Notes from Maine - 2026/02/22
On Friday I went to my friend’s latest art exhibit. Her paintings are fascinating. Some included embroidery and jewels stitched into the canvas. Branches with lush, verdant leaves projected from a ribcage in one. Another showed snarling canine teeth contrasted with egg-laying hens.
A few of her pieces hang in my house. I like to leave little offerings for the skull-headed baby who watches over one of the hallways here. I don’t know if that little skull-headed baby can be bribed, but it seems foolish to take any chances.
On the way home, it was snowing. I don’t drive in the snow much anymore—there’s just no need for it. My schedule is loose enough that I can keep an eye on the weather report and work around when the snow is coming. I’m comfortable driving in snow, and the truck is capable, but there’s always a danger that someone else on the road isn’t going to be fully prepared. Even if I can stop in an emergency it doesn’t mean that the person behind me will. I had to sweep out the truck bed when I got home. I need it clean and dry to haul hay and shavings.
I’m counting down the days until March. That’s when I’ve decided to finally use up the store of hay in the loft of the barn. Suddenly my trips per week will decrease by 80%. The people at the feed store are going to forget who I am.
My goal for the rest of the winter is to make at least one trip to the dump every week. This is on top of my normal refuse schedule, of course. There are parts of the basement that still have leftover items from the last people who dwelled in this house. I don’t need metal racks with shelves labeled for medical supplies. I don’t need random coils of thick wire or the last of the hundred-year-old windows. I’ll keep making weekly dump runs until I’m shed of that cruft. There are things in the attic as well. I remember an old chair in the storage space above the garage. Everything must go.
I have a toolbox in the garage that belonged to my father. On the top is a large foil “STP” sticker. The rest is covered in stickers as well, but the STP one is the attention-grabber. I’ve decided to collect stickers on my toolboxes. I don’t know why my father covered his toolbox in stickers, but it seems like a noble pursuit. My pinball toolboxes are enormous—the kind that are bigger than a washing machine and roll around—so I have a ton more surface area to contend with. Fortunately, pinball manufacturers love stickers as much as my father, so I run across a lot of them. I’ve made a few stickers with my printer, but it’s more fun to try to collect. In this beginning phase, I’ll just go for quantity. Once toolbox real estate becomes more precious, I’ll probably become more discerning.
I think that decorating the toolboxes is a form of nesting. I’m not sure why this instinct is kicking in for me right now. This winter has been one of my more “successful” winters in a long time. I mean that in terms of getting done the things that I wanted to get done. In the fall, I had detailed visions of wrapping up different projects, organizing this space and that, and prioritizing work that required me to be a bit more indoors and sedentary than summer activities. I’ve made good, heads-down progress and it feels nice. I’m sure that in a month or so I will be panicked about all the stuff I have to get done before mud season, but that always happens. I’ll worry about that when it comes.
At some point, I’d like to have another carnival here. We used to have them every few years. Spring would be filled with trying to come up with new and better amusements, although the kids always liked the bounce house the best. Cotton candy, face painting, go-karts, and mini golf were all good, but just having an inflatable bounce house and one of those big caterpillars is enough for a decent carnival. Actually, you need some kind of water feature for a successful carnival. A dunk tank, water slide, or, at the very least, water balloons. When my nephew was little I asked him his favorite part of the carnival after everything was cleaned up and put away.
“Watching the girls fill up the water balloons in the sink,” was his answer. I don’t have that sink anymore and those girls have graduated from college. Then again, my nephew is going off to college this fall, so I guess the carnival isn’t really age appropriate for him either. Maybe I need to wait until my friends have grandkids before I bother to plan another carnival here. It’s fun for everyone, but more fun if there are kids running around.
Speaking of winter and snow, a weather advisory just popped up on my computer. It spoke of a “Winter Storm Watch” for “Severe Weather.” When I clicked through they’re talking about maybe six inches (fifteen centimeters). At this point in the winter, that’s hardly enough to shovel. It will be gone in no time even if my driveway doesn’t get plowed. I better hurry up with my dump trips or I’m going to run out of winter before I run out of stuff to get rid of.
