Sunday, 27-Jul-25 22:00:25 CEST

Pickled cuecumber

This week, we pickled the third jar of cucumber.

Monday 21 July

Today, both DW and I worked from home. All was fine and beautiful until half past two in the afternoon. Then Merida got her first epileptic seizure for the day. It lasted a long time. I put her in the animal carrier and drove her to the vet, and she still had a seizure until I reached the parking lot of the vet. Then she "woke up". This was an awful experience. I got valium for her so that if it happens again, this long, then I can give her that to stop the seizure. Then I went back home with Merida.

It has been humid and hot. Our ventilation system decided to run at full capacity to ventilate out the moisture as if the moisture had come from the shower. I turned it off. It was a productive day. After work, Merida had her subsequent seizure. It was not that long this time. We were standing outside, talking to our neighbors, when the incident occurred. When we came back in, we found pee on the ground. She is usually peeing herself at the end of the seizure.

While DW prepared dinner, I fetched more manure from the sheep's winter location. I put that in a bed that DW had harvested onions. I placed the manure below the layer of soil in the bed. We will use this method for the no-dig gardens. Remove the soil gently, place a thick layer of manure at the bottom, and then replace the soil. That means that strictly speaking, I am digging, but we are not purists in this garden method, so this is what I do. The manure has been lying since winter and is almost fully composted. This way, it puts nutrients in the ground, and as we work with this bed, the nutrients will feed the plants. On top of the bed, I planted Japanese indigo plants. Those are plants DW can use to produce blue dye.

After dinner, Merida had her third seizure for today. It was about 3 to 5 minutes long. I held her head so she would not bang her head against the floor. She ran in the air, lying on her side, chewing air, and peed herself. It's a mess when it's over. She wakes up and wanders around aimlessly for a while, then begins cleaning herself.

I went walking with the sheep in the evening to encourage them to get nearer to the road.

We had thunder this evening. I would like to know if the air is charged and if the thunderclouds trigger Merida's seizures. I googled it, and I found no clear evidence for that.

Tuesday 22 July

Last night, Merida got her fourth seizure at 4:05 AM. It was a regular seizure, lasting around four minutes. After that incident, we conducted the regular cleanup. Then we went to bed again. I fell asleep rather quickly; it is something I am good at. DW had a hard time falling asleep again. The alarm clock went off at 6:30 AM. We had the regular smoothie breakfast.

Then a neighbor arrived, and the three of us went to the train station. I then went to work. I had a meeting with my manager, which had been inconvenient to attend from home. After the meeting, I went home.

Remarkably, life can shift from being relatively happy and having complete control, and then, just like that, with a snap of a finger, things feel as if they are disintegrating. We will also manage this situation effectively. Tomorrow, I will take Merida to the veterinarian, and we will have the blood tested for the levels of the medicine. Merida will be fine, and if she's not fine, then she dies. Then we will have another cat. It's tragic, but that's just the way it is. We are not there just yet. In a moment, I'll be home and see how she's doing, and if there are any problems somewhere. If she's influenced by high humidity and thunder, then we will have that figured out.

Merida had another seizure at 1:30 PM, and again six hours later, and at 7:30 PM.

After work, I first harvested potatoes for the delivery tomorrow. I have a busy day ahead at the vet, so I decided to harvest the potatoes and store the vegetables in the fridge. One potato plant produced 2 kilograms!

I moved the sheep to the north-west field. Then I mowed the southwest field. It was a delightful feeling to mow the ragwort and mulch it. Now the good grass has a chance to compete with the ragwort.

Wednesday 23 July

On Wednesday, I had no energy to write a blog post. I took a photo of the carrot seeds sprouting. This is the first time I managed to bring up carrots in this amount. I do hope they will grow well.

Thursday 24 July

We had a smoothie for breakfast. DW picked fresh berries for the muesli bowl.

Good morning. The time is 9:00 AM, and I am late! OK, the reason I'm late is that I displaced my hat and couldn't find it. It was old and dirty, so it doesn't matter so much, but I only have one. This experience significantly reduced my sense of having complete control over the situation. Monday, Merida had a terrible seizure that lasted 20 minutes. Almost lost count, but after that, she's had something like 7 more minor seizures. On the positive side, yesterday she didn't have any seizures.

The plan was for me to go to the veterinarian in the afternoon, but we had the wrong time for the appointment in the calendar, so I arrived 1 ½ hours too late. I still had to pay for the missed appointment, and I have a new one scheduled for this coming Friday. Complete control, you might ask? Not at all. I hate it.

The delivery to the food cooperative had a mix-up, which was corrected, and I can live with that. The joy of the food cooperative remains intact. I am a software developer and system designer, and I believe the cooperative needs a system to eliminate human errors. I'm not going to suggest that, because that would make me invested, and I would be programming on the system that requires new features every week. Either that, or they do not want my help, which might humiliate me. Additionally, in my free time, I aim to work on projects that bring me joy and happiness. I am not sure a system for delivering local vegetables would make me happy.

Which brings me neatly into my phoneme conversion program. On Wednesday, I had time to work on the project while waiting to go to the veterinary clinic, and during that time, I programmed the phoneme project. I reached line 33,512! It feels like a significant step forward.

