I Write the Best Posts at Night

Just as I drift (attempt to drift) off to sleep, I can write the very best posts for this blog. I come up with wonderful subjects that can lend themselves to concise or elaborate text. Ideas that are meaningful and compelling. Subjects that are interesting or intriguing or just friendly and familiar.  When I wake up in the morning my ideas have all pixelated into the disjointed fog just like those photos that are enlarged all out of proportion to their original digital information.

Since my fifteen-month illness disappeared faster than this spring's tulips, I have felt more creative and energetic.  But I find these are just feelings and not something that is manifested into concrete production and activity.  I am back working on my free weights and my running on the elliptical, but there are many days that I can find excuses to put this off until the following day.  Excuses like the exercise clothes I have really should be washed, I must wait to digest my recent meal (which becomes an excuse to wait until just before the next meal), or finally, I have to clean out the inbox of my emails.  

My creativity is there for this blog, but when strained through the clean light of morning,  it also comes out flat and must be put off until after the news, after the gardening, after cooking.  Excuses.

Most of my readers are my age...old.  Their lives do not stand still as they move forward with the challenges of aging.  I go to their blogs and find I have missed a crisis or two or even three!  I feel guilty for sitting on my thumbs when the real world is still turning.

Perhaps I should write about the new fellow that has moved in quite comfortably under the deck.

Yet, I do believe that the real world is once again getting back to order and people are once again moving at a quicker pace.  There is a large group of people in my country who are on a hate fest and who will not be happy until they 'win' whatever it is they think they are pursuing.  But the larger group of people just want normal and courteous discourse and freedom to love the nature of the world once again.  I think they would even be willing to read a boring blog or two to inject normalcy back into their lives.

I will write soon about the goose saga.  With encouraging and discouraging photos, because us old ladies have not much else in our lives but birds.

My coffee is now cold, so I am off to read your blogs and hopefully to comment!

Is That a Light I see?

"Kontorovich told me. “Patients had been told symptoms were in their head or purely due to anxiety.” Her patients epitomize the kind whom the medical system frequently fails—by contesting the reality of their illness, sending them from specialist to specialist, loading them up with drugs without getting to the root cause."

The above was taken from a long article in The Atlantic about long-haul patients who have had COVID.  The patients vary in that many may have had a few days of illness while others were hospitalized and they are also varied in their normal health and exercise routines prior to COVID.  They got well and then they got heart and breathing and oxygen symptoms days, weeks, or months later.

My search for a cause and end to the coughing also sent me on that endless experimental trial of medicines of all types.  Side-effects were sometimes scary.  The medical community wants clear results and they get lazy or impatient when the things they have successfully tried for years fail to work on a patient.  They wonder if you are just one of those old ladies who wants attention.  "According to experts, the prevalence of hypochondria ranges from 4 percent to 7 percent in the general population, affecting both men and women equally."  So I guess if you fail to find a solution for 4 out of every 100 hundred patients, you must assume they are psychologically ill or very lonely.

My most recent doctor diagnosed Silent Gerd.  She put me on a 'proton pump inhibitor' pill which inhibits my stomach from producing acid.  She added a cough suppressant pill that I took three times a day.  After a week of this pharmaceutical diet, I documented on paper that my cough continued intensively 12 to 15 times during the day, interrupting my cooking, gardening, movie watching.  It followed with runny sinuses and never being far from a box of tissues.  I would get attacks three to four times at night waking me.  The acid reducer gave me severe diarrhea and the doctor allowed me to cut it in half and told me to go off the cough suppressant since it was not working.

After a week of exhaustion, I decided I was going to take Sominex (an over-the-counter sleep aid) and try to sleep through the night.  The first night I took it I slept like a log!  Waking not once.  The next day I had NO coughing all day.  I continued the medication but also took one Sominex for several nights after that and the coughing totally disappeared!  Sudden onset of normality?  I have stopped the Sominex and find I am sleeping reasonably well and not waking with coughing spells at all.  I go through the day and have regained better breathing (I sometimes had shortness of breath) .  My doctor will assume it is her prescriptions...but such a sudden switch after about 5 or 6 days of taking the medicine makes me wonder.  Shouldn't there have been tapering off?

And like every other hypochondriac, after reading the Atlantic article I wonder if I had contracted COVID?  I never have been tested for it.  

All I know is that I am returning to normal and looking forward to a family weekend with my children and grandchildren in two week.  Everyone here in the state (with a brain) is being vaccinated and our infection rates are dropping dramatically.  I see a light at the end of the tunnel.

Singing on a Train....Wait for it.

I  have been busy and not busy.  I have been here and there.  Blogging has not been something that called to me or fulfilled me.  

