I get so much done when I am busy avoiding getting other stuff done. Here’s my new sprouting station, in the faux window over my kitchen sink, lit by flourescent spots. Jars contain a new batch of mung beans, alfalfa sprouts (in the big jar, as M loves them) and clover sprouts. Broccoli sprouts are a hard sell but I mix them in with the milder ones…

Jeff and I installed this as Molly’s bedroom door as a surprise on Christmas eve. She’s a Doctor Who fan, and the time traveling machine from that series is The Tardis, a British police phone box.

Her room has an odd sized doorway, so we had to cut down the length of a hollow core bifold door. That involves removing the block of wood at the bottom (predrilled with hardware holes), sawing off the required inches, and reinstalling the blocks of wood with a little carpenter’s glue.

I turned the door upside down because I needed to cut out panels to make windows, and the long panels are usually at the bottom. I laid it on the table and used an exacto knife to make repeated cuts around the grooves of the top panels, on either side, until I could saw/pop them out with a steak knife.

I cut plexiglas to fit onto those holes and glued it in there with liquid nails, thick like glazing putty.

I made the white privacy glass effect with a cut-and-apply film. I mitered (kinda) the half-round molding to make window vanes. really, it looks better from a distance… lol

The pic was taken from the clothes closet across the hall — the blue looks too dark because of the lighting but it’s Who blue, really. The two side boards are the door frame. The top is a one by four and a taller board with notches Jeff cut. The sign is just a painted board with blackboard paint on it and I printed and cut out the alphabet letters and mod-podged them on there. The sign rim is made of wooden yardsticks.

Jeff printed the sign for the front and that’s mod-podged to the door.

All that’s missing is the door handles — looking for a spare moment and the right drill bit.

Oh, and the little light thingy on top. I’m almost done with it but have to rig a thin, hidden extension cord to plug an electric eye night light inside of it.

It looks awesome in the dark when M is in there, and it’s all lit from inside.

Somebody offered to pay me to make one for their house, but I said I would rather do something that takes less time and effort for the money… like, say, a surrogate pregnancy. (kidding.)

The mouse who stole from my kitchen was dead in the trap this morning, because this is my kitchen and not hers.

Wide-eyed owls row silently through the dark, and in sunlight hungry hawks eye my chickens. I watched from my garden as the red-tail swooped into the cluster of ginger colored chicks in the grass. The hen who fosters them flung herself full-on into the diving raptor, screeching with rage. It rose and flapped off on expansive wings, talons empty. Until dusk the hen scolded chicks out of the open lawn, kept to the hedges, tipping her head with one eye to the sky. Once roosted safely for the night with her numbered chicks intact, she kept her look of vigilance; pulled herself to full height and looked down her beak at me, reptilian-fierce for her size. Good girl, I said. Brave mama.

The bees hurry hard to replace what I’ve stolen, storing the last of summer’s gold sun into little wax pots, like grandma’s peaches in canning jars lined on pantry shelves for the long winter’s dearth. They know in their microscopic hearts that one night soon will come a killing frost, and what’s done will be done for their lifetime– the flowers burned black by cold, the next flight for nectar a winter away. As the cold closes in, the hive evicts its drones. The big-eyed males bees eat but do not work, don’t gather or guard, raise babies or make wax — so they are barred from the door in these shorter days, left outside to freeze or starve to protect the winter’s store. Nature bears no sentimentality; winter is serious business.

My hens who gave me seven eggs a day offer three, or two. They won’t go broody as the days grow short and the cold closes in. Nobody pecks my hand when I gather. They offer up eggs without protest. Their ovaries don’t know there are fifty pound bags of grain in the barn. Nature says “scarcity coming, and spring is a long way off.” In another month, the bright orange grass fed yolks will grow pale as the cold-parched lawns. In two, we’ll buy anemic eggs at the store.

My garden has slowly surrendered, vines curling back to reveal the acorn and butternut squash, the last of the paper husked ground cherries fallen on mulch. I know in my modern and civilized mind that the produce department will be there all winter, bananas from islands and decadent ruffled of kale being misted under flourescent lights. I know that my first world “white whine” problem will be rock hard winter tomatoes among the more-food-than-we-ever-could need, as we waddle the aisles with our shopping cart. Still, some part of me formed over tens of thousands of years, so I take satisfaction in well stacked woodpiles, fifty pound bags of rolled oats and rice, rows of pickled beets and tomatoes shining in canning jars. Like the bees: enough, enough for winter, enough until gardens grow again.

Summer food falls in our laps, in our lawns, blueberries tumble into our fingers and all the world is a feast. Summer is melons and babies, hammocks and gardens, fishing and naps.

Cold means the hungry hunting the hungry. In falls growing up I learned to cook for the deer camp, scald and pluck mallards, skin a hanging buck. The mouse who robs my pantry will be swept from its snowy track by the hunting owl. The fat mourning dove at my feeder is food for the kestrel, a flash of impact and a drift of grey feathers.

It’s not that fall makes me uneasy. It always reminds me of life-since-forever, tens of thousands of years that formed our likes and dislikes, skills and fears, worries and satisfactions in ways we no longer directly understand. The world plays for keeps. I’m on full alert, busy as a bee who feels impending frost. Though some of my “chicks” are twice my size, I still hover like the hen, watching with one eye for all that might threaten their safety. When hard frost comes I will greive in my garden, pulling blackened freeze-scorched plants for the compost, regretting tomatoes that never got ripe and the crops that never got planted.

