Saturday - 232nd

 Last year, Halloween was bitter cold. There was snow on the ground, ice in the gutters. The kids were at the farmhouse after school and I took them sledding in the back of the barn. Evening trick-or-treating was slippery!

This year, Halloween is so different! You could say that it's been modified to meet the moment. My three grandkids are all dressed up in costumes, and I'm sure they'll sink their teeth in more than one piece of candy, but running from door to door and ringing doorbells is not happening. Primrose (aka Miguel from Coco) had a distanced outside Halloween meetup early in the day. Snowdrop (mermaid) and Sparrow (ghost) went back to the neighborhood of their school, where they were invited to trick-or-treat in homes that had chutes: cool long tubes that served as distanced transfers of candy, straight into your pumpkin or Halloween bag. 

What struck me was how clever people could be in creating something special for kids and still keep everyone safe. Outside. Masked. Distanced. Oh, how much easier this winter would be if those three words were markers of unity and determination!

Of course, here in Wisconsin, the weather more than cooperated. Lovely skies, gusty winds, and for the last day of October -- beautiful temperatures! (56F or 13C).

But let's go back a little. Early in the day, there was the usual walk, to the back, to the front...

 

And, too, I had a sweet FaceTime with Primrose! (Playing school...)

(constructing skyscrapers)

And today's breakfast? Late!

In the early afternoon, I go over to read and play with Snowdrop. Distanced and outside. 

She is in costume. Of course! She has been wearing it on and off for days!  (Jacket comes off. But not for too long.)

 

 

Today, she resists keeping her mask on all the time and given the fierce wind, I let her shed it, though I tell her I'll have to triple the distance between us!

Between the wind and our separation, my reading is more like me shouting into a hurricane, chapter after chapter. I'm surprised she catches my words. I suppose I got an assist from the wind!

Toward evening, Ed and I once again go for a walk in our county park. I admit it -- my step goals drove me to it! I'm not about to lose my October challenge on the last day of the month!

 

 

Night. Full moon, blue moon, somewhere out there, shining on us brightly tonight. On you as well, I hope. 

With love...

Friday - 231st

 I'll tell you the end result before I get lost in the detail: I did not get killed by a tumbling calcified giant water heater today!

It is a beautiful (though cold!), sunny day. The kind you love from early wake up til sunset. Your energy levels soar. You know you'll have no problem reaching your 10,000 step goal.

Hello, farmette lands!

(A rare survivor of October frost: alyssum, in a pot by the house)

Ed, breakfast is ready! Said with a smile. A regular 1950s moment, where woman wipes hands with dishtowel and invites her guy to sit down to a lovely meal.

And now I just want to tidy up a few details, thinking -- I'll get stuff done early and we'll go out for a walk and isn't this day just so beautiful? And then Ed asks -- when do you want to help me lift the old water heater up the basement steps?

Well, never, actually! But most certainly not today! It so beautiful outside...

Okay... Ed is anything if not agreeable.

Maybe Sunday, when it's windy and cold...

Okay... 

Fine. We can do it now. (He knows that the best way to get me to do something is to leave me alone with it for a few minutes. Inevitably I will want to get odious chores out of the way. They otherwise pollute my head.)

It is, in fact, possibly the most odious chore we've ever done together at the farmhouse. The monster heater is huge, clumsy, dirty (years of mice!), awkward and exceptionally heavy. Our steps up from the basement are rickety, wooden planks. Nothing more. Ed has figured out that he'll have to keep tilting the monster one way then the next, while placing strategic bricks underneath to lift it slowly to the next step, where it will teeter under Ed's grip while I place the next set of bricks, continuing in this manner all the way to the top of the stairs.

You know that if that thing falls, it will kill me -- I offer.

Just step out of the way. -- his advice.

I trust Ed with my life and I know that he'll be careful. There is no choice. We have to get this done.

It takes forever, but eventually, one inch at a time and many beads of sweat later, we manage to heave that thing up the steps and out the door. No one is hurt,  there's not even a scratch on the mud room tiles. We do lose the outdoor mat in the process, but that's fine -- it was worn, it needed to be replaced and I am happy to go on a mat shopping trip (on the internet) after the moving job is behind us.