My two-shot  vaccine regimen has been completed and I have been able to  hug my grandchildren, something that is unmeasurable in its pleasure.   All five of them caught Covid in their bubble while being social, but it was only a few days long  and they survived the worst.  

I was able to visit my oldest grandson on his 16th birthday.  He is a  handsome, tall and a thin nerdy boy with so much hair there must be birds who crave to nest on his head.  I hugged and ran my hands over his thin and boney shoulders and down his strong but lean back,  Then I hugged my granddaughter who is built like a draft horse and could lift the back of a car.  She has a strong and lovely body and will fight weight gain in  her  mid-life years, but her cheer activities have kept her healthy.  She was sharp and lacked patience as a child, but has evolved into a loving person as a 13-year-old.  My youngest, a boy at 10, is still evolving,  but his hug was free and honest.  He will  be the handsome  and  popular young man  in  college and will probably date the prom Queen who will break his heart and make him stronger to face life's twists and turns.

I have still failed to conquer my chronic cough which has made me hopeful and then depressed with each new attempt at treatment.  My allergist finally sent me for a C-Scan which he said revealed an infection in the lining of the sinus cavities under my eyes. He sent me to a well-respected ENT surgeon in the city.  I was nervous to meet with her, not for the illness, but because I had  to get there on time!  My husband and I Ubered after spending the night at my daughter's.  The ENT surgeon was nice and kind and told me her 'friend" my allergist was wrong after looking at my scans.  She ran another camera down my nose and into my throat (after an anesthetic spray) and said she saw swelling at the part of my throat where I swallow.  NO surprise to me as I  have a coughing/gagging spell every 1 to 2 hours day and night!  She diagnosed what she called  "silent acid reflux".  I was eager to accept this as I had feared surgery of some unnatural order.

I am  now on another set of drugs and waiting to see if  this will help.  But I am  afraid of the diet restrictions on the list she gave me.  It seems all I can eat is oatmeal and meat....!  This dance will be  difficult and I do not believe I will be successful!

Spring is here in all its full glory.  Warmer weather interrupted by rains is ahead.  I have planted my annual seedlings.

My son and his wife visited last week now that we have our shots.  They have not caught Covid nor have any vaccines.  They are now registered and since our state is wide-open I am hoping for a perfect family gathering the first of May.  I love all of my family and feel blessed for that.

It has been a difficult year and I wish all of you the strength that it takes to get through it.  You are all precious souls and need to be here for the rest of  us!

For some wonderful German mind engineering go to the link below"

Wait for the ad to see.

A Reset On Our Value System?

Empty streets and quiet cities...

The text below was taken from a New York Times Opinion Column written by Frank Bruni on how we are preparing ourselves for the future without the pandemic.

"...They wish, as any sane person does, that the pandemic had never happened. They hate what it did to this country, to this world, and to many aspects of their own lives and the lives of loved ones.

But its brutal winnowing of their social obligations and commitments beyond the home? They actually didn’t mind this, at least not so much. Their movements had grown hectic and their schedules overstuffed.

The way in which shuttered schools, canceled extracurricular activities, and closed offices compelled them and their children to spend more time together? There was stress in this, often proportional to a home’s square footage, but there was also intimacy. They liked how many nights everyone ate dinner together.

The halt to commuting? That was all upside and, along with the cessation of business travel, it produced a revelation: In-person meetings and the logistics that went into them weren’t as necessary as everyone thought. There were cheaper and easier alternatives."

I know the above is true with the attitudes of my two adult children and their families.  Americans live a rushed and career-oriented life.  We are often amazed that Europeans do not care so much about their jobs and are not afraid to take long vacations.  Maybe this pandemic will reset our Puritan work ethic problem!

Guinea Pigs Are We ALL?

This is a health post, and if you are not into that after this horrendous year, I will understand and you can move on.

I think with medical care some of us think Doctors are marvelous geniuses and inciteful and caring.  Afterall, we have seem them risking their lives for the past year saving lives in a pandemic.

Yet, our local physicians which run a private office within small practices are pretty much normal people, some with exceptional skills and others counting down  the days until they can retire, with most of them in a  mediocre middle.  Within a rural community this is even more so.

I have written about this dibilitating cough that I started to get over a year ago.  It is the kind of dry cough that cannot be muffled and sometimes ends with a gag or at other times a raging sneezing fit and other times weeping eyes.  Because I am home 99% of the time, I have not had to leave a room or face embarassment.  It  would occur even in the evenings when I was sleeping.  Some nights I was awakened every two hours.  It has been a year since I have had more than 4 hours of continued sleep.  My primary sent me to an ENT who had me x-rayed as well as sent a camera through my nasel passage and down my throat.  Since she found nothing, she sent me to an allergist.  I had already spent over a month tracking what I ate and what I breathed, etc. purchasing a $200 room filter and last spring even leaving my house for a trip for a number of days to see if it was the house and nothing changed in each instance.  I have no fever and no loss of appetite.

