distracted by thinking that "last time I was on this road. Steve was driving" or "I didn't used to have to drive here; Steve always did it." By now, I've driven most places I go to by myself several times, and I so I feel like I am doing the driving, not waiting for someone else to be in control. I still hate having to do it alone, but I am recognizing that I can manage most things. Maybe not the way Steve did them, maybe not as well, but I am managing. And that lessening of anxiety and panic is, I guess, a "feeling better."

There's still stuff not getting done, but I am managing to remind myself every day that I will get to it, even if it's more slowly, and/or less often, than I should - I will get it done. When I hit obstacles, I will manage them or work around them; I've figured out several work-arounds for things that I can't possibly do myself already, and have ideas percolating on several more. I finally found a charity that would pick up the brown recliner sofa for free - Goodwill around here doesn't do free pickup any more; they contract with College Hunks Hauling Junk, who charge a discount rate but nonetheless charge. I had offered the damn loveseat on Freecycle a couple of times, and while a couple of people expressed interest, they never followed through. And nobody was interested in buying it on Craigslist. But some internet research finally found a web site that will show one who picks up donations for free, in a given ZIP code. (Yes, Salvation Army still does, but I am not in the mood to give things to that brand of religion.)

And, while the vet bills from Gizmo's emergency today means I'll have to put it off for a couple months, I've found a company that will refinish the pink bathtub in white, reglazing it, so I don't have to buy a new one and pay a contractor to remove the old one and install a new one. The reglazing will be quicker, cheaper, and will feel more acceptable, because I really hate the thought of throwing out a perfectly good fixture where the only fault is extreme ugliness. I think with the tub white, and I can get a new white toilet installed (much less expensive to remove and replace than a bathtub), then the rest of the bathroom, including the peculiar sinks, will seem much less awful. So there's a plan for that, even if deferred a bit.

Baltimore County sent Steve a jury duty notice, so I got more copies of the death certificate last week and tomorrow I'll mail them one to explain why Steve will not be answering the notice - I'm sure they wouldn't just take my word for it. I have to get more copies of the "Letters of Administration" also - the estate execution stuff - to finish up some other stuff, and I haven't done that as fast as I should have, but at least I know I have to do it and how, so it's progress, if slow.

So. "Feeling better." No less grief, but less panic, and that does make life a teensy bit easier. I went to a grief support group run by Gilchrist for 6 weekly sessions, and that did help, too, talking to other people - I hadn't thought it would, but it did - certainly did more for my peace of mind than NOT going to one, if anybody else is wondering about whether they're worth it. The people in the group decided we'd keep meeting occasionally for lunch, to continue to talk to each other, so we're having lunch tomorrow at Panera. There are 6 of us, and 3 of the others are also in the 55-65 age range as I am, and the other two not too much older. That was a coincidence - it wasn't planned specifically to be a "young widowed persons" group or any other specific age range, so it could have been all older people my parents' age - the age where, forgive me for saying it like this, one starts *expecting* people to die. Most of the groups that are for "young" people are for up to age 50, and most of the rest tend to be seniors over 65, so it was a bit of serendipity to have a group turn out to be people in the neglected middle-age range. Anyway, as it turns out, it is a great relief to be able to talk to other people who are going through the same thing - even if it's not identical, we have more in common than not, just by the fact of losing a spouse. Some lost theirs to long, drawn-out illnesses, one other person to a sudden event like mine. There are people left worse off organizationally and financially, and people not as badly off, but we all have the struggles with those things - even the people who had a couple of years of their spouse battling cancer find out, apparently, when it's over, there's no way you can have remembered to take care of everything, and there's no predicting what details will pop up out of the woodwork that it never even occurred to you could exist. Everybody turns out to have SOMETHING in their bills, paperwork, or housekeeping that they didn't know had to be taken care of ahead of time.

There was going to be a very depressing paragraph here, about what we also have all learned about illnesses that can't be detected or prevented, about how even early treatment doesn't stave things off forever, but after writing it three times, each time was more depressing, and I decided to leave it out.  Even my attempts to summarize it in a sentence are depressing. Let's just say, we all beat ourselves up about what we might have done to prevent things, or save our spouses, and we all need a long time to realize that the should have/could haves are (a) likely not true, and (b) definitely not useful.

So that's the update. I'm coping. I'm still lonely and sad and heartbroken. I would still like someone to come live in my spare room so I have some help. I'm still alive. It's still unfair - and it's still true that there is no such thing as "fair." If there's a pattern in all that, I haven't figured it out yet.

Well, the roof is replaced. And the eaves/sofits and the gutters, and a few bits of the siding trim. Energy-efficient white shingles, that will get us an energy tax credit on our next income tax return.

And Fern bunny is fine, after the application of quite a bit of money at the veterinarian.

