It is a Dangerous World Out There

This past fall while traveling in Florida and visiting some long time friends, I met a man.  He was a childhood friend of my friend and they had not seen him in decades although they lived in the same state.  The man was in his late 70's I am guessing.   He was tall and handsome.  He used to be an engineer.  I surmised that he was a very successful engineer because he recently lived in a beautiful house in a very nice part of Florida, one of those impressive gated communities.  He lived there alone and I think his wife had passed years ago.  He had been a community leader explaining he had thrown many a party for political candidates.  (Stop me if I have told this story.  I swear I have the memory of a gnat.)

We were talking about weather, food, filling time because his car would not start.  He had come for a visit to my friend's house and could not leave.  He was restless and impatient.  That type that I know so well that runs companies or manages projects.  The type that wear out the carpet and check their  watch every few minutes.  It was getting dark and both he and the neighbor lady he brought did not like to drive in the dark.  This is common among the elderly and a joke among the middle-aged in Florida.

The conversation got around to his new smaller neighborhood and why he had sold the big house.  I assumed he was going  to say that it was too large for him, too hard to maintain, too expansive to use or that his friends had all moved away.  Instead he said he had moved because he used to wake up in the middle  of the night listening for noises and thinking someone would break in and kill him...not rob him, kill him.  Now maybe I could read something into this, like who had he wronged over  the years or what did he know that we did not about his past, but I really think there was nothing nefarious here.  There was no crime spree any greater than any other place in the state or even the states for that matter in his area.

I think he was that man that never was comfortable in a community unless he was the leader running things.  I do not think he was the man that trusted his fellow man.  He was not the man that figured most people are honest, most people are fair, most people do not have hidden agendas.  He was the man  who would vote to go to war first and ask questions later because the world is a dangerous and ugly place.

Last week I read a news story about an incident on the mass transit train  in England.  A man, large and military looking, got on the car  and began  having an emotional attack of some kind.  He was talking to himself, thrashing about and terrifying the other passengers.  A woman in her 50's or 60's was sitting at the end of the car where he was standing and she reached out and took his hand when he took a pause in his emotional outburst.  He collapsed to the floor in tears and sat there the rest of the ride  holding her hand.  At the end when it was time for him to get off he said softly to her, "Thanks moma (mum?)." and exited the train.

When this woman was later interviewed they asked her if she had been  afraid.  She said, "Of course."  but she explained that her instinct told her to try to help.  She did not know how he would react, but  she  knew he needed something.  Yes, I know that this could  have turned out so much worse for  her, but I truly feel the odds were on her side.  The world is not that dangerous and ugly if we use caution and  love.

It is Not Adding Up

When I began to volunteer with the county Adult Basic Education program it was a very slow start.  I took a three hour training/meeting that involved more in the way of forms and cautions about privacy, legal issues, etc. than it did about learning theories or learning styles. While initially they had told me they really needed someone living at my very rural end of the county, months passed before I was contacted with a student.  During that time I was certainly romanticizing this project and envisioned hours of success and happiness and goal completion!

As I wrote in a prior post, it was to teach math...not reading, which was a bummer for me.  I only volunteered for math because I felt guilty not trying to help students.  It was high school math, not Algebra or Geometry, etc. thank goodness.  I was told not to contact the student until I got my "packet."  Someone spent a good part of a day pulling together all kinds of exercises from various curriculum books, included the answers, and put them all in an inch thick notebook which I picked up at the local high school.

I looked over the exercises.  I slowly became terrified over my research hours because I honestly do not remember the details of combining fractions and the rules for decimals, I mostly just used a calculator in my daily life these days.  Word problems are another challenge and can be easy or difficult.  Anyway, I studied and prepared and then called my "student," a 50 something black woman who had dropped out of high school at 17 due to pregnancy.  This is such a tragic and common story.  You can go here to read about our very first meeting.

We have now had over 12 sessions together.  Our meetings have been erratic to put it generously.  She cancels about 20% of the time due to a granddaughter in the hospital, her flu, a grandson she has to get ready for coast guard deployment, her moving to a new location, a migraine, and this last cancellation was due to a fall on hard concrete while doing her job.  I myself had to cancel over the Thanksgiving holidays for travel and we did have a "snow" day.  She cannot afford voice mail and when I call I just have to wait for her to call me back to touch base.  She does not seem to have email either.  That is another challenge.