The allergist ran those two dozen skin test pricks on my inside arm and said I was  allergic to a number of  things including polllens, but nothing severely.  ( I know that I am severly allergic to cat dander!)

He then started me on a nerve medication, something you give to someone who is under stress and needs tranquilzing.  No side effects after a month and also no reduction in coughing 8-10 times daily and then through the night.  We changed to a second nerve medication and he said that coughs can be VERY hard to find the cause.  A month of the second nerve medication and no side effeccts  and no reduction in cough.  I had to be taken off it gradually as it did  make me dizzy and I had a waking dream the day after! He then tried a third medication which did not reduce the cough but the warned side effect of anxiety and temper did kick in and I told him after two weeks, I was no longer taking it as I was getting murderous!  We are a fragile chemical factory!

At my most reent visit  (four months after my initial visit) he  prescribed a blood test (I was too tired to ask what he was looking for although I did ask if it  could  be a fungus) and also a CT Scan.  He called  last week and said they did find an infection in the top two sinus cavities by my eyes!  I then was put on a 10 day course  of antibiotics  and a 5 day course of a steroid.  I immediately called to explain that I was  getting my second  Covid Moderna shot in two days and wondered about the wisdom of being on a steriod ... my understanding that it suppressed the immune reaction.  He agreed I should only take the antibiotic.  I was thinking that ALL doctors should have COVID in the back of their mind with every patient when they are prescribing these days as many patients do not research their meds!

Anyway, I am on my 4th day of the antibiotic and the cough has been cut by about 30% and  usually is not so intense.  But the cough has not gone away.  I got no  reaction to  my second Covid  shot except for a sore arm muscle and what seems to be two days of fatigue.  I have taken advantage of this being a test tube to try to nap each day and rest generally by doing nothing this whole weekend as I have not felt super energetic.  I MUST do some exercise on Monday.  Tonight is take-out unhealthy pizza.

Anyway, I am so tired of being a guinea pig in this process and exhausted as it has been a whole year of this cough.  I have my fingers crossed and the doctor recommends taking the sterioids in about 9 days.  Wish me luck!  As someone who had fought food poisoning while living overseas and  dengue fever while overseas on a tropical island...under mediocre medical care, I was unprepared for this.

Changing Seasons and Seeing Things in a New Light

The longer daylight and the angle of the sun have awakened the hormones in my birds. I saw an American Cardinal couple kissing the other day! Right out in the open! Right on my deck! Ah, young love. 

The longer daylight and the angle of the sun have also awakened dismay in me. I see all the dribbles and spots on my kitchen cupboards under the morning sun's spotlight. I see the dust bunnies and gunk on the kitchen lighting. 

My kitchen has a small island with a range. Since I have a high ceiling I did not want a huge ceiling vent fan coming down. It would be enormous to clean as well as allowing a draft of cold air to seep through in the winters down that long vent. Therefore, I had installed a counter pop-up fan behind the range. I can never use the fan on high. It is not as efficient and it draws the heat away, so affects cooking, but the filters can go in the dishwasher and there is less to clean.

But the "fancy" lighting fixture that was installed above is a bit of a nightmare to clean. I actually think it was for pool table lighting!  Since I have a bit of a wrought iron theme going in the living area, I selected it.  I have been putting off cleaning for quite some time and this year tried to remove the three lamp hoods and glass shades and pop them in the dishwasher.  I could not actually reach all the curled iron above which was covered in grease.  I got two of the fixtures down using my kitchen ladder and patience.  The last one would not come off.  The ceramic threads were misaligned.  I called in my tall friend. (You may remember the fellow who helped with the Osprey nest.)  HE could NOT get the glass shade off either!

Thus he used his height and good eyes and long arms and cleaned the shades as well as the iron decoration with a rag and some Mr. Clean.  It now sparkles.  He also helped me re-assemble the parts that I had put through the dishwasher.

I now have to go to the hardware and get a finish polisher to shine the two black hoods.  Easy enough! It hangs about an inch off-center, but I will have to live with that.  Now I have to wash all the cupboards!