Hmmm, what should we put by the door? (It is the one we all use to come inside.) None of this "welcome" stuff. We're two reclusively isolated for 231 days now human beings. I laugh at the less welcoming options. How about a mat that says "Beet it!" -- with a drawing of a beet? Or the one that says "You Better Have Tacos!" Then there's the one that simply says "Go Away!" My goodness people can be unfriendly. 

In the end I pick one with a tree. If past experience is a guide, after a few days of cats, cheepers, boots, and Ed's shoes, you wont be able to see much of a design anyway.

Later, much later, we contemplate the possibility of a walk. That's as far as we get! Ed is distracted with cutting up wood trunks, and me, I watch the movie Coco. It's Primrose's favorite film and the little girl chose to dress up as Miguel for this Halloween. I owe her a viewing of it. And in doing this for her, I of course am amply rewarded with a beautiful story. Timely, enduring. (Read just one review of Coco here, in the New Yorker.)

Evening. I cook up a Jamaican style salmon fillet and roast cauliflower in the oven. An end of the week meal. House is warm, food is good. Staying home is so much our pattern now that I almost can't imagine not staying home anymore. I mean, eventually, Ed will ask me -- want to go out for dinner? I'll probably say no, let's stay home. Out of habit. But, it will be fabulous to have that choice again. Someday.

Thursday - 230th

I've held this belief that if you bypass, intentionally or unintentionally, a technology use or application when you are older (meaning past middle age, however you might tally that), then chances are you will not ever have an easy time of it if you choose to engage in that technology later in life. It will have moved on and you'll left without even the slightest comprehension of what functions it serves.

Ed doesn't agree. He thinks you can learn anything anytime, so long as you retain a can-do attitude, give yourself time, and maintain total patience. He has all three -- the attitude, the time, and perhaps most notably -- the patience. He would like to think that if I applied myself, with time, I could even install the on-demand gas water heater downstairs, in the same way that he did it. Sure, it took him a week to get it up and running, and many weeks of prelearning. He'd say it would probably take me longer, but there is nothing, absolutely nothing that would prevent me from being an A+ water heater installer if I applied myself.

We had this conversation because the weather outside was cold and yukky (gray and nippy) and, importantly, yesterday my new smart phone was delivered to me. My old one was barely serviceable. It's been many years. I needed the upgrade.

But of course, I hardly use a fraction of its smart capabilities. I do resist new technologies for too long. I was late to get a smart phone, late to start texting. (Now I cant imagine life without either.) So... maybe I should delve into the phone more deeply and learn about its hidden secrets? Maybe I should schedule a tutorial on some of its more obscure (to me at least) features?

After a very brief walk in the morning to feed the animals...

 

... and a few minutes devoted to the initial phone set up (I admit it -- in the past, I let the store geeks do it for me), we pause for breakfast...

 

 

... and then I await my training session. 11:30. I'm like a nervous student: what if they probe and find out how much I really don't know? I must sound smart and knowledgeable! Student, wanting to impress teacher all over again...

Okay, mistake number one: the training is supposed to be 11:30 Pacific Time. Oops.

Finally, at the proper time, I enter the chambers of the training space. Or, more acurately, the dude calls me and I pick up the phone. I tell him (meaning I brag) that I already did the transfer of data from my old phone and now am just happy to learn any new tricks about this new device. We have 25 minutes together -- he tells me. Oh, I'm sure I can let you go sooner! -- another puffed up hyperbole.

And he does have tricks and I make the appropriate delighted noises. 

Honestly, I will probably never use all (perhaps any) of what I learned today. I like my own smart phone orbit. I don't need to know how to pick favorite accessories or do any of the other things I've already nearly forgotten. Still, I almost feel that Ed had a point: I took the time, I was patient, I learned a few things. 

In the afternoon, I zoom with my friends.

I do think that we need solid, physical time together, more than what a zoom call may offer. It's hard to comfort, to move a mood, to convey feeling through a computer screen. Still, we are stuck in this pandemic and the calls are a incredibly valuable.