The program lets her take her test early if she has enough formal class hours plus hours with me.  I sent in the paperwork and while I discouraged her from taking the test in January she went ahead and took it anyway.  She did pass her reading but did only slightly better on the math side and thus failed.  I have not seen the tests and while I have asked her and the county offices to let me know her areas of weakness, I do not seem to get much help. 

She still seems enthusiastic to meet this challenge, but also shows up and then cannot read the problems because she forgets her glasses.  I have been around the world a few times and know exactly what is going on here.  She does not want to quit and yet she does not want to continue.

I have scheduled the library study room for 6 more weeks and will continue with her into late spring and about 12 more classes, but realize at that time if she is not ready, she may need to find a new volunteer teacher.  I think she is not allowed to take the test again until September, but I am not even sure about that scheduling.  I will give it my all through these next months, but feel a little disheartened that I am failing her and she is failing herself.

Update

Regarding movie/video preservation it is the 16mm and 8mm home movies that turn  to acid.  They do not like dramatic temperature changes or  being stored in very warm places.  Once these films start their "vinegar" transformation they can  no longer be saved.  We had converted all of our reel-to-reel type movies years ago because some were almost 100 years old from my husbands family!

But at the time we converted them we converted them to VHS as that was all that was available.  Now those  VHS are getting old and must be converted to digital.  The DVD's are not recommended as long term archival  medium any more, so we may have to put them on flash  drives,  or  hard drives and as back up  store them some safe place "in the cloud."  This process is actually a scary and expensive nightmare.

My wedding photo album is fading because I did not  have money for a professional photographer and it is snapshots taken by friends, so that is something I need to also  send away for professional restoration  soon!  It is sad that we are not going to live forever, even virtually, it seems.

What is that smell?

Is it a bouquet or a stench?

I lived in an apartment for two years before my retirement.  It was a change I had to make because we sold our house and had no where to live.  We were retiring in a few years and had not decided WHERE we wanted to live, and felt the housing market was too squirrely to wait for another few years when we might find it more difficult to sell the big old house.

The big positives in this new lifestyle were that it took an hour to clean the whole place.  I lived across the street from my workplace.  Everything I needed including shopping, hardware, restaurants, cultural activities and mass transportation were just blocks away.  It was a new lazy way to live without the yard work and the low utility expenses.

The negatives were that I rarely got to know my neighbors.  We may meet at the mailbox but many tenants came for just a year and then left.  My view from the apartment was of a parking lot and the rooftops of business buildings.  I missed my gardening.  There was little room to entertain company unless you went to the lobby with human traffic and stale air, and the kitchen was not exactly set up for cooking.  Our first Thanksgiving I actually bought a large box Thanksgiving dinner from the local supermarket.

The other adjustment was the closeness of living spaces with strangers.  Fortunately there was only one yelling match that took place in the stairwell off my kitchen door. 

But I also frequently smelled curry in the hallway.  Now I do love curry but not everyday and certainly not that stale smell that lingers in the morning as I ride the elevator down to work. There are those commercials that remind people the smells of their pet can be hidden to them but very off-putting to others.  You can always tell when a toddler lives in a house no matter how careful they are in changing the little one.  And there is the joke of stale cabbage odors and cigarette smoke in homes of the elderly.

Well, once my new home had off-gassed its odors of wood, sheet rock and paint, we noticed something a little off in the master bedroom closet.  Now to clarify, this closet is HUGE as The Donald would say.  It is not only walk-in but there was room enough to put the grand children's portable crib when they came to visit.  We checked out the shoes, billed sports caps, and dark corners.  I checked hubby's suits which he no longer wore and we had some of them cleaned.  We could not identify the smell and eventually we no longer smelled it...because we got used to it.

Once or twice when my son visited he commented that the closet smelled funny.  He did not make a big deal out of it, probably thinking old people shed skin and stuff, and therefore, their closets smell funny.

We never could figure it out until yesterday.

Hubby was going through all of his old photos albums, his parents albums and diaries etc. in a box on the top shelf.  He called to me and said he had figured out what was making the odor.  In his hands was an 8mm movie tape in a metal case.  I could smell the acid yards before he reached me, the vinegar syndrome where an acid is created by the decay of the ascetic base.  Fortunately we had converted this to VHS years before, but now I have been reminded that we have to digitize even that medium.  VHS gets brittle and fades, to say nothing of the fact that we have only one VHS reader in the house and it is part of a TV set.