Find Me an Empath

The photo above was taken back in 2018 during our Amazon trip.  I have posted about some of this adventure before.  This was a cruise where we went up the better part of the Amazon on an ocean-going cruise ship.  The city above, which looks modern, was not truly ready for cruise ships and clods of tourists, but certainly ready to find a way to extract money from them.  I say this not disdainfully.  They are poor and enterprising people just trying to find a way to stay ahead while living under a corrupt regime with horrible inflation.  Three to five percent of the total income of Brazil is lost to corruption.  It is a tragic way of life.  (Of course, our Congress allows wealthy companies to write the legislation that helps them avoid taxes, so we certainly cannot pretend purity here.)

The city was muddy, rainy, and busy.  The people were poor but polite.  There was criminal behavior.  I have emblazoned on my brain the face of a man in his fifties that just wanted to take people on a bicycle/cart ride around the city for some money.  He waited patiently at the dock as each passenger disembarked.  It was horribly rainy and so no one was willing to ride.  His face was so unbearably sad.  My husband gave him some money, but that would not stop the suffering he faced each day and would feed his children for only a short time.  

This is the city where the Brazil variant of COVID emerged in early December of last year.  The more contagious brand.  Manaus already had 75% of people infected [in the spring of last year].  Now 27 to 50% were vulnerable to this new version.  It just does not seem fair.  Why must some people suffer so?  Why is empathy now considered a weakness among leaders in the U.S. and other countries?

At mid-day, I am going with hubby to a drive-through facility where he will get his second shot. He got no reaction to the first, but I am hearing a second can sometimes make you feel as if you are coming down with the flu--a simple trade-off to avoid the hospital oxygen tent.  It does appear that by the end of spring the majority of Americans will be protected from hospitalization and/or death if not from getting sick even with the current varients, so that is a good thing!

Please be kind to others.  It is so hard these days to just put one foot in front of the other.

The Social Butterfly is a Luddite

Today is a cold, gray, rainy, mushy, and boring day.  Cannot do anything outside!  I am working with my library of photographs and deleting a bunch and blogging.  Hubby is reading his emails on his tiny phone screen and listening to Irish music.  

How he can manage email on a phone is always something I question!  He does lose emails and forget to answer others and that is why I encourage him to use his laptop more.  He has become more and more unable to work with his computer.  His age is part of it and now he actually fears using the devices.  Unfortunately, in our world, if you do not use a computer (and this is horribly true with the restrictions from the Pandemic) you lose touch with the world.  I was the one who got us both registered (at different locations) for our Covid shots after he messed up the first appointment.  We will be getting the second ones this month.

He got notice in his email that his car needed to be re-registered.  He kept putting off the task.  So, yesterday I had to go in and re-register his car for him.  Fortunately and surprisingly since it is a local government site, their interface was very simple and I almost wondered if I had completed it correctly until I got the email that verified that I had.  Now we wait to see if I actually did it correctly when the registration comes in the mail.

Last month Hubby gave a small webinar on extending vegetable growing across the three seasons via Zoom.  It was done in PowerPoint software and I spent hours and hours helping him with it.  The problem is that I would get all the typos, incorrect formatting, etc. removed, and then he would go back in to add something or edit some bulleted list and it would end up looking like he had selected three different presentation backgrounds!  Maybe he had!  I also provided the photos needed and learned that PowerPoint now can compress the slides automatically to reduce the bytes which saved me time.  Anyway, the whole experience made him even warier of computers and totally drained me! 

This is not the world for him because he is a very social person.  He loves talking to people.  He calls old classmates on the phone just to chat.  He will 'talk the leg off ' of the man or women at the restaurant that is completing our take-out order.  When the man comes to help with our stuff around the yard, he is right behind him talking away.  He is looking forward to a class reunion this fall of those in their late 70's.  He and another mate are planning on driving down to Florida together, and I am now hoping I can get out of it since they will be able to assist each other along the trip!  Maybe they can combine it with a fishing trip, which he would love.  With the increase in vaccinations, this looks more promising.

I really like people and I even love some people, but I would also love some time alone just moving around on a free schedule while he would be gone.  No meals on time, no helping someone find something, etc.  I am a loner and while I have finally accepted that, I actually wish I was a bit more amenable to social activities.  

A Shining Star

In the time of Covid, time itself seems to be moving in clods and clunks.  Most days go by pretty fast.  But there are others that make me realize how long I have been hiding out in my house.  The other day, I missed an old gardener friend and had not heard from her for several many months.  I realized then that the lockdowns and sheltering in place have changed everyone's perspective on time.

When our gardener meeting minutes came out I noticed she had dropped from several committees. I thought the worst but reminded myself that it had to be something normal. I tried to call but did not get her, so emailed. She responded right away and wrote that she was fine and that she owed my husband and me dinner. I think we paid for her dinner over a year ago on our way to a meeting...so long ago.  I had forgotten, but she remembered.  She then went on to say that she has dropped out of the gardening group but is volunteering one day a week at the local library.  She said that she had just turned 95 and decided she needed to slow down.