Yesterday, DW visited a market for textiles, wool, and related products. In the evening, she was happy but exhausted. We had friends inspecting the progress of the garden and the barn, and they were super enthusiastic. That boosts my morale; it's always lovely to hear that you are doing well and that people think that things look great.

You know what also makes the bike tick less? Rainwater. It rained a lot yesterday.

I arrived at work at 9:33 AM.

It's 5:45 PM, and I'm biking home. It was a productive day. I'm working on a new project. Typically, there is some confusion and setup time before things run smoothly. I had a feeling that I was making progress and that we were now moving forward.

On the way home, I biked another route. It is a route along a narrow canal in the city. It has many more bumps and fewer parks. I was wondering how it would feel biking the route of yesteryear. I must conclude that I am more satisfied with the new route, which follows farmers' roads and passes through park landscapes. It has fewer bumps.

I haven't discussed the email server issue in my blog. It has been a challenging time, and it still is. I'm a user of a digital vault. I had my email address in the vault via the failing email server. I tried to change the email address of my vault, but it required me to enter the code sent to the non-functional email address. I had to switch to another verification mode, and then I got that fixed. I could also investigate how to read the store of undeliverable email on the server, but I have not done that yet. It is a little bit exciting to lose access to your vault. I had a similar issue with the new Internet service provider because the admin account is routed through the failing server. The funny thing is that some emails get through. I had a couple of services sending confirmation emails with codes in the subject line, and I can still read the subject line of the failing emails. This way, I have recovered access to a couple of services. It would be nice if I had spare time to look into improving the email server situation, perhaps as soon as tomorrow.

I'm at home at 6:20 PM.

The evening was fine—no seizure of Merida. There has been one more seizure, we are almost sure. It might have happened around the couch in the living room. There was a distinct smell of cat urine, which might indicate a seizure we have not yet noted.

In the evening, I sowed beetroot seeds in the place where I harvested this week's potatoes. I covered the soil with plastic and will keep it there until the seeds start to sprout. Beetroot is slower than carrots. I can see the first batches of carrots are coming up. It is great. I never had so many carrots sprout so nicely before.

Friday 25 July

Today, I had a day off. DW worked from home. It was a rainy morning. Although it didn't rain outright, the weather was overcast and drizzly.

I continued on the phoneme conversion project and registered the seizures of Merida in an Excel sheet. On another screen, the phoneme conversion program happily crunched line after line.

At line forty-one thousand nine hundred and eighteen, it found that a silent "j" was needed for the first time in the word "fenjves". It is most probably a surname from Eastern Europe. The CMU database contains a wide range of words from many languages.

41917 fenjves
          0  1  2  3  4  5  6
          f  e  n  j  v  e  s
          0   1   2   3   4   5   6   7
          F   EH0 N   HH  EH1 V   EH0 Z
          f     at 0-0   in Fenjves F    fricative
          e     at 1-1   in Fenjves e    silent
          n     at 2-2   in Fenjves EH0  vowel N    nasal
          j     at 3-3   in Fenjves HH   aspirate
          v     at 4-4   in Fenjves V    fricative
          e     at 5-5   in Fenjves EH0  vowel
          s     at 6-6   in Fenjves Z    fricative
41918 fenjves
          0  1  2  3  4  5  6
          f  e  n  j  v  e  s
          0   1   2   3   4   5
          F   EH1 N   V   EH0 Z
          f     at 0-0   in Fenjves F    fricative
          e     at 1-1   in Fenjves e    silent
          n     at 2-2   in Fenjves EH1  vowel N    nasal
          j     at 3-3   in Fenjves j    silent         ← here!
          v     at 4-4   in Fenjves V    fricative
          e     at 5-5   in Fenjves EH0  vowel
          s     at 6-6   in Fenjves Z    fricativee

I almost reached line 42k. That is a huge step forward! At the word 'Flamemaster' on line 43144, I had to put the project aside. That required a pause from the phonemes.

Instead of sitting behind my desk in my office, I decided to go out and mow the area around the container and tiny house. We excavated this area during the installation of the rainwater pipes from the barn to our pond. Since then, that part has been sown with grass, and there is more grass there than in the south-east field. It was time to cut the weeds and grass here to make the area more cultivated. I poured out some soil to even out the worst holes. The lawnmower tractor can handle a considerable number of holes, but there are limits, of course.

It was supposed to stay dry according to the forecast, but it started to drizzle again. The wheels of the tractor got covered in clay. Now the tractor is recognizable as being a Jens tractor. I might wash the wheels at some point because they looked ridiculous.

Then it was time for lunch. After lunch, I went to the veterinary with Merida. This time, I arrived only two minutes late, but that was still considered excellent. Merida got her yearly vaccination. I think it is against a sneezing disease, but I am not sure. They also tapped her blood to figure out how well her anti-epileptic medication levels are. We will get the results from that later. Overall, Merida behaved well at the doctor's.

