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stubbed toe at Middle Deep
Monday, July 2 2018
I was feeling still better today, though it took awhile to clear the accumulated chunks of mucous from my lungs after getting out of bed this morning. I'd find a rattle in my lungs and work to get in behind it with a good head of air to blow the mucous it represented forward with a powerful cough.
Despite the continued heat wave, it was reasonably comfortable down on the nascent screened-in porch. So I put together a whole "wall" for the east end. It was a little less than 12 feet wide, 88 inches tall, and had "studs" spaced four feet apart. I'd be stapling screen to the outside of this and that wall will be complete. Once completed, I tried lifting it into place, but this proved a bit taxing in my condition; not only did the lift fail, but I was left with a headache.
After that, Gretchen and I decided to take the dogs to Middle Deep, the swimming hole below the derelict dam on the Saw Kill east of Woodstock. Though it was Monday, Little Deep (which we walked past on our way from Zena Road) was pretty well occupied. And when we got to Middle Deep, there were as many people there as we'd ever seen (perhaps ten, counting the kids). There was also a little black dog that Ramona didn't seem to like, though she did like the large male German Shepherd she'd met on the trail who soon joined us at Middle Deep.
Both of our dogs got in the water, and Ramona did a fair amount of actual swimming. Neville, though, started wandering eastward along the south bank and I went to fetch him. Unless one paid attention to him, he tended to keep wandering off (something Ramona just doesn't do). While I was trying cool down and Gretchen was chatting with some water-wings-equipped redneck children, Neville vanished again. And this time when we went looking for him, he couldn't be found. We walked all the way back to the parking lot at Little Deep, asking people we passed if they'd seen a dog matching Neville's description. Nobody had. So we were forced to walk back to Middle Deep again. Somewhere along the way I stubbed two toes on my right foot so badly that I was momentarily doubled-over in agony. I'd been wearing flip-flops, but they hadn't provided any protection. The damage: a bleeding injury on the endmost joint of the middle toe and unspecified damage to the "ring" toe adjacent. [That ring toe would later swell and turn purple; perhaps I fractured a bone.]
Happily, as we approached Middle Deep, there was Neville on the trail, heading our way. He was looking concerned, though I doubt he will have learned his lesson about wandering off.
We all got in the water one last time at Little Deep before getting into the car and going into Woodstock for lupper, my favorite meal of the day. I'd kind of wanted pizza at Catskill Mountain Pizza, but the only shade there was provided by table umbrellas. So we ended up at The Garden Café, where Gretchen is such a VIP that the dogs can always be with her in the dining room (which is air conditioned). After being oohed and ahhed over by all the customers along the way to our table, the dogs quickly lay down on the cool floor and didn't do anything else for the rest of our meal (though a chalkboard with daily specials slipped off a chair and landed on Neville at one point, causing a moment of terror and some visible dog claw scratches on the tile, but Neville got over that soon enough). The Garden has upped its taco game in recent months, so I had the Jamaican jerk trumpet-mushrooms tacos filled-out with lemon slaw, and they were great. I also got a side of fried potatoes wedges, as that is something they have also perfected in fairly recent times. They're great with Cholula sauce, which The Garden always has on hand. I should mention that was the first real sit-down meal we'd gone to during business hours to which I hadn't brought my phone.
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