The Daily: 7 October 2024

Autumn rolled in last week. The mountains are not green, but a glorious pumpkin orange. The late apples are ripening. Several farms put the early glut of winter squash on sale already. My favorite place, Burtt’s, is doing 3 pie pumpkins for $10 and 5 winter squash of any size and variety for $30. That’s a lot of squash!

I had planned on going up there over the weekend to buy a lot of squash and apples for winter keeping. However, I had a couple adulting tasks that needed to be done, and those sort of derailed all plans.

First, I had to do my car’s state safety and emissions inspection. My car may be registered and licensed for two years, it may be running mostly on batteries (which nobody seems to understand in car maintenance land… something that probably should be a little more widely disconcerting), it may hardly rack up fifty miles in a week these days, but I need to have it tested every year. In other states, this is a matter of pulling up to the state car inspection booth, letting them hold a monitor near the tailpipe for few minutes while you fill out a short form, and then you’re sent on your way with a new sticker. As I remember it, the cost was minimal and you never needed an appointment. Moreover, there was never a threat of needing to do repairs unless your car was spewing black smoke — and even then you had to go to a mechanic to do those repairs, a mechanic that was not part of the testing system. (Or you could do them yourself, which is how most New Mexicans approach car repair.)

I was shocked to discover that in New England, not only is testing of the whole car required (which, okay, maybe a good thing, but still…) but the testers are not state supported facilities. They are the very same mechanics who will be doing the repairs that they find necessary in the test. How ripe for graft is this system! I had to replace the ball joints on my pick-up truck — a labor intensive and therefore costly repair — two years running. The part itself only costs about $50, but it takes specialized equipment — at least a hydraulic lift — and many labor hours to replace. But… I don’t care how much salt I was driving through. The ball joint is a solid piece of steel and does not corrode to dangerous levels of thinness in twelve months. And yet, this costly and difficult thing to repair routinely failed to pass an inspection done by the same people who would then charge me hundreds of dollars to replace it. And keep my truck until it was fixed, because I couldn’t drive with the enormous red “failed” sticker in the window without getting pulled over by the local constabularies.

Who, now that I think about it, were probably in on the graft…

I have learned to accept this corruption as the price of driving in New England, but it still rankles. This past weekend I needed to get my sticker replaced (it expired September 30th). As some of you know, I had a rough summer of car maintenance, paying about $2500 for an oil change that managed to find many things dangerously wrong. I sort of believed that these things might have actually been worn to dangerous levels. My car is over 10 years old, after all. It shouldn’t have lasted this long. Things will need replacing. So I forked over that money and had everything fixed. And yet what happened on Saturday when I took the car in to get its state inspection? Well… the alignment is off. It needs new winter tires. And the windshield wipers failed inspection.

The alignment was fixed in July. The winter tires are barely two years old and have seen maybe 15,000 miles. And the wiper blades were replaced in March. Now, fair disclosure. The wipers never work. It’s not the blades; it’s something about the design. It is too loose or something. The wipers smear water; they don’t wipe. So, I can see how that might confuse an inspector. But it doesn’t bother me. I don’t drive in the rain all that much, and never if it is both raining and dark — when smearing water is the worst for visibility. Still, I let them replace the blades so that the required repair would be checked off and I could leave the shop with a passed inspection sticker. I did not let them do anything with the alignment or tires, which were merely bad, not failed, saying that I’d rather take it to the dealership mechanics where they have the parts and the tools to deal with my complex electronica-protecting undercarriage.

I will not be fixing the alignment, nor will I be buying new tires, because I know that these things are not broken, because I just fixed them. But how many people are scared into fixing things that aren’t broken? How many alignment jobs in New England consist entirely of a mechanic raising the vehicle up on a lift, looking at it, maybe adjusting something slightly, and then charging the clueless customer $500? What would have happened if I hadn’t fixed my car over the summer? I would have probably taken it in to have it fixed… I might have even let the “inspector” fix it on Saturday.

But I declined… except for the wipers… and that wiper blade replacement plus the inspection costed me over $150. Which is a substantial chunk of my discretionary income for the month. So, I was feeling a little poor after that, poor enough to think that buying a lot of squash was maybe not a good idea this week. However, my next stop on the adulting trail put paid to any notion of apple picking and pumpkin purchasing.

I went to get my COVID and flu shots. I am already rather late on this project. Flu has been going around my office. I’ve been lucky to work in my own little cubicle bubble and haven’t contracted it yet. However, Son#1 texted me Friday after he got off work to say that he tested positive for COVID… Well, that pushed the vaccine urgency right to the top of the to-do list. I can’t do another damn round of COVID this year. I don’t have any more paid time off. My body is only now recovering from April. And I still don’t feel like I have a brain most days. So after talking with him (remotely), I made an appointment to get vaccinated.