The movie tape acid was so strong that we had to wrap it in a plastic garbage and take it out to the garage garbage bin.  Even today I can detect the smell in the garbage!

Now when son comes down to visit, I am going to take him to the closet for a sniff test.

A Better Side of the Argument

The take over of the Oregon Wildlife Refuge still hangs heavy on my mind.  I guess it is because I love this earth and I do not believe the way these militiamen-terrorists took over that land was an example of how to win an argument.  They lost the support of the locals, the American Indians, and all of us environmentalists in short time.  They also, like so many radicals, claimed God was on their side. 

One of my blog readers (keeping them anonymous as they argued only with me) provided a link to support the argument regarding the promotion of environmental grazing of lands.  The person making the argument did not convince me as there was little example or science to his blog post.

But I do not like to think I am closed minded and thus I went on a bit of research and came across the link I am providing below.  It does not win me over to the side of those who make arguments with guns and breaking the law and claiming they should get a resource for free, because they needed to be more intellectual and take their case to those that can provide the rational and science arguments for them that this African does. It is an environmental argument.  Does this work on our continent?  Who knows?  It might be worth looking into though.

It is a TED talk which means it carries some validity and is worth paying attention.  I am just linking here to provide a better argument.

(https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world_s_deserts_and_reverse_climate_change?language=en)

Oh, the photo above is a macro of my couch fabric with some photo-painting!

Just a Memory

The big storm is now melting into water and I can hear little rivulets trickling down the drain pipes when I carry bird seed outside.  The white blanket will soon be gone and a distant memory as mankind forgets the challenge. 

I actually shoveled about 1,250 pounds of wet heavy snow off of my deck.  At first it was just to make a path to the bird feeder and water bath and then when I realized how heavy each shovel was, I was fearful such a blanket of icy snow was too heavy for the deck and removed as much as I could over about 45 minutes. My lower back will remind me tomorrow, but the rest of me will be happy for the exercise.

I have monitored how everyone has coped on FB.  Most of the families with young children are sledding, shoveling and building various snowmen and snow-women.  The more dynamic types are cooking or complaining about cabin fever.  We are mostly mellow because this is the first really winter weather we have had.  With my Helleborus blooming last week I was fearful all my bulbs would be emerging.

I sit at the computer and paint my photos. 

I read books.  I follow one of my courses that I bought a while back.  I binge watch a Netflix series.  I do sometimes feel I am wasting time but I am not lost.  There is always plenty to do.  When I post this I will start the pork ribs in the slow cooker for tonight's dinner.  Not healthy, but we deserve it.

Soon a more normal routine will emerge. 

Dodging a Bullet

Spent most of Friday getting ready for the big one.  Meteorologists were in the middle of orgasmic math as they predicted the breaking of ten year and then five year records of snowfall and temperature drops on fancy graphs.  We parked the big car at the end of the driveway for an emergency exit if needed as we had no intention of trying to shovel that long driveway and we do not have a snowblower.

As you can see above toward the road, there was just a little snow left from that first dusty bit that shut down the city earlier in the week.  We filled buckets with drinkable water in the event we lost electricity.  We got out the flashlights and candles and the weather radio.  I had gone shopping two days earlier and we were well-stocked with food.  This was a good thing, because there is a ritual in this country that people go bonkers 24 to 5 hours before a storm hits and buy everything in the grocery store that they can find.  The lines get long and the people begin to lose their sense of humor.  I did not want to argue over the last can of beans!

By the afternoon big wet flakes were beginning to fall.  Mayors and Governors were giving speeches on television about how ready they were, how you must stay home, and how this could be life threatening.  This was followed by newscasters talking to people on snow-covered streets who did not stay home and who were trying to shop for last minute booze or whatever or dragging out their snow shoes or skis which never get used.  Hubby stocked up on wood...we had a week's worth next to the house.  We started a cozy fire and watched a movie.

By nightfall it was beginning to get serious as the far side of the river disappeared.

We went to bed just a little excited about what might await us on Saturday morning.