For some insight, this woman is a volunteer master.  There is nowhere in the county that she has not donated her precious time.  She has won awards from the county for her time donated.  BUT when she explained that she had just turned 95, I was a bit surprised.  It seemed just a few years ago she was in her 80s when we used to work booths, etc. together. She never seemed that old to me.  Wow.  Time seems to have flown while I was sheltering and nervously eating chocolate.

She has been a widow for almost two decades.  Her children are all doctors and live in the city while another lives somewhere in Germany!  This gene pool should be duplicated!

I am always envious of those who fit in everywhere and are not intimidated by some new task or the pace of activity, and she is a shining example.

I am Timid Theresa and always move in slowly with trepidation.  I am sure I will disappoint or I will not like the endeavor.

Do you have friends that are 'stars'?  Are you a 'star'?  (Having read Bloggers I follow for years, I find lots of shining stars.)

I Will Send You Next Door

The world has been topsy turvy with such odd weather.  We got just a taste of that.  I will send you to my other blog for a trip in the icy woods, since I have nothing to write here.  (Do you see the finch?)

A Litany of Activities and the Answer to Your Question on the Prior Post

The last time I saw my 13-year-old ( or is she still 12?) granddaughter was just before Christmas.  She looked at me sideways and asked "What do you do all day, Neena (my pet name)?"   The image of what she thought about an old lady who has no job, lives remotely in the country, and does not look at her cell phone every ten minutes flashed before me.  I am sure she thought I sat all day and stared out at the window.

Actually, I do a lot of that staring out the window in feeding and counting the birds that come to my feeders.

I also read quite a bit.  Reading three books right now:  Keep Sharp: Build a Better Brain at Any Age by Sanjay Gupta; The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz  by Erik Larson; and Best American Short Stories 2020 (The Best American Series ®) edited by

Curtis Sittenfeld.  I am going through a bit of an addiction to Winston Churchill because I am also taking the Great Course of him on my computer.  You study history long enough and you realize that pure damn luck has a lot to do with where you are at any time and that smart leaders are very complicated.

I watch a lot of British TV in the evenings and science fiction/space shows.  Hubby and I are binge-watching the various series of Star Trek each night.

I do sit and look at my phone every 10 minutes or so to see if any of the three places where I have registered for the COVID shot have contacted me to face the dragon on their website and pick a time.  Nothing...except 'we have no vaccines at this time' or 'working on our site and we will be available in the near future.'

I try to do my exercises 3 to 4 times weekly, but my continued chronic cough has interrupted my sleep for over a year and thus my energies are not as high as I would like.  My allergist is treating me with various versions of tranquilizers which seem to be making me edgier rather than calmer and do not seem to impact this cough which emerges every hour to an hour and a half during the day and two or three times at night.  My daughter is angry that I am not more pro-active in seeking a solution, but my insurance company is not as liberal as hers and my medical network is much smaller.

My day is also busy with cooking for someone with allergies and ordering food mostly remotely which takes up a LOT of time and creativity.

As my blog title says:  I am taking it ONE DAY AT A TIME.

And, to answer your question, the series of photos in the prior post came about because a pair of Canada geese have been sitting on the osprey nest.  They did successfully raise a small flock a few years ago at this nest and drove away the osprey couple for whom we built the nest.  Osprey arrive to mate about 2 weeks later than our local geese do and while they have talons and a sharp beak they are no match for the heavy geese with their long strong necks.  This year we want the nest available for our Osprey as their nesting sites are more selective.  The metal deterrent is something we used last year and then took it down when we saw Osprey in the area.  Our young friend who stands over six feet did the setup and we will now wait for the Osprey season.

Having Friends in High Places

Tabor's world continues to turn and it seems to be moving fast enough to stay ahead of the Virus.  Hubby has gotten his first shot and that is a relief to me.  My daughter and her family all had the virus for a long weekend in January.  They got tested and were found positive.  They did not suffer terribly.  Mostly fatigue and aches.  Now I just worry about my son and his wife.  Both have some health issues, so I keep praying for more vaccines.  I have not yet been scheduled for any shots, although I have called and registered everywhere in the area; so I am hanging out mostly indoors.

I have a "brief" photo montage below that cautions you about helping friends.  Let me know if you have figured it out and I will explain in the next post.

Now off to read your posts.