All of which is to say, we're not going anywhere this summer. No RG in Pittsburgh, sorry M-friends. No Knit and Crochet Show in Buffalo. Nowhere that we can't drive to within a couple of hours and stay at someone's house for free.

We are fixing up the other house for sale, since we haven't had much luck renting it - it goes on the market in a week and a half. A bit of interior paint, repairs to the sidewalk, replace a couple doors, stuff like that. We won't get what we paid for it; we bought it at the peak of the market, and that's not going to come again any time this ten years. But we should clear enough on it, if all goes well, to pay off the mortgage on the current house, replenish savings that were depleted by the new roof, and maybe, just maybe, enough to let us replace the pink bathtub with something we can stand to look at with our glasses on. There's no chance it would be sold and closed on in time to use the money for any of the afore-mentioned summer travel, though.

Anyway, that's what's been happening around here lately. I've gotten in a bit of reading, some crocheting and knitting, and have written some reviews for the Tea Review Blog -check out the blog here:
http://www.teareviewblog.com/
and a few of my reviews, specifically, here:
http://www.teareviewblog.com/?author=27

And, just so this has a bit more content, a picture of the most recent sweater I finished:



I've already worn this one a couple times and people seem to like the little sunflower, even though squirrel_magnet says it looks like a large-winged insect has landed on me.

Watch the gap! is the LIRR's motto, apparently, and they repeat it more frequently than almost anything else. For that matter, Amtrak says it a lot too, although they are more polite and less New York about it: "Please be aware of the gap between the train and the station platform." I've just been in New York again for a few days, visiting my friend Sally-the-hoarder and helping her throw out some more stuff. We got a lot done. The upstairs of the house is *almost* empty, so that it can be recarpeted and repainted and rented out, which will help a great deal in supplying money for doing long-delayed maintenance and renovation to the rest of the house. We put a whole bunch of small furniture items out at the curb, and, since it's the weekend lots of college students are settling in, almost all of it disappeared within minutes. Except for a sofa in really bad condition, cat-pee-wise. Which is too bad, because other than that, it was in excellent condition. Oh well, it will keep the town sanitation department bulk pickup guys employed. And lots more papers went to recycling, and lots more stuff that she's keeping went into clear plastic bins where it can be stacked neatly and she can see what's in them, instead of losing track and buying duplicates. Progress! Next: convincing her to get rid of some of the downstairs stuff, where she has her grandmother's stuff, including furniture, and ALL her parents' furniture, as well as everything that she has purchased over the years. And she claims to love it all, including the 50-year-old lamps with brittle cords and shades that are in shreds. Sigh. Oh well. A little bit at a time.

I got back Saturday. Coming back on the LIRR to get to Penn, there were many, many college students, and many, many open cans and bottles of beer, and much shrieking. Which made the conductor change the announcements a bit: "Watch the gap. And take your crap with you. This means you. Take your beer bottles and crap off the train with you." The Amtrak regional back to here was quieter. Train really is a very comfortable and easy way to travel. And do it late enough at night, and the fares are less than half what they are at peak times.

Today we went to the State Fair, as this is the last weekend of it. I looked at all the "home arts" - needlework and cooking, mainly, and I was interested mostly in the needlework - and we went to the Sheep and Goats pavilion and the Swine Judging pavilion and the Cow Palace - skipped the horse barns, since there were signs saying no strollers allowed past this point, and I assumed that applied to my scooter, too. Yes, same scooter that I took to Europe. It makes wandering around several crowded blocks' worth of fairground doable. Let's see, then a tiny chickens-and-rabbits building, then the Exhibition Hall, with vendors of all sorts of stuff Ginsu knives!, waterless cookware!, handwriting analysis!, Jews for Jesus!, Electrostatic brooms! (we bought one of those); candy apples (I bought a couple of those...), cinnamon pecans, Jack Daniels mustard and barbecue sauce! For those of you not familiar with State Fairs in the USA, this is a pretty typical vendor selection. All sorts of crap, mixed with some good stuff, mixed with booths from the political parties and several government agencies and a few more charities and a lot more crap for sale. Then through the 4-H petting area, which included a very attractive llama and a snooty alpaca. Walked through the Midway a bit, and the food pavilion featuring locally made/grown foods - everything from corn-on-the-cob to lamb sandwiches to pit beef, not just junk food but some halfway real food - to get to the last hall, the Agriculture Hall, which featured lots more state agencies' booths, and a John Deere tractor, plus all the prize-winning individual pumpkins and apples and corn and flowers... chatted with the people from the Maryland Insurance Admin for a while, wherein we shared a few laughs about Inland Marine insurance. I don't often get to talk to other people who think Inland Marine is as funny as I do. Outside that pavilion were the armed forces recruiting trailers, and the Motor Vehicle Admin's trailer (guess how many people wanted to visit that) and the county fire department's safety training trailer. And then a last glance toward the Midway, and we were done. We would have spent longer, but they don't have as much of a rabbit show here as they have at the Texas state fair or the Massachusetts state fair, nor nearly as many hysterical-looking chickens. No emus. No pig races. And we skipped the learn-to-milk-a-cow parlor.