Throughout the Saturday snow fell and gusts of wind rattled the window panes.  Birdies were thankful for our water heater and the full bird feeders and the suet cakes we had left out.  I went out around the neighborhood for photos because we were supposed to have a follow-up ice storm and I knew I could miss all the good stuff.  We had not gotten more than a foot of snow by mid-day which probably makes Canadians laugh.

I made my way carefully down to the dock for photos while hubby brought firewood into the garage and blew snow off the AC/Heat fans beside the house.

Then by mid-morning we lost electricity and thus started taking things more seriously.  We moved the love seat right in front of the roaring fireplace and got our books and e-readers out and put a pot of tomato soup on the gas cook top.  While we missed the contact and hullabaloo (yes, that is an actual word) from the outside world in a very quiet house we slowly re-settled into non-technology mold.  We did use our cell phone to report the outage to the electric company and to let loved ones on FB know we had no power.  Gusts of  strong winds pushed drifts next to doorways and against trees and pushed windows until the drifts were a few feet high.  Several small dead trees went down.  Yet, we had electricity back within hours, we were so lucky!

By the time we headed to bed the snow storm had become a white out with blowing snow hiding everything around the house.  We had measured only 12 inches of snow around noon, but it will be interesting to see what this morning brings when daylight begins.  I am writing this at 3:00 A.M.  The precipitation has stopped and thus far there is no ice!

Keeping Balance

We went to our monthly master gardener meeting last night and were surprised to find almost an inch of snow as we left in the early evening.  It was still falling in soft large flakes as we headed home down the highway.

It seemed we were not the only ones surprised as people were sliding and driving much slower in the dark.  We did a little fish-tailing on the turn into the intersection and this was in my husband's large and heavy Ford Explorer, so you can imagine how difficult it was for smaller cars to keep their traction.  The snow wetness, the temperature, and whatever else made for some acrobatics you do not want to see except on TV.  The city to the north of us came to a standstill for NINE HOURS.  Some people did not get home from work until 2:00 or 300 in the morning.  Officials had been focused on this weekend's bigger storm and failed to get roads salted for this little dusting.  It only takes an inch of snow to shut down an entire metropolis.  I am sure that officials heads will roll, but at least we are not drinking lead in our water, so I am willing to give the traffic department a pass.

I am supposed to assist with a seed exchange meeting on Saturday, but am pretty sure that will be postponed to the snow date next month.  I am glad, because I have not had time to sort the few seeds I can share.

I like having an excuse to not do anything but sit in the house and waste time for the next three days!  I am in truth a bum at heart.  Maybe I will at least make an effort to write...

Except, I really feel like making chocolate chip cookies.  I have half a bag of walnuts left over and flour I need to use before it gets too old.  Then I will have to run 4 miles on the elliptical to justify eating two of the warm cookies!

Stay safe and warm inside.

Our First Visit This Year

This should go on my other blog...the one about our beautiful earth, but I have a list of things for that one, so today I share our FIRST real snow...1/2 inch of wet, sloppy kiss, flakes that fell almost the whole day, stuck to the sides and branches of shrubs and trees, revealed animal tracks across my yard,  and then...by the time the sun came out in late afternoon...well, just look at the photos to see.

My Cornell Feeder Watch numbers were in the high dozens as I tried to keep up with all the little birdies that visited my feeders as the snow cover hid their normal food.  Today we are back to normal.

TMI With Photos

What follows is going to be about medical care and procedures.  If you are young and healthy and do not want to read this, I will understand.  I was like you once...I think, but putting your head in the sand is not always healthy.

I lost about 48 hours this week from my routine, uneventful life.  It was an expected loss as I have done this before.  This loss was time preparing for and time getting a colonoscopy.  I am fortunate that my health  insurance covers most of  the costs of this---although mine did require a $200 co-pay which is a sizable cost.  I had this done first long ago at about the age of 55 and the second time around I was 64.  They recommend it every 5 to 10 years as we age.  My most recent dance with the machinery was this week.  If you have not had this done I can tell you it is a good preventative procedure to have if you are covered by insurance.  It is also NOT a lot of fun.