Transitions

Well, yesterday, an Official (our new incoming President) held a memorial for the 400,000 who had died in this pandemic.  He did not pretend it was a hoax of his party's making.  He did not pretend it was just a little cold-type-flu that impacted only the weak and unChristian.  He took the route of science and facts and calmly honored those who are no longer with us.  Dr. Gupta (CNN's talking head doctor) said the flu was hard to really understand for Americans because it was so hidden for most.  We are all sheltering in place.

There have been funerals in parking lots, funeral parlors have been overbooked and turned away customers.  Los Angeles reduced its air quality regulations because so many people were being cremated!

AND if this was a hoax, it was a good one, fooling everyone across the globe!

Both hubby and I cried as the Spirituals were sung while all of our new officials stood quietly.  The Washington Mall and reflecting pool with its thousands of American flags waving in the gentle winter breeze were the perfect backdrop as the sun set.  Someone had gotten the entire Mall lit with soft lights as well!  

If you listened carefully, that warm breeze across the continent was a global sigh of relief that a gentle, smart, generous, purposed adult had taken the reigns of our nation.  A person who was surrounded by loving family and staff and not people who wanted a piece of the pie.  Of course, there will be more storms before the calm, but I have faith in our Democracy.

Yesterday

Yesterday, I made Krupuk and ate too much before I realized it...you know I was watching TV and not monitoring my snack food intake.  This really plays fast and loose with any calorie count you "maintain".  It does not help when you are watching Breaking News.

Yesterday, a young friend of mine gave birth to a baby girl (their second) in a Washington D.C. hospital.  It went uneventfully and peacefully.  Life does go on.

Yesterday, my doctor responded to my complaint about a medication I am taking which has no effect on my chronic cough.  (The first week we tried one tablet twice a day and then three weeks later since there was little effect two tablets twice a day, and then last week, after my visit telling him the cough still happened 8 to ten times throughout the day and night, he upped it to three tablets twice a day.)  After my call yesterday he upped it to three tablets three times a day(!)...after which I will no longer comply if it does not work over the next ten days.

Yesterday, I remembered visiting the Capital on a tour with my parents one spring many years ago.  We were strictly required to stay in lines and areas and be quiet when in the Rotunda.

Yesterday, I wept and raged and sighed and was sorely embarrassed for our country.  I felt for those few police officers who were tasked with protecting the Capital building.  During the Black Lives Matter protest, the President called out the National Guard in full force and riot gear.  The President called those protesting at the Black Lives Matter Movement "criminals."  Yesterday he said he "loved" the "protestors" that violently broke into the Capital building.  

Some Congressmen/women are calling for enacting the 25th Amendment.  My only response is "What the hell took you so long?"

I live Next Door to Martha Stewart

Drip, drip, drip.

I have blogged (belabored) several times on the economics of my current neighborhood, and this over-blogging of the subject, perhaps, was because I grew up poor.  The kind of poor where there is food on the table but not enough to fill a growing teen's stomach..especially when there were five children at that table.  The kind of poor that when you outgrew last year's winter ice skates, there was not enough money for a new pair. The kind of poor where you did not get the gifts you hoped for Christmas, so you did not make any wishes. My parents were loving but somewhat distant as life pulled them here and there while trying to make enough money to feed, clothe, and shelter a family of seven.  We were never the "homeless" poor although my father was on unemployment for one year.  I was in sixth grade the first time I ate in a restaurant, and that was with a friend and her parents.  Our form of eating out was the 15 cent hamburgers at MacDonald's when I was a teenager. I never knew how difficult it was for them to make ends meet, as they were good to shelter us from the tensions of money problems and we did not live in a community where there were wealthy that flaunted their fortune.  We never felt we were poor...just a farm family.  I am sure this is what makes me side with the liberals, as I know the hard-working poor.

Education was important and we all worked hard to make good grades.  Besides, that was the only way we made money...by getting "A's."  We did not get an allowance.  I did have the fortune to go onto a small state school where I got a Bachelors's Degree.  Then after saving carefully at my first job I was able to go on to get a Master's Degree.  I met an educated man at graduate school and he was also a good and honest man and we married and raised our family on a solid middle-class income with a small nest egg from living 9 years overseas.  To me that is rich.

So living in my current middle-class house, which we designed and had built, is a dream.  As I have written before, the neighborhood is mostly upper-middle-class with at least three millionaires in the larger houses and everyone else solid middle class.

I have written about the lovely large house to our left and our good neighbors with whom we went out to dinner at least twice a year and talked on the phone as needs arose.  They finally downsized and now have a small apartment in the Capital city and a small Condo in Florida. Their huge house sold in two days!  The new owner(s) moved in over the weeks of December.  Three moving vans illustrated that the new owner(s) had plenty of furniture to fill up the place.  This was followed the week before Christmas by a large tree to decorate.  I do not spy on them, but as I did dishes there is a clear view between the bare winter trees and I easily saw the day-long activity.  