 

Evening supper. As I go about the usual kitchen prep work, I think about how this week has had its share of rough spots for many whom I love. 

 We're all hanging in there though. For this I am so grateful.

With love.

Wednesday - 229th

We start off with a brilliantly sunny mprning! Warm-ish too. Or, at least as warm as we'll get for the rest of the year. A day that begs for outdoor play. But that's not the game plan for today. Ed and I are concentrating on bringing big projects to completion. And they are indoor projects. In the basement no less.

But first, a heavenly morning stroll...

And breakfast...

And we putter a little, just to avoid doing that necessary final step of getting the installed new water heater rigged up and running.

My role in that process is really to do nothing more than to ask -- how's it going? every time Ed comes up for a pause and rest. Except I do have one big job: I need to help him bring down the old water heater which right now is perched on several cinder blocks, in a tight space, surrounded by pipes, some of them innocuous, some of them horribly volatile. For what seems like the whole day but probably is no more than 90 minutes, we shift the massive calcified piece of now junk, and remove supporting bricks and cinder blocks from underneath, one at a time (Ed holds up the water heater, I slide out the bricks) so the whole thing can be eased off of its perch and moved out of the way.

Phew! Nothing explodes, no pipe is damaged, mice turds from behind the monstrosity are neatly swept away by me. (Mice were a perennial farmhouse problem before the cats took charge!)

Here's our spooky basement. Old monster water heater to the left, nifty new on-demand water heater to the right, hung on the wall above the beyond ancient clothes dryer:

 

 

I come up for air and then hightail it over to Snowdrop's home for a distanced, masked meeting. 

 

We are so lucky with the weather! I mean, no rain, no freezing winds. Let's be grateful.

 

Toward evening Ed and I finally find a handful of minutes to spend outside, In our local county park,

Yes, the days are growing shorter. But the farmhouse is so warm and now our water heater promises a winter of hot showers. 

Luxuries. Such grand luxuries!

Tuesday - 228th

On this at first cold, then beautifully sunny day, we waited.

Oh, I did the usual -- feed animals, do household stuff, fix breakfast. We ate part of it out on the porch because Ed got giddy with excitement when he saw that some of the cats were hanging out there...

 

(We did retreat after a while. It was barely 34F (1C). My coffee and oatmeal had turned cold instantly.)

And then we waited. For Ed, it was to get the motivation needed to do the final big leap into the installation of the new water heater. He says it's the most difficult step and he needs an inspirational boost for this last huge job.

For me it was to decide where to take this day. I had letters to write. Okay. I wrote them. I had steps to take. But where? There was another calico cat sighting in Stoughton. Do we follow up on these constant calls claiming for sure that they saw THE cat, that it can be no other, that she was RIGHT THERE? The owner who lost the cat no longer wants it. The sister cat is in a good permanent home. What's our game plan here anyway? As Ed said -- if we're going to help a feral cat, why that one? The retort would be that it's because the missing cat was inadvertently separated from her sib. Sure, but now her sib is with a new owner who wants only one cat. Should we quit responding to the calls with alleged sightings? One reason to suspend them -- they are even less likely to be successful now than they were many moons ago.

 

As I wait to figure out what to do next, Ed comes in to remind me that we have almost no cheeper food left. Forget the water heater, forget cat dilemmas and head out to Farm & Fleet for a curbside pickup, stopping on the way at Edna Taylor Conservation Park, because there is no step movement in a curbside pick up and I need my steps and the sun is just brilliant!

Edna Taylor isn't an especially large park, but it's right by the Farm & Fleet store and it is surprisingly pretty considering its central location. Here, take a walk with us! All 4,300 steps!

Afterwards, we pick up our Farm & Fleet stuff and drive home and for this beautiful sight alone, the trip was well worth the indecision, the waiting, the detours and procrastinations. Dozens upon dozens of sandhill cranes. Here's just a wee fraction...

A frittata evening. With broccoli and potatoes and onions and garlic and mushrooms and lots of shredded Gruyere cheese. Like a pizza only different, right?