First, you must be on a jello, bouillon, clear liquid diet for 24 hours.  That in itself requires sacrifice if you are a foodie like me.  No creamy liquids and only sugar in coffee.  Then the evening before the procedure you must drink a liquid preparation from the drugstore that is the most foul tasting drink (sodium sulfate, potassium sulfate and magnesium sulfate) even though they attempt to drown it in cherry flavoring and sugar .  It is a full 8 ounces mixed with 8 ounces of water followed by two more 16 ounce cups of plain water over the next hour.  Your gut is now filled with 48 ounces of liquid.  Within 45 minutes you will be visiting the bathroom every 10-15 minutes.  If you own a Fitbit, be sure to wear it on this day as you will easily reach your 10,000 steps.  This cleansing continues for about three hours before it wears off.  In my case I was really ready for sleep at 9:00 P.M.  While I did sleep uneventfully, I had to set the alarm for 4:00 AM and start the process all over again so that I was really clean for my 8:30 procedure.  In the photo above you can see how clean.  The nurse told me she had lost 8 pounds when she had the procedure done, but I only lost 2.5!!

The doctor puts a probe with a camera up your rear end and looks at your lower and upper intestine for anomalies, polyps, hemorrhoids, etc. and they want you squeaky clean.  They put you under an anesthetic before they pump your bowels with carbon  dioxide air and you sleep through the 25 minute process.  The CO2 is best because when it is over you have very little gas pains or problems.  It just absorbs!

In my case I had a team of really energetic, friendly and efficient nurses and doctors.  They even had warmed the nightgown and blanket in a heater before they made me strip naked and put it on.  I was required to answer the same questions for two different nurses and the anesthesiologist prior to meeting the doctor, which means they double checked everything.  Our nurses are mostly white ladies, but the anesthesiologist was Asian and the doctor was middle Eastern and the receptionist was black and seemed to be a personal friend of Obama according to our conversation.   If it was not for these immigrants I would get very little health care out here in the sticks.  Regular white doctors want to live in the city with their families, it seems.  Even my primary care doctor who is Asian Indian left for greener pastures last year as I wrote in a prior post.  (My new primary care doctor is Latino.)

Well, the procedure went as planned with the primary pain being the injection of the sleeping drug through a vein in my hand.  For some reason it must have pressured a nerve because my arm was in so much pain before I finally went under that it felt as if I had broken it!  The anesthesiologist told me it would feel like a pinch...WTF!!

They found one small flat polyp which was removed at the time of the procedure and sent for biopsy  although the doctor told me he was pretty sure it was precancerous.  At my age, everything they find seems to be precancerous which I  guess justifies all of this medical care.  We must keep us old folks alive as long as forever.  And the young think it is a waste of money...until it is their turn.

The sleeping drug wears off within 5 minutes of stopping the drip which is very different than it used to be years ago when I felt very drugged all day long.  I was not allowed to drive myself home even so.

You would think I would be starving for a big breakfast after this, but I was only a little hungry and very disappointed that either the sleeping drug, the oxygen in my nose drying the olfactory surfaces, or the excessive dryness of my mouth hindered my taste buds and the breakfast at that high calorie place called I-HOP tasted like cardboard.  The only thing I welcomed was the hot tea with honey.  That taste issue lasted until evening when my dinner, prepared by hubby, of some of our frozen crab, asparagus, sesame oil and roasted red peppers over a pasta was delicious as my tongue or nose seemed to be working once again.

I hesitated writing  about this, as medical stuff  is not very interesting and sometimes icky,  but I  felt some who had not had the procedure might find it important or informative.   I am now good "to go" for another 5-10 years.  Sorry,  but I could not resist.

Books Now and Later

Well about 20% in I gave up on the Baldacci book that I had written about in an earlier post.  It was written too much like a movie with James Bond types, perfect warriors with chips on their shoulders in wild situations.  David Baldacci is a best selling author and he appears to be a good person as well.  His books are too much like our over-the-top TV shows for my enjoyment.  They would make a perfect movie with strong characters and lots of action, which is also not my type of movie, and...they are clearly written for the big screen.  These are the books that seem to fit the need for escapism among the average reader.  They require little in terms of critical study or detailed thinking on the part of the reader.  This is the stuff that always seems to sell.  Yes, I am a bit of an elitist.

I instead have picked up "Istanbul Passage" by Joseph Kanon.  Much better.  Good description of the country and city and creates the exotic, dark and scary mood of this country as WWII is winding down.  It is a spy novel, but with a nice tapestry of the culture thrown into the plot.  I really want to get to Turkey some day.  I am about 25% through reading this one.