I called my old neighbor and she said that the new owner was a single elderly woman.  "Single elderly?" I said to my  former neighbor, "She must be very wealthy to live in a huge house like that by herself."  The response was "Oh, she has lots of money!"  This from neighbors who themselves have "lots of money."

I will try to get to the end of this ramble here about money, neighborhoods, and neighbors.  This week my husband harvested the last of the carrots from the food pantry garden...pounds of carrots and nowhere to deliver with a closed food pantry due to Covid and holidays.  The pantry was not to open until the second week of January.  So after calling around he found a good place for distribution but saved two batches for our neighbors on each side.  Therefore we(he) got to meet the "elderly lady" with a hospitality basket of carrots and a welcome card.  She was very gracious and surprised that we were the first to drop by.  I think she thinks our neighborhood is neighborly...

She told my husband she had sold her 600-acre farm to the north and hosted a garden show on PBS for years...so she likes to garden and she must be VERY good to be on PBS. As hubby and she chatted, they realized they were the exact same age spared by a few months.  Her husband passed a few years ago.  So when hubby came back with a name, this nosy old bitch (me) had to Google her and I found that she is listed as a Philanthropist, rather than a TV host.  She has donated a million dollars to our county hospital and hundreds of thousands to other venues in this county.  We are so lucky to have people like her.  She is beautiful (maybe a face lift) but a lovely smile and warm face.

This morning my husband noticed that "Martha" was out in her front yard planting a tree!  She was digging a hole with a shovel and then she brought in bigger tools.

I told you she was Martha...she drives that bobcat!  You can just see her on her knees doing something with the vehicle.

 

Answers

First, an answer to the older post titled "An Abstract" and posted on December 14 was BS as in Bird S###.  But it did make a nice abstract pattern within the shadow of dock railing at the fishing pier.  I was surprised at the evenness of the white spray!

Second, another answer to a more recent post, the gift WAS a pot mover and it "seems' to work well enough.  The problem is that many of my plant pots have become brittle with age and need replacing.  You must have a very good thick pot edge to tilt the weight back against those suction cups.  I will not be moving plants again until the end of March or early April, so my plant mover has gone up into a vacant closet.

Last winter here was very mild.  We got so little snow and so little interruption in our daily lives.  While this had a good side, it does mean that climate change is more impactful.  This year we knew we would not get a white Christmas.  We did get a "dandruffy" Christmas Eve.

I looked out the window at the weekend cabin across the way and what, at first, looked like fog or mist became a snowfall.

The flakes were like small tufts of feathers from the white breast of our Canada Geese that gather on the river this time of year.  There was a small breeze and the "tufts" came in waves.  If you click on the photos you may get a better view of what was drifting across the back yard.

Grandma shook her quilt against the sky and even more feathers filtered down but disappeared as they hit the warmer earth.  It lasted all day into the late afternoon sun which created a brighter light as the lowering sun peered through the thin clouds of snow.

I wonder if we will get snow this year to any extent?  In 2017 we got this much snow at another house where we lived closer to the city.  We were certainly sheltering in place for quite a few days back then.

Guessing Game

Christmas is not Christmas without something given to you in pieces that you must assemble. Some of the pieces were so small I lost them in carpet threads sometimes. Directions were only two pages long and in English...good English, so we (me) got it together in about 15 minutes. Pat this old lady on the back. It did take me some effort to get up off the floor. Can you guess what it is?

Squinting Through the Holidays

Today is Christmas.

I am waiting for a call from my children who want to open presents via Zoom.

I got out grandma's China for hubby and me to eat our meal.

Since Hubby cannot eat mammal meat due to his allergy we spent a small fortune on live lobsters.

The lobsters are in a box in the garage where it is very cold.

I did no baking although Hubby made a pumpkin pie from a pumpkin we had sitting on the porch from last month...a post for another day.

I bought a tiramisu from the grocery and it looks beautiful, better than anything I could make.

Below some photos from our rainy Christmas Evening.

One is in focus and one is hand-held blur. 

Which one do you like?

If you squint your eyes you can see 2021 on the horizon.

A Very Very Very Busy Solstice, Grab Some Coffee or Tea

The 2020 solstice day was a busy, busy, busy shortest day of the year. We packed the car with gifts for the kids and grandkids and then headed up to a small town about 20 minutes north of us. I had a doctor's appointment for my chronic cough which is still a mystery. He is increasing my meds by 30% in the hopes this will work! He is a jolly man and actually spends time talking to you about stuff other than your illness. I like him and trust him. 