So, now that I'm back from being sick (previous post) and going to NY and going to the fair, I have about two weeks worth of y'all's posts to catch up on, ha ha. If there's something I absolutely need to know, give me a comment here so I can go check it out, 'cause otherwise I am going to just read the last couple days' worth.

First, the promised-last-week Amazon.com review of Harry Turtledove's Beyond the Gap. Next, also reviewed on Amazon.com, although it's a crafts book, there is text in it, which I read, and even learned a few new finishing techniques for small cross-stitch pieces, is Mini Cushions in Cross Stitch: 30 Original Designs to Make by Sheena Rogers.

Then, also finished my on-again, off-again reading of Atheist Universe by David Mills, which is subtitled "The Thinking Person's Answer to Christian Fundamentalism." There are some good points in the book, and some ways to give quick, yet scientific, answers to people who claim there are miracles, or who tell one that one is going to hell. However, Mills has a tendency to confuse the Intelligent Design anti-evolution movement with Fundamentalism as a whole, and there are much better resources than this book available if one is specifically setting out to counter the IDers.

I've also just re-read the entire Liaden Universe series, except for the two Crystal prequels, which may account for the increased sentence length in this entire post. It's probably not a good idea, in general, to re-read Brust's Viscount of Adrilankha series and then Lee & Miller's Liaden series, in such quick succession, as both leave one talking funny and with a strange impulse to bow when greeting people.

Other stuff:
Boots guinea pig is getting elderly and slowing down fast; usually when this happens, it's not long, unfortunately. Boots is a long-haired breed, a Silkie - and a Himalayan Silkie, at that - and it's my experience that the long-haired breeds always seem to be more fragile and short-lived than the short-hairs or silly-hairs. I think it's all that effort and calorie consumption that goes into producing the beautiful hair, instead of building up body reserves and strength. We are coddling him in what we expect are his last days, chopping up carrots into smaller bits, giving him applesauce, and just generally talking to him lots.

Which is how I spent yesterday, alternating building a new, larger, cage for the Funnybunnies (Farfalle and Domino) with talking to and feeding Boots. The Funnybunnies seem to like the new cage - it is half again larger, and has two upper levels to hop around on, instead of just one. I'm still waiting for the metal litter tray I've ordered, since they've just about chewed the current plastic one down to the ground (they go through entire plastic litter trays in 3-4 months). I will take pictures sometime real soon.

One of the problems with buying lots of books, in lots of unplanned trips to both new and used book stores, is that every once in a while one goes to look at the TBR (To Be Read) shelf, and there's something on there that neither of us recognizes, neither of us remembers buying, and neither of us can think of why we would buy it. Such is the case with Karen Harper's Dark Angel, which appears to be a sort of medical thriller/romance involving an evil pharmaceutical company stealing Amish babies. Completely silly plot right off the bat, and in the telling, it turns out to be one of those giant conspiracies where everybody turns out to be a bad guy, despite that fact that in real life you couldn't possibly have that large a conspiracy and keep it a secret for more than 10 minutes, nor that many psychopaths in one small town without someone noticing before now: the evil, formerly kindly, sheriff, and the evil, formerly kindly, veterinarian, and the evil, formerly kindly, wife of ____ and the evil, formerly jolly, best friend of ____ and the evil, formerly hardworking and serious, husband of _____ - you get the idea. And, apparently, it's part of a series, all involving the same small Ohio town, where the romances seem to all involve someone Amish falling in love with someone non-Amish and yet it works out happily ever after, somehow, every time. Just. Plain. Silly. I read the first two chapters or so, then the last two, and then skimmed a few pages from the middle, and it never looked realistic enough to tempt me back into reading the whole thing. When I want mystery, I want a faint semblance of realism, and when I want silly, I'll read fantasy that's intended as fantasy, thank you very much.

We cleaned bunny cages this afternoon, and everybody starts the new year off with assorted new chew toys. It's funny how different the tastes are of the various critters. Gizmo prefers plastic things he can pick up with his teeth and FLING; Fern prefers wooden things with lots of parts and a nut in the middle, or else woven grass or wicker to be shredded; Farfalle and Domino will ignore all of those in favor of shredding a large piece of cardboard down to its component molecules. They all like "Carrot Slims" treats, as do the piggles and chinnies, so there was happiness and munching all around afterwards, despite our ruining of their homes by cleaning them.

Because Banned Books Week starts tomorrow, here's something pertinent by Kurt Vonnegut.

And, on a less serious note, some pictures of our bunnies!