Monday - 227th

A young man knocked on our front door today. Masked, keeping to a distance. Since we actually have a front entrance these days (for years, we did not), it now looks like a home with regular inhabitants, as opposed to a crumbling abandoned house with derelict squatters inside. The visitor wanted to encourage us to vote. I waved him on, told him we're done, and thanked him for his effort.

And I had to wonder -- is this what it takes to get people to do their job and vote? You know, to pick legislators and this year -- a president, in exchange for all the government services we readily haul in and protections we make use of as the need and/or age arise? Does it really take the efforts of these earnest young people, who perhaps could be doing something else with their time if people just filled out a request form, got their ballot and voted (or in the alternative, hauled themselves to the polling place to vote)?

Want a way to get yourself really depressed? Take a look how many people of voting age in this country actually do not vote. In 2016 -- more than 43% of eligible voters did not bother to cast a ballot. Mind boggling. I mean, I don't expect our numbers to have been up there with, say, Belgium (according to the Pew Research Center, over 87% of eligible Belgians voted in their general election in 2014), or even Australia (same source, about 79%), but geez, at 55.7% we are at the bottom of the pile in terms of fulfilling our civic duty to participate in this democratic process. Sometimes, I just want to say to nonvoters -- you don't like it? Well now what's your alternative? Because believe me, there are plenty of traumatized people in countries with repressive regimes who wish to high heaven that they could kick their rulers out, only they can't. Not without risking their lives to do it. Here, we just have to give a thumbs up or down by casting that damn vote.

If you haven't done so yet, please, go vote.

There, I've said my piece.

 

It's a cold morning. Bits of snow linger on raspberry leaves and crab apple branches. The cheepers are hiding in the barn when I come out to feed them. I do my morning walk very briskly.

Breakfast in a toasty kitchen. How I love our furnace! (Hear that, furnace? Don't you act up on us this year!)

I have a lot of catch up work to do that requires sitting still for long-ish periods of time, but I do coax Ed out for a neighborhood walk by early afternoon. I need my steps!

For the first time, I'm wearing a cap and mitts. Badly torn up mitts. Beyond repair mitts. Needing to be replaced mitts. E-shopping will have to figure into my day, that's for sure.

It's great fun walking through the new development with Ed. So much of it is a construction site and we comment on all the styles and technical details of building a home, and of course, we pick our favorite solutions to perplexing gradation problem. My FitBit sings with pleasure as we walk up one street, down the next.

Evening: leftovers for supper. It's dark these days when we eat (and for once, that's not a statement about how late we eat). But you know, in less than two months our daylight hours will once again begin to stretch out in a race toward summer. Lots to be grateful for, even as we inch our way closer and closer to winter.

Sunday - 226th

 I finished mowing just as it began to snow.

So this is it -- our first snow of the year. Not heavy yet, not lasting either, but definitely cold, wet, white.

The mowing job is one of many that I attacked today with an extra load of determination. And I began before breakfast. We don't really mow our grasses anymore -- just a path running through them. There are advantages to this new way of treating your landscape, not the least of which is time saved: it takes about a dozen minutes to mow down paths. We do this once a week during the growing season and they look brilliant! It takes much much longer to mow all the grasses. Over an hour for sure. 

The downside is that many nasty prickly plants worm their way into the former lawn areas. You cannot walk through the grasses without picking up burrs. But, we decided that no one walks through the grasses anyway (except for the cats), and we are protecting habitats, and it all looks fine, without that trimmed lawn look which neither of us especially wants to see here. 

Still, at least once a year, you have to mow all those tall grasses down, so that in spring we can once again encourage some flowers and more delicate perennials to come back. So today I hauled out the tractor mower and got to work.

With a pause for house cleaning and breakfast!

As if that wasn't enough, I also set out to bake a cake (from one of my favorite cake bakers -- Maida Heatter). When I asked my daughter if I could do anything for her, she sheepishly admitted to craving mightily a chocolate layer cake. Done! It will be part of my dinner delivery tonight. Unfortunately, I only have one 8 inch cake pan, so I have to bake the layers in stages. It takes time.

