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pet door for a wolf spider
Saturday, September 16 2017
I could hear Gretchen's parents puttering around downstairs as they impatiently prepared to drive homeward (though the plan was to visit the sculpture museum at Storm King on the way). So I came down, fed the cats and dogs, started some coffee, and went off to the brownhouse to take care of some business. There's a large wolf spider living in there, and she keeps casting aside shed skins like pairs of eight-legged pants. While I was there, I went too close to the spider and she fled out through the crack along the hinge-side of the door. That spider has been living in the brownhouse for months (and may have even survived the winter in there) so I wasn's sure she wanted to be outside. So I left the door open. I also considered what a pet door for a wolf spider might look like.
While Gretchen remained in bed, Gretchen's parents and I talked about medications, medical procedures and other not-especially-appetizing topics over breakfast. I was eating a plain bagel from the Honest Weight Food Co-op (not as good as Hannaford bagels!), though it contained my usual sandwich materials: raw smoked tempeh, jalapeño, onion, vegan mayo, tomato, and mustard. At some point I checked in on Gretchen and she indicated through a fog that she'd taken an ambien at 8:00am and wouldn't be coherent until 11:00am. Gretchen's parents hit the road at 10:00am.
When Gretchen was next fully conscious, she said she thought a mix of things had kept her from having a good night's sleep. Part of it was having become accustomed to the constant interruptions of a hospital stay. Part of it might've been a small physical dependency developed to the narcotics (which she has quit cold turkey). And there's also occasional nausea and trouble with her pooping system, which is far from normal in ways that you might find interesting but I will refrain from describing.
After I'd given Gretchen her customary meal of two pieces of toast and her two antibiotics (served with apple sauce, since one of them extremely bitter), I took the dogs for a walk at around noon. They ended up staying in the forest until 4:30pm. Meanwhile some asshole at the bus turn around monotonously fired into a tree with a very large gun, waiting sometimes 15 minutes between shots (the bullets were probably expensive).
At some point Gretchen was feeling strong enough to go for a short walk, maybe 300 feet south down the Farm Road and back. Later she settled in in front for the television and watched old movies, starting with It Should Happen To You. Meanwhile, I continued doing work I should've done during the week, figuring out the WooCommerce API and what I would need to do to upgrade the server's PHP from 5.3.3 to 5.6.
Eventually I answered a phone call from my childhood friend Nathan. Freakishly, his wife Janine was now in the hospital for an infection. I'd been drinking kratom tea all afternoon so I was in a good mood for talking. Our conversation inevitably came around to subjects such as the fractured state of news media and the absurdity that a man nobody should be buying a used car from is now president.
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