I also just finished reading a collection of short stories, "Half an Inch of Water," which I bought for my e-reader on Amazon after a PBS review.  The short story format has always fascinated me as a challenging format.  This collection was a good read, taking place in Wyoming near and on an Indian reservation, written by Percival Everett, who is a well-respected author.  The descriptions of the animals, the desert, the horseback riding and the types of people that live there reminded me of growing up in Colorado.  The stories tend to end a little abruptly and have sort of a mystical  tone, but it is so different from what I usually read, that it sticks with me long after I have finished.

I also just finished reading "The Sense of an Ending" which I did not "get" until I read a review or two.  It had a bit too much navel-gazing for me.  I think it is a novel for younger readers.  They love all that angst type of stuff.

A book that I read last month, "The Color of Water in July," was an OK read although it got pretty good reviews.  It is an easy read with one of those story lines that jumps back in time and then forward to the present and then back, etc.  For some reason writers are using this method a lot these days.  It works, but not for everything.  Good scene setting of an old summer house on a lake.

In the cold winter months I read quite a bit as you can see.  In between I read my multiple books of poetry, but the house has to be totally quiet for that to work!

Again With the Small Talk

Not everyone talks to their wait staff when eating out,but I frequently do.  I am "elderly" in the sense that I may not talk to anyone other than my husband for days at a time.  Here in the country we usually only run into repair people.  They are on the clock and not usually chatty...although some are very polite and endure my husband's insistence on bending their ear.  But recently I talked to my wait staff.

Since this country is one of the wealthiest in the world we do get a number of immigrants, in spite of what spiteful candidates may tell you about how we need to close our doors.  Our service industries are run to a great extent by those from countries with no democracy, no opportunity, and no promise.  People who have no choice, but come to us for a fresh start.

My trip this fall during Thanksgiving to Florida resulted in quick talks with a young man at the restaurant who was so very helpful and polite in waiting upon us.  Since we loved the view of the setting sun, we went twice to the restaurant for dinner and got to know this waiter better.

The place had an elderly cat that pretty much had the run of the place and caught my photographic eye.  He worked around the tables like an old sailor at a bar.  I am sure if he had had better eyesight he would have joined me on the table for dinner!

Anyway the young man, who actually was very androgynous much like "Pat" on Saturday Night Live and caused my husband and I some quiet discussion, had medium length curly dark brown hair and wore a gold earring.  He explained that all of his family still lived in Cuba.  He told us that life in Cuba was very hard.  People were very poor and the newly opened tourist industry from America may make little difference.  He said he did not bring money to his family who he visited every other year because they had nothing to spend it on.  They could not buy any more food than allotted and it was against the law to raise animals for food.  Obviously Cuba is still very restrictive and still very much a harsh country.  So sad that being hungry will not be alleviated by any harder work or more money on the part of the citizens or a growing tourist industry. Just a boat's ride away and I am sure that they are thinking very much about change.  But change comes slowly.

There is another person I met the other night when my daughter took me to dinner for my birthday, just she and I at a new Spanish tapas restaurant in her neighborhood.  It was expensive as are many innovative places just outside the city.  Most customers from that neighborhood make six figure salaries some even mid-six figures, and that supports such places.  I rarely get to these interesting restaurants and have fun with my daughter buying all the odd foods and great wines---even though I think some are overpriced.

We had to get there early because we had another activity at 7:00 PM and so we were one of the few customers .  Our waitress was a short and medium built blonde with attractive features and a very attentive and pleasant attitude.  She had an accent that we could not place, and I, being the nosy elderly one, asked her where she was "from."  She explained she was from the Ukraine.  I mentioned I hoped I would  have an opportunity to visit her interesting country some day and she said that she  hoped it was not too soon as it was a very sad country right now.  Poverty, war, and  Russia had made her sad about her family and the living conditions.  She said it was not the wonderful country it used to be.  We did talk about the way they celebrated Christmas with a 12 plated dinner of wonderful foods, which were then stored outside on the very cold patio and eaten throughout the rest of the week.  The 12 dishes are meatless and represent the 12 months of the year, pre-Christian and something to do with honoring their ancestors.

It is not totally irreligious as "After a prayer the father will anoint each person present with honey, make the sign of the Cross on their forehead, and say, "In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: may you have many good things in life and in the new year.""

