Sigh - October.

This kinda sucks.

September lasted for an eyeblink. This morning's got me rummaging around in the barn pantry for my winter woolies. Yeah, I knew I'd be peeling it off in an hour, but still. It sucks.

Ghost was really full of beans this morning, which was nice to see. He spends large periods of time acting like a grumpy old dog, and considering that this time last year I lost two old dogs in quick succession I find that unacceptable - particularly considering that Ghost is only about five. But this morning he wanted to PLAY! Wanted to PLAY! Let's go for a walky, Uncle Joel!

And the truth is I've been criminally remiss in the walky department lately. Most of the summer I've had some pressure sores on the side of my stump that Would! Not! Heal! The best that could be said for them was that they didn't ever get much worse, either. Can't blame the skin for the problem. If you were a patch of skin, I'd defy you to heal if you spent all day sweating into:

• A nylon sheath
• A thick wool sock
• A closed-foam soft insert
• Two layers of other socky stuff, just to make up for the soft insert having pretty much collapsed from age
• A fiberglass prosthesis.

Yeah, go ahead and make fun of it for not healing.  It's not the skin's fault.  The only way to get pressure sores to heal is to take off the &%$# leg and leave it off.  Which I pretty much refuse to do.  But the sores make walkies less than giddy fun for Uncle Joel, so we haven't been doing them much.  Which, in turn, makes life dull for the boys.

But the sores have been much better just lately, Uncle Joel is feeling pretty damned good, I certainly don't have the excuse that it's too hot, so off for walkies we go.  Pretty quick I was sweating into that ill-advised overshirt.  I know better than to do that.  When preparing for a good walky, always dress at least one layer less than you need for comfortable warmth.  It doesn't take long to regret that extra layer, once you get going.

After several tries, I'm still having trouble getting M's tractor going again.  Bleeding the filter housing and the injector pump was a piece of cake, but I can't get the engine to pump the air out of the injector lines and I've worn the battery down twice trying.  I get some dampness and bubbles, but no clear flow from any of the injector lines.  At this rate I may need to wait for M to come up next weekend and was really planning to have it running long before then.  It's not that complex, but so far it's not working.  It is an irritation.

Ah, well.  As usual I've a list of things I want to do today, and as usual by the end of the day I probably won't even get to half of them.  I've cut all the tiles I need for the Lair's stove pedestal, but so far still haven't glued them into place because I can't find a single toothed trowel on the whole damned place and I know we have at least two.  I still need to pull the shower tub up in the bathroom so I can install that new drain fitting I've had for over a week.  Little stuff like that: Stuff that I really need to get off my duff and get moving on, because IT'S OCTOBER!

One thing that's really going surprisingly well is the matter of batteries for the Lair.  There are all these big 12-volt gel cell batteries we obsoleted out last year; I pulled the ones with the best readings and tried to coax them back to life with a trickle charger, with no joy.  But I've found that wiring them directly to an 18-volt solar panel and just leaving them in the sun for three weeks seems to work a lot better than I thought it would.  I think that'd boil the electrolyte right out of a regular lead-acid battery, and am pleasantly surprised to learn that these maintenance-proof gel cells actually do have at least one advantage over the old-fashioned way.

Oops!  Just got a call from H; I've overdue for shit-shoveling, and she's making bacon and eggs and wanted to know (snicker) if I (choke, chortle) wanted any.

Gotta go!