what a day

Squirrels were back, the hot chili oil I painted on everything dissuaded them from chewing up more shingles but the massive thunderstorm that rolled through last night after that knocked most of it all off. But I did have a live trap on the roof with some peanut butter. It was empty but the rain didn't wash the bait off and shortly after the chewing started I had one of the pair.

Now I'm going to assume squirrels do the whole pairing up thing, you know for reproduction and shit. The last time this happened I was able to keep em out well enough or soon enough that they hadn't settled on a space. These two were locked in and determined to get in.

The hold still trap as my brother calls em (hold still while they get dispatched) worked and cool, just ride em up the bike path.

Where.
the.
fuck.
is.
my.
trailer.
hitch.

30 min of searching later (maybe it is in the office? WHO KNOWS I TOOK IT OFF THE CROSSRIP+ AND NOW IT HAS VANISHED WTF)

So, basket? Turns out the live trap fits really well in a Topeak floor pump shipping box. But the front loading basket on the kid's FX1 (the larger one) was too precarious, center of gravity too high, also couldn't see well through it.

Oh, hey I have that bolt on seatpost mounted rear rack that's on E's Lemond Zurich.

Moved that over to the Surly, IN BIDNEZ!

Strapped it onto the rack using two old inner tubes. The little rodent stopped bouncing around in the cage once closed up in the box. And off we went. 2.5 miles away. Released into the woods. The other one watched and I wondered if they were going to be too smart to get caught.

Re-baited the trap (they had a nice big tablespoon of peanut butter as fuel for the day in their belly).

But the other fucking destructive varmit decided to chew on the house instead. Cage was up on the higher roof this time, but middle of the roof, propped against the vent pipe. Heard the "IT IS CHEWING ON THE HOUSE AGAIN" from the kid (her room is there on the corner getting eaten) went outside, moved the cage over closer to the edge and put some more of  my special hot chili oil concoction on the freshly chewed stuff - supposedly they don't like spice. 30-40 min later, chew chew, i went outside to see it in the cage. trapped. Climb up the ladder and that thing was WAY more agitated than the other one. Throwing itself around, cage starts to roll off the roof, two stories up, it probably would have bounced, broken open and the fucker might have gotten away with a full belly of peanut butter.

But I grabbed it just as the cage started to roll off the roof and boxed it up and we went for another ride.

Released the second in the same spot as the first. Hey maybe they'll find each other and make a nice house in a tree or something LIKE THEY ARE FUCKING SUPPOSED TO.

Or they'll get eaten by a fox or coyote or not find each other and just hang out and eat and do squirrel stuff with the others.

Hoping that the roads and water and various biomes and dogs and houses are enough to keep them from coming back to find this house.

But after I got back, maybe an hour or two later two more squirrels came running across the roof. But I think they might have been just traversing territory, i hope, they didn't stop at the corner of the roof... I'm assuming they are somewhat territorial. Guess maybe I should know more about these rodents, but hey, they are fun and cute and entertaining, as long as they aren't chewing on my house.

Now I have to repair the damage. clean up the chewed stuff and splice in some new wood, prime and paint it up.

And then I had to teach class.
Reading the transcript (Zoom automatically records the session and does a text transcription of the whole thing) was painful, ouch. Was strange lecturing like that, weird in a way, so much of the class was quiet with the mic muted the whole time. A few asked questions and that was good.

Only made em sit through 90 min of me talking. A couple weeks of no training or teaching and my voice was feeling a bit out of shape.

But it was good to see everyone even as a tiny computer icon.

There's so much to do, like busier than "normal" endless stream of stuff. Maybe it was always there and we just ignored it? But there's new stuff now, different I guess.

Bored people? SO JEALOUS, sort of. But bored can be really bad, esp if you're self employed your revenue is deemed non-essential and you have no money coming in. That kind of boring is terrifying.

On the whole today has been one of the better ones. Productive (humane relocation  of pests), teaching, and the rest of it all. Not so much drama, able to push the really scary stuff off to the back a bit. Can't really control it, can't really worry about it.  Was told via email that this is really very much a "take one day at a time" situation.

But i read it as "fake one day at a time"

I kind of think it maybe more fake one day at a time than take it.

One foot in front of the other. work the tasks in front of you and move on to the next.

Funny thinking I'm just as overwhelmed as I was a couple months ago but so dramatically differently now. Also in lines of last web log post, I has just kind of started getting a balance with everything, ah who am I kidding, i just forget because it seems like a year ago, it was not anywhere close to being balanced. I was stress booking people for training sessions 3 weeks out. What didn't happens was me taking any time off. That week of vacation time i was planning on taking? Poof. gone. Not happening. gonna lose a vacation day unless i take tomorrow off.

guess losing one day of paid vacation is pretty inconsequential in the whole scheme of things, i'm feeling absolutely no loss or regret at this, shrug, move on.

Lets keep getting shit done, be ready to go back when we're ready to go back. Work through this list, teach the class, fix the house. Maybe even ride the bike. Alone.

Oh and I did take time to myself today. Ate dinner watching "Going In" and then kept watching. earbuds in, oblivious to everything else. 90 mins or so of pretty cool shit. Go watch it - and yeah - mountain bikes - i'm back in love with the riding, was so stoked to be racing and shit i'd even started thinking about a Stache 9.7 - sell this one get that one, move on up ya know? And now I gotta ride alone if I ride. Gives me time to work on the shit I need to, like log hops, I still kind of suck at that. Ride ups I'm pretty okay at, drops no problem, it is the transition up and over shit and back down quickly that i need to work on.

EDIT - forgot the link: https://racing.trekbikes.com/stories/tfr-cross-country/going-in-available-to-stream-for-free

That and being less wordy. DAMN ARE THERE A LOT OF WORDS HERE IN A SHORT TIME.

And shit it is late.

But successfully managed to cut back on coffee intake today. Hoping to repeat tomorrow. Maybe coming out on the other end of this I won't be drinking a gallon of coffee every day.

Just gonna have to remember to drink water to make up for the fluid differential.

Long day - started at 5:30 waiting the rodent criminals to strike...  now I should maybe think about turning off the electronic devices and do some of that meditation stuff that people say works to fall asleep (i haven't managed to make it work yet)

Amor Fati Motherfuckers

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