I do love the way many countries hang on to such traditions because parts of our country move forward into the next year ignoring all the symbolism replaced  by sales and economic success while pretending we are celebrating a religious holiday.

I asked her about her social life in this country and she explained that at first she used to go to the bars with the young people looking for a social life but found all young American's wanted to do was get drunk.  She was looking for conversation, music, and maybe dancing.  So now she hangs out with a few close friends and has given up the American bar scene.  She did not tell this tale with any anger or criticism.

I find it important to be able to talk to people from far away countries without the work and expense of a plane trip and I like to see the world through their eyes instead of  my well-coddled view.   We are a global melting  pot an becoming more so.

It Is Late

It is a little after 1:00 in the morning.  Hubby's snoring pulled me from the light  sleep I had fallen into.  I poked him to roll over and he immediately but quietly fell back into  the  deep sleep of the innocent.  I  had to pee.  When I got to bed and tried once again to fall into sleep the clang of the geese on the river started up.  The weather is now cold, into  the 20's F at night and thus our Canadian visitors have begun to arrive with their rude middle of the night noises.

My neighbors across the river insist on using bright lights at their  dock and shore.  The lights are like little moons and crisply reflect on the smooth black surface of the water and somewhat blind me to everything else.  These are the kind of lights that they ask you to turn off in southern beaches when turtles are nesting as they compete with the directions given by the real moon.

I admit defeat in falling back asleep and get up and make some decaffeinated Earl Gray tea.  I am careful to bring the water  to just boiling and steep the bag just enough and am rewarded by that perfect cup of tea.   I sip the hot liquid and try to read the David Baldacci book with the tiny print.  I am spoiled by the font size I can create on my electronic reading devices, and now that I have tried to read the many physical books in tilting piles around the house, I remember why I have almost given these up.  The font is most certainly 10 point and Baldacci always write over 400 pages of this stuff.

The Friday tomorrow has a small list of few tasks and that does not worry my brain.  I do hear in the back of  my mind the drum beats of volunteer season starting up again shortly.  Soon there will be lists to make, tasks to organize and marks on the calendar.  I do so love the dead of winter when everyone seems to be in hibernation and leaves me alone.

The house is quiet except for the heater that kicks on and the click of the metal on the fireplace still cooling from the fire in it a few hours ago.  We have lots of wood in the outside pile since winter just started and the propane tank was just filled last week.  Hubby still loves to split wood and I am glad his health allows this.  The fires are perfect for taking  the edge off once the sun sets in the evenings.

Well,  I should read some blogs if I am not reading my book.  So I will leave you until another day.

Finally Benumbed

Our cold weather has finally arrived.  Below is the snowstorm that sprinkled flakes across my distant neighbor's yards, but failed to move west enough to reach us and I am not complaining.

While the snow was just a confetti of flakes and never held, it was our first show of reality that winter is actually going to come.  Cold winds today and all my birds look like fat feathered figurines.

Added a blue filter below so that you can see how it really feels here.

Thoughts for Those Who Protect this Land

A "National Wildlife Refuge is a designation for certain protected areas of the United States managed by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. The National Wildlife Refuge System is the system of public lands and waters set aside to conserve America's fish, wildlife and plants. Since President Theodore Roosevelt designated Florida's Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge as the first wildlife refuge in 1903, the System has grown to over 560 national wildlife refuges and other units of the Refuge System, plus 38 wetland management districts encompassing more than 150,000,000 acres (607,028 km2)."  according to wiki.  Sounds like a lot, doesn't it?

I am one of those people who, when seeing this designation  on my road map as we travel, get all excited about the possibility to visit.  I know intellectually it is not as pristine as my inner vision hopes.  Sometimes it is smaller than we wanted.  Other times it is pretty inaccessible and I accept that.  I do sense that there are thousands of creatures and plants being left alone to blunder along in their lives through drought, flood, fire and storm and mankind's ever-reaching  pollution.  The area is called a sanctuary...a refuge and that is the mission..

"National Wildlife Refuges manage a full range of habitat types, including wetlands; prairies; coastal and marine areas; and temperate, tundra and boreal forests. The management of each habitat is a complex web of controlling or eradicating invasive species, using fire in a prescribed manner, assuring adequate water resources, and assessing external threats like development or contamination."