I always forget how thoroughly this wipes me out. Flu shots were bad enough before COVID came along. I always feel like I have the flu for a couple days after a vaccination. Also… vaccinations just don’t work that well on me. I go through the vaccination misery but never avoid having the flu later in the season, though maybe it’s not as severe. (Severe defined as deadly… it always feels severe…) I have also had measles and mumps and scarlet fever despite vaccination. I should also say that I have not yet dodged COVID. Every time I am exposed, I get an infection strong enough to lay me flat for days regardless of my vaccination schedule. (Truthfully, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had COVID… I think April was the sixth?) Like the flu shot, the COVID vaccine seems to keep me alive but not healthy.

I have never done both shots at the same time.

I will never be doing that again…

First, both arms hurt. By evening, I looked at the injection point and expected to see deep bruising, but there was nothing but pain. However, as soon as I got home from the pharmacy, I was experiencing a hodge podge of symptoms from both types of infection, plus an increase in the stuffed sinuses of allergies and the inflammation of rheumatoid arthritis. Even a bit extra heart disfunction. Couldn’t breathe. My joints and back were throbbing. My head and throat, raw. I had a light fever. And the COVID brain was back with a vengeance.

Do you know how hard it is to do anything when your brain is on COVID? I can’t even read. My eyes slide over the page without taking in a single word. I will start a task and forget what I am doing as I am doing it. This disease redefines being present in the moment. That’s all I got… a string of disconnected moments. All of which are intensely painful…

Anyway, there was no way I could do apple gathering. No way to even drive to the orchard. So I did not do that. I did not do much of anything actually. I dug out a little Halloween for my house to try and keep up with the neighbors, save face as the neighborhood witch. (Not that I’m that kind of witch, but I try to meet expectations when it comes to the joy of little people…) I baked bread and made yogurt and a pot of lentil stew. I cleaned the basement and the bathrooms. And I prepped for the cold…

The forecast for Saturday night was in the middle 30s (°F), very close to freezing. So I finally closed up the storm windows, all except my bedroom. (I like to sleep a little cool, preferring to burrow under the blankets rather than heat the whole room.) Closing the storms usually involves a bit of clean-up first to get leaves, bugs and other outdoor grack out of the window frames. It wasn’t so bad this year because we haven’t had much wind for a while. Also, I fear the reduction in bug carcasses might reflect the reduction in bugs overall. But it was still a task to get the house sealed up. Especially on vaccination body…

I also had to cover up the winter veg. It won’t die unless there is a hard freeze and that was not likely. But seedlings have a lower tolerance for extremes, and the carrots and other roots are nothing but seedlings right now. So I dug out the row cover and the frames for that bed and turned it into a tiny poly-tunnel. I also looked at the tomatoes that still need to ripen and decided that I don’t have enough windowsills for all that green fruit. So I lightly covered all that also. That will not protect them if we get a hard frost, but it will keep the leaves from yellowing, something that happens when the temperatures fall below 40°F for a while. Maybe the fruit will ripen, maybe not. But I’ve done what I can…

And it did, in fact, fall below 40°F. On Sunday morning, it was still 34° at 8am, with dense fog that didn’t lift until almost midday. It turned warm after the fog burned off, but not too warm. So I feel vindicated. My neighbor’s tomatoes and my uncovered squash were all limp after the cold night, though I don’t think we did get frost. To be fair, the squash were already severely stressed from mildew and so on. Wouldn’t have taken a frost to finish them off. But my tomatoes and basil are all still happy in their little tents.

I had planned on taking down the row cover on Sunday. But… well, first of all, I felt terrible. Even worse than Saturday. Had a really fun round of vertigo which had me taking strong doses of antihistamines and anti-inflammatories to dry out the inner ears and stop the room from spinning (I was in bed by 7pm…) But then I looked at the forecast. We won’t have lows above 40° for the rest of the week, and there is a chance of snow late in the week. I suspect that won’t happen, but I fully expect to have miserable cold rain, weather that is, for me and the garden, worse than snow. Damp and just above freezing. My joints hurt just thinking about it… So the garden is draped in white cloth still.

Maybe it’s seasonal… a ghostly garden…

If the weather gods don’t deliver some warmer weather next week, I will probably pick what I can and let the tomatoes go for the year. This late in the year, the garden isn’t getting enough sunlight anyway. So it is time to put the growing season to rest.

Which I am more than ready to accept. The gardener needs rest too!

---

Some Halloween photos…

---

©Elizabeth Anker 2024