Viene la tormenta

The wind is picking up. I not only hear the wind chimes, but I hear the wind howling too. We're supposed to get a big storm tonight, I hope it brings rain for the garden.

It's been four and a half months since I started posting and taking a picture every day for a photographic journal (the 365 project). There are days it's tough, and it feels more like a chore than an experience. But in spite of those days I have to say that I feel so much more creative in both word and picture now than I did when the year started. I have so much creative juice I almost feel like writing a book... (fiction, of course).

But before I go off and start another project/career, I need to finish up a bunch of things I have going right now--foremost among them, the solar installation and the new garden. They are so close to done I can almost taste them! The final solar inspection is scheduled for 8:30 am tomorrow. The solar company was out again today checking and rechecking--for the fifth time--the wire sizes, breakers, anything and everything the inspector might question. I actually had to write a letter to the inspector today putting in writing that I understand that I can't use all my appliances at the same time (including kilns) because they pull more amperage than my system is rated for. If I do try to run that much at once, I will blow the house breaker. Really? I have had to do many asinine things in my life in the name of bureaucracy, but this may have been the most spectacularly stupid. Whatever. It's done.

The pond liner is going in tomorrow and I am going to need to schedule a water truck to deliver the water for the pond on Thursday or Friday. But, wait, you say. Don't you have a well? Why yes we do! And though it pumps lots of gallons a minute from the aquifer, the reverse osmosis system only purifies around a gallon and a half a minute. The pond is about 6,500 gallons which would take... six days of non-stop running of the RO system to process, and we would just about blow through an RO filter doing it. The filters cost $600 each so it's better to just do a one-time water buy.

New beehive tomorrow too (if I'm lucky). I need to paint it before the bees come and they're tentatively scheduled for Friday. Have I mentioned how much I love my bees? I LOVE MY BEES!!! I'd love them if I didn't get a lick of honey or a smidgen of wax. I love that they are.

Zaga is beginning my birthday celebrations early and taking me for a deluxe facial tomorrow afternoon. I feel so pampered! Pedicure yesterday, facial tomorrow, legwax Thursday... is that TMI? I never know. I look at it like I'm taking the car in for a tune-up and detailing. Dave did have my car detailed last week and it's so clean it feels brand new again. That's quite an accomplishment after I've been hauling muddy dogs, bees, uncounted plants, a McNugget begrimed child, and assorted other stickiness--not to mention schlepping all kinds of stuff from Atlanta--over the past several months. I am hyper-aware of how clean it is and I'm being very careful not to let so much as as French fry fall between the seats.

This is one of those stream-of-consciousness posts. Sometimes they can be good, but sometimes they can go horribly wrong so I'm just going to wrap it up now and hope for the best. It was a Good Day. I'd like more of these please.