Then I will reach for my comforts: the woodstove fire, the fat sweater, the pot of pea soup and fresh baked pumpernickel bread. I will talk to myself, counting my blessings, hugging my children, glad that unlike my ancestors, my “wolf at the door” is only a figure of speech. It takes all my civilized logic to convince me that even in seasons of theiving mouse and frozen garden, hungry hawk and evicted bee, no predator lies in wait on my path — no eyes glow bright in the brush — no puma, no wolf, no grizzly with cubs — nothing is hunting ME.

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So I’ve had a kitchenaid forever. I have worked two to death, canning applesauce, grinding flour, grinding venison and making sausage, kneading artisan bread, shredding kraut and making tomato sauce.  I called kitchenaid and they shipped me a new one in a day’s time — sometimes an upgrade. But this last one was long past warranty when it coughed and started skipping, ker-chunk-chunk, oozing oil in a sinister fashion.

So I decided to take it apart. If I could see what was wrong, I could maybe fix it.  If not, it would at least be fodder for fobot projects. Picture one is the Iron Horse itself, awaiting surgery.

I poked around the internet and printed an exploded diagram and parts list. I needed a phillips head screwdriver, so of course I found five flatheads.  The second picture is step one: remove the aluminum band. Note: eew. There was old food and oozed oil under there.

Step two was to unscrew the whole top of the machine. Picture 3 shows what that looked like.  Auxiliarry dad Mel Jacobsen taught me to always take pictures when rewiring kilns, in case I need to remember where stuff went to put it back together.

Step three was to take the top off the gear housing in the front there. I put a plastic baggie over the circuit board first to protect it from grease. There was a LOT of grease. I have spared you a picture of my black crusted fingernails. I removed grease with a screwdriver blade and then with q tips. Eeesh.

See the horizontal worm gear on the right? The one with the coppery looking end? That lifts right out. The dome shaped one to its left, though, is held in place by a little clamp ring. Not sure what it’s called but I made up several unkind names for it as I tap-tap-tapped it upward one skillimeter at a time.

You can see the ring in place in the 5th pic.

When you remove all those upright gears, you can make the whole bottom piece drop out (it’s called the planetary, which I consider kind of cool.) As I removed parts, I put them on a sheet of paper and wrote next to them where they came from. That’s picture six. I have a short attention span and have become really good at adapting to my non-linear way of thinking.

After I got all the parts out and cleaned them up, finding no toothless gears or shattered bits, I wiped more grease and looked carefully at that horizontal worm gear. The long shaft looked like a rotini noodle, but the center part of the swirl had been worn thin and narrow and quite sharp — cleary worn enough to cause the double-skip!

I called around until I found a place called Mr. Appliance in South Toledo. I picked up the boys after final exams and then headed down there, with my parts list, model number and the greasy worm gear in a bag. I decided to spring for a new gasket for the gear box as well, as the existing one had obviously allowed grease to ooze out around the edges. And for ten bucks I got a styro cup full of the special food grade grease used in kitchenaids. The shop was a fobot maker’s dream — parts for everything you could imagine. The whole bill was fifty bucks — a fraction of the three hundred plus it would cost to buy a new one.

I got home and dropped the new part into place… put all the screws in — and then found a leftover piece.  As usual. But once assembled, it ran like a top, and I am back in the bread business! Jeff got home from driving my grandma to the lake and was very impressed by my willingness to forge ahead without a clue, lol.

Now I shall return to degreasing the kitchen.. my tools.. my hands.. my hair…

Last day of wet clay was Friday. Last art appreciation presentations will be Wednesday. Last day of class with my writing students looms as well. The last glaze load will be cooling in two days time.

Meanwhile, I’ve known these students for fourteen weeks — Ceramics 2 students even longer. I’ve dragged them over new terrain, cajoled and scolded, told stories and jokes, listened to their struggles with life and academics, finance and romance.  I CARE about these folks.  And somewhere in the second week of May, they will all be assigned a percentage, summed and totalled, and then they’ll disappear into their own lives. The ceramics studio at Owens will stand empty all summer.

Familiar routines, washing that coffee cup, packing a bag lunch, taking the elevator or the stairs, driving to and from work with BBC and an eye on the clock… no part of it is all that remarkable, but having it end abruptly is unsettling.

I will spend absolutely no time sighing when my break begins… I’ll be digging in the garden, balancing the budget, planning meals, renting a dumpster, cleaning the garage, sorting outgrown kids clothes for goodwill — but until that point, I’m feeling a bit nostalgic. The endless rain doesn’t help matters, even though the green leaves are pushing through and the world around me is greening up.

Besides, I am filling my summer schedule with classes at the new Hands On studio at the Toledo Botanical Garden — clay whistles, flasks and rattles, felting and batik, papermaking and tiles, taught by me and by others. New students, new focus, all very exciting.

I’m maybe too sentimental. I want to hug all my students goodbye and friend them on facebook, have them over for bbqs and know how their lives go from here… and they’re probably thinking, “Whew, that’s over! No more being blathered at by whatshername!”  Plus, grades add to the weirdness of a teacher-class bond… the fact that no matter how funny you are and no matter how much I like you, the math will add up the way it will and I cannot tell a lie to the great computerized  grade book that rules us all…

Anyway I’m in a funk about the whole windup here. Off to grade papers…

I cobbled together a quick cold frame in front of my house where the sun comes early… mesclun on the left, bok choi on the right. It’s been below freezing at night but it all looks happy ;0)

I can’t officially “go public” with my big big big project — the one I go to bed scheming about, wake up excited about, and race home from work to go work on… I can’t crow until it’s official, and appears in print, and that’s a few weeks away. never scoop your own story.

But meanwhile, I am deeply and truly happy.  Here’s a pic of me doing some late night window trim painting in what promises to be a space full of good energy and joyful pursuit.. Jeff took it from outside the window.