At home, I decided to do smaller tasks. I weeded the path from the driveway to the garden and filled it with another layer of wood snippets. That had the dual purpose of improving the path and also clearing the area in front of the sea container, where I now drive in and out with the lawn mower tractor. It is challenging to do that in a deep layer of wood snippets. We had a tractor load of snippets delivered, and he dumped them in front of the sea container's doors. We have not consumed all the snippets, and some of it is lying in the way of the opening.

Wood snippets are not heavy in themselves, but it is not easy to scoop up the snippets and put them in a wheelbarrow. It had been nice to have some kind of device that picked up the snippets and transported them to a wheelbarrow. There is room for improvement.

I also cleared the herbs overgrowing the path. I created a flower piece using herbs and one branch of runner bean flowers. The bees and bumblebees visited the flowers for several hours.

Saturday 26 July

Tomorrow, we plan to visit PiL's old place and pick up the desk from the great-grandfather of DW. I think he was a gynecologist, but I am not sure. We will also visit the PILs at their new place. Chairs match the desk as well, but I am not sure how much we can bring with us in one go. For this transport, we need the trailer, but it is currently occupied with garbage, so we need to empty it today. When we checked the opening hours of the upcycling center, we learned it will close at the beginning of August. It will be reconstructed and reopened after two years. They will likely call it something Dutch when it reopens, but it will retain the same functionality, with a focus on waste collection.

On the way to the upcycling center, we passed the farmers' market where we picked up nuts, cheese, and bread. We also had a cup of coffee. It was lovely weather, we met friends and chatted a lot. It was mainly DW's friends from wool and fibre activities.

The supervisors at the upcycling center were stricter than usual. I had to sort out a garbage bag, pick up gypsum and wood scraps from it, and discard them separately before I was allowed to throw away the bag. It is for a good cause, and it teaches me not to do it that way next time.

At home, I worked on providing the birch trees with new protection from sheep in the form of metal nets. Here is the story of the TreeProtectors in reverse order: On 17 May, I discovered that the tree protection was not adequate, as our sheep were eating the birch trees. It was on 23 April that we let them out for the first time in the birch forest.

We bought the TreeProtectors in November 2024. Now we will stop using them for the birch trees. Too bad. We may occasionally use the TreeProtectors for temporary purposes. We will see.

Merida came to have a look at what I was up to. When she is lying like that, he primordial pouch is puffing up. Her fur color looks lovely against the green grass.

DW carded dark wool under the canopy of the barn. I spent a significant portion of the day replacing the Tree Protectors. In the late afternoon, the net was consumed, but I had not served all the trees with new nets. I need to purchase more nets before I can continue with this project.

In the evening, we got the message that FIL was at the hospital. Unclear what it was, but he was well taken care of. A few hours later, he came home.

Also, Saturday evening, I found my hat! Now that was a nice feeling to get it back. In my search for the hat, I found a sealing gasket of a water flask that I had missed for several weeks. DW found a lost microphone muffler for the microphone I use when dictating while biking.

DW made the third jar of pickled cucumber. The cucumber harvest is in full swing. Every couple of days, there is a handful of cucumbers to pick.

Sunday 27 July

This morning we had tea in bed. DW looked at a charming lady printing with the help of leaves. I sat working on the phoneme project. I reached line 47235!

When I got up Merida looked at me in a demanding way, as if she wanted to say to me "I am hungry!"

We moved the sheep to the area between the west and north neighbors. It is much easier because we have permanent nets in so many places right now. We had to close the area near the road and between the two north neighbors with the same name. Initially, I recall that we were busy for two and a half hours setting out the temporary nets. Currently, we have temporary nets along the north neighbor. That is because he got a hedge. Most other neighbors have metal nets.

When the sheep were out munching on the new, lush grass, it was time to cut down the weeds in the area they left.

There are a few details that could be improved, but it is looking much better this way. I hope the grass will spring into life and take over this grazing area. That would be fantastic!

When the mowing was done, I lifted the tractor so that I could scrape green slush from under the cutting bed. There was a considerable amount of material in the cutting bed, since this was the first time I removed it. There is a water connection, but I don't have the correct couplings for that just yet. I will look into that sometime.

Then I put the tractor on the charger and arranged the cable so that it would not snag when closing the sea container and locking the doors.

Then we went to the Pil's old place. We met up with BIL. He helped us move out the desk, which initially was from DW's grandfather. It fit precisely in the back of the car, including one chair. In the trailer, we could fit three more chairs. Then we went to the PILs and had a couple of cups of tea and muffins that DW had made. MIL claimed she had never eaten muffins before, and I have a hard time believing her. She is 96 years old, not too old to start creating fantasy histories. FIL had problems articulating when talking. The last couple of days had not been good for his speaking capacity. He said a couple of words, and that was great. I think he will need to keep trying; perhaps he can practice to regain some of his back. We will not know for sure.

Then we drove home. Moved the desk into place in the guest room. The plan is to remove the red cupboard. I removed the tractor from the charger.

It was a lovely evening, but I was too tired to enjoy it truly. Emotionally, the big event of this week was the massive seizure of Merida. It doesn't feel like I want to make that the headline of the week. For the headline, I decided on something that feels more positive: we've pickled the third jar of cucumbers! I also wrote 3460 words, which is a lot.