Does mankind do this successfully?  No,  of course not.  We do not play God very well  at all, but we keep trying.  60 refuges exist primarily to protect endangered species.  Some of these refuges provide fishing  and hunting opportunities to sportsman who cannot afford a refuge of their own.

The National Wildlife Refuge System must work with issues like urban intrusion/development, habitat fragmentation, degradation of water quantity and quality, climate change, invasive species, increasing demands for recreation, and increasing demands for energy development.

But the worst and most dangerous threats are people like the Bundys and other "hardcore militia men" (one wonders why they are not fighting for their country overseas) who think they own the earth and can take it from the rest of us to use as they wish.

2016 Cute

Those who really know me know that this is too cutesy and little-old-lady for my in-your-face taste, but it will have to do as I have just gotten my computer back in time for the end of the year.  My more ZEN wishes for your best new year ahead can be found here.

Raising Teenagers

Me: Anything you want to tell me? Talk about? Reveal about yourself so that I understand exactly what's going on in your mind at all times and so that we bond in a mother-son way, deeply, so that we have a continued good and healthy relationship so that when you eventually leave me to go out and have an life independent from me (despite all the dire warnings I give you beforehand) you'll call me on the phone every now and then and ask my advice on things and tell me how your day is going even when you are 20 and even though doing that is really uncool?

J: What?

Me: Never mind. Tristan how was your day?

(Something I sort of overheard recently.  Been there and done that.)

Brain Drains

I have been in computer hell for a few days.  It seems my download of Windows 10 to this old PC was NOT a good decision.  As a result they (Geek squad) took me back and not to the future by loading Windows 7.  I would like to upgrade to 8 where I was before the disaster, but have not found a way that does not cost money as I seem to have lost registration of discs or whatever.  Reloads of most other software, at least that which I use, was fairly normal.

ANYWAY...this is boring.  So lets talk about the weather.  Days and days of rain or gray sky and not a drop of sun.  Barely saw the rare full moon through foggy clouds on Christmas Eve. Took some night photos of Christmas lights. Well, this is also boring!

Oh, would you like me to list my New Year's resolutions?  ... I didn't think so.

It seems that working on my PC has left my brain empty of thoughts for blogging...so, I will leave you with a few Christmas shots as we say goodbye to another Christmas Season.

 This lovely house in the grandchildren's neighborhood gets super decorated every year.

 The angel in the window is there every year.

Hubby and daughter checking out Santa and his reindeer on the house.

The three jewels in my family.

Taking a Pause

My last post before Christmas.  This year the  approach to the holidays was the easiest ever.  Daughter wants to do most of  the cooking, gift shopping was fairly easy followed  by two afternoons of wrapping, baked a few cookies, and today deciding on appetizers to make at daughter's house since I will be up there tomorrow.  Hubby and I put up a handful of decorations since we are the only ones to see them.  No  Christmas cards because  my computer was in the shop and I wanted to design the cards myself.  So, it  looks like I am sending out New Year's cards.  Maybe that will be a new tradition?

I spend my time today enjoying the musical links on my small  laptop as that keeps me in the real  spirit of Christmas which is  SUPPOSED to be about the birth of the Prince of Peace.  How easily we forget.  Two  people, a young carpenter and  a young woman, perhaps barely out of  her  teens, in the final stages of pregnancy, seeking shelter and being turned away several times.  This scene has  become common today.

I am truly so personally fortunate this time of year and this becomes more painfully clear
as three of my young friends are fighting serious illnesses and another young friend is struggling  with fertility.   It is normal for us elderly to fight our health battles as we have lived a long life and I can accept that, but it is not fair when it visits the young who should  be focusing on family and future.  So, they will be in my heart even more so this season.

May you find a way to  enjoy the true meaning of the season as the bright colors and laughter of the  season surround you, distract you.   OH, don't eat too much,  because you will have to face all  those horrifically annoying diet commercials in the New Year.

Holiday Expectations

They no longer call
But if they did,
And asked how I was,
What would I say?
This morning I saw the pileated 
destroying that old tree.
This afternoon I heard a loon’s lonely call 
across the silver gray river.
Tonight I will spend an hour flipping through channels
Before I find something I watched before
And will watch again.
Tomorrow…
Tomorrow I have nothing on the list
Of things I used to do.
They never call
But if they did 
What would I say?

(Yes, this is a sad little poem, but it kept forming and reforming and so to get it out of my head I had to write it down.)