Then we were off to to the city to visit the daughter and her three children. Her hubby was off for his shoulder therapy because he injured himself months ago on one of his many sports. When we arrived the granddaughter was upstairs with her therapist working on the pain in her ankles, probably from cheer where she is the base holding people 2/3 her weigh with her hands and shoulders! The oldest grandson has had the boot removed from his foot and still takes some therapy for that injury but he explained there was only a little pain now and he was working his therapy exercises. It seems he has an extra bone in that foot...rare but not so rare that they have never seen it. The daughter arrived at the door apologetically as she had three remote meetings and two conference calls that day and was squeezing us in. But since we arrived early she had not had time to wrap our gifts and was adamant that we wait so that we can take them. She went upstairs and we visited the two boys while she wrapped. The youngest boy was happy and healthy and not in any therapy! I told my daughter that I expected her to take better care of her active family and she laughed.  She told me to open the large box at my feet as it was my birthday gift---my birthday is on the solstice.  It was glass storage containers and I was thrilled as I am moving away from the unhealthy plastic in our lives. We visited a bit more, deposited our rather large box of gifts, and then headed to another suburb 20 minutes away where my son lived.

My son was alone except for his neurotic dog, who is sweet, but like many of us has issues.  His wife had driven far north to the Great Lakes area to see her grandmother who lives in an elder home and had just contracted Covid.  She is 91 and we are all praying she does well.  She is a bubbly and delightful woman and one of those who takes the tragedies and changes in her life with aplomb.  Son was also was panicked upon our slightly early arrival and proceeded to wrap the gifts as they were still in their cardboard boxes from the mail delivery on the table in his living room.  We all maneuvered in his small living room around the big tree and the enthusiastic dog and the rolls of wrapping paper.

He handed me a lovely and sweetly written birthday card (as I wrote... the solstice is my birthday!) and explained my gift would come by email and while we could not hug and kiss we deposited our gifts at his tree and gathered our boxes from him to put in the trunk of the car and air-hugged before we pulled away.

By this time it was mid-afternoon and we had not eaten since breakfast, so we decided to find someplace with take-out as this  County does not allow indoor eating ( which we would not do anyway).  I really craved a hamburger as hubby cannot eat beef with his allergy and we found a place that cooks actual hamburgers and not that flat meat that MacDonald's and Burger King now offer.  The fries were limp and needed more salt, but my burger was delicious with the fresh toppings!  Hubby had a mediocre grilled cheese.  It was an adequate birthday lunch/dinner.  Since we were eating so late I knew that once we were home it would probably just be ice cream for dinner.

We headed home after 3:00 P.M. and we faced absolutely gridlocked traffic all the way around the beltway of the city to the other side.  There were police pulling over cars, at least one large toll truck broken down, and just lots of cars trudging along.  As we sat in traffic, we remembered that on my birthday the "Christmas star" (the close matching of the planets Jupiter and Saturn orbits so that they look like one star) would be visible just after sunset.  

We stopped to pick up the mail about 10 minutes before sunset, rushed home to use the bathroom, get my camera, get the binoculars and head out to a nearby farm field to see if we could see these planet phenomena which had not happened for something like 1600 years (?).

I leaned against the car as the sun's fading made the planets and stars visible and tried to be steady with my handheld camera.  We saw it better with the binoculars.  It was exciting and even my meager photos will help me remember.

We finally returned home, started a wood fire to thaw, and watched a couple of episodes of The Crown before we sleepily headed to bed.  Such a looong day for two old retirees.

Regrets, I've Had a Few

Each year I drag out fewer and fewer Christmas decorations.  This year, with Covid hanging in the air, no one comes into the house.  The decorations are just in two rooms and only for the two of us.

I notice each year the ones that are handmade.  Most are handmade by my Mother-in-Law.  She did not have much time on her hands with the full-time care of my blind and demanding Father-in-Law, but she was always generous and cheerful.  When I received the handmade decorations each year, I am afraid I was not as effusive as I should have been.  Oh, I thanked her and was appreciative, but looking at them now in my old age, I realize how much care went into each one.  I also realize how far away my grandchildren are from appreciating anything handmade (other than friendship bracelets) in their digital world.

She made several of the ornaments on my small tree like the one in the photo below, all in different colors.

She also made these little stuffed Santa Shop characters that greet me as I walk up the stairs several times a day to my computer.

And leaning again the candle holder, made from a wine barrel stave (made by my brother and sister), I have propped these little felt ornaments.  I cut off the little rocking horse on the right with this camera angle, accidentally.

While she did live with us for her last few years, I do so wish that sweet lady, who was given such challenges in her life, was back here so I could thank her properly!