 

Okay, food delivery!

 

And then home again, to finish up our own dinner here.

I am proud to say that I have kept to my 10,000 step daily goal, even though sometimes I put in the last 1000 awfully close to midnight. However, I do feel today was a bit of a cheat. Riding the bumpy tractor-mower I think added (to my counting device) a few hundred steps not taken. Shhh! Don't tell anyone!

Saturday - 225th

Another large, round number in our isolation tally! Sad but true.

Still, from a distance, we watch the world go by and even though yes, there is that distance, I feel not entirely disconnected from the rest of humanity. (Ed, well he has me to look at and admire. That's it. Otherwise, now that the front steps are built, he sees no one. Even curbside pick up errands are run by me, as I am more obsessively reliable with the whole distance thing.)

The morning is cold. The day is cold. The season is cold. We expect nothing less. And in fact, today, I go on my animal-feeding-farmette-strolling walk in a winter jacket.

 

Breakfast, still with flowers from the yard. Enjoy them -- there will not be any more flowers from the yard. Not until April.

In the afternoon, I have a meetup (distanced, masked, outside) with Snowdrop. She had had an unfortunate encounter with one of their cats and I got a very discombobulated little girl before me, ready to snuggle in her sleeping bag and not come out. But, what are grandmas for if not to smooth out the upset, to throw out disparaging comments about a cat that would dare make my grandchild unhappy, and eventually to coax a smile out of the little girl.

 

 

I see that she is wearing part of her Halloween costume. (Snowdrop is currently quite smitten with mermaids so predictably, she choose to be one.)

She discloses more of it now as she takes off her jacket. I shiver as I look on. I mean, it is just in the upper 30sF outside (about 4C).

Children have such different perceptions of temperature than I do!

I leave her eventually and as now is my routine, I head out to pick up our CSA box of veggies, and while in that neighborhood, I take a little stroll. To admire houses flanked by autumnal trees, to look wistfully at a cafe that I once frequented with the kids, to enjoy being part of the greater world that I know still exists out there, beyond our safe isolation at the farmette.

 

Evening has me cooking up a few ingredients for what we affectionately call a Caesar salad. Oh, it has the eggs and the lettuces and then a bunch of other stuff I find in the fridge on this day (spinach, carrots, squash that I roast up, radishes, avocado, olives, cheese, cucumber, peppers and a scrap of smoked salmon). 

I'm going to drizzle some maple syrup on the squash... -- this from Ed. Me, I just smile. It's good to have such wee things in your day to smile about.

Friday - 224th

A rainy day. Still, one must walk. So I do my farmette morning spin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And we eat breakfast.

And then I sit down to think about the upcoming holidays. The last weekend of October is the time I typically begin work on a holiday card. With good reason. I have more time then. November's Thanksgiving and December's pre-Christmas craziness leave little time for musings about holiday messages and designs. Too, there are sales now. What I might do today will cost me 10 or even 20% more if I wait until, say, Monday.

But how do you write a holiday card in these crazy times? I look at my past cards: Joy, Merry and Bright -- such themes just don't cut it this year given that just about no one I know will be spending the holidays in a manner that is likely to be very merry.

I look for suggestions on my previous year's card making website. There are the usual messages of Merry this, Joyous that, but I also see options that could only belong to this era: "What a Year!" and, amidst pictures of frolic and fun -- "Our Real Life Looks Nothing Like this!" Well, that's funny, but sort of sad at the same time. What if I played around some? Stick "Oh What Fun..." next to a photo of a Zoom meeting. Or, here's an idea -- "Cherish the Moment" -- with a bottle of wine and an empty glass. Maybe several bottles of wine, all empty. Not exactly a Ho Ho Ho. Not even a Ha Ha Ha.

And, too, working this far in advance makes me uneasy. What if someone I want to reach during the holiday season falls sick before then? What if we're in such a political and pandemic mess that anything cheerful is like a slap in the soul for us all?

And yet, would I not wish things to improve? Wont I want my beloved family and friends to find an ounce of holiday happiness, despite it all?

I go back to my search, looking at and rejecting dozens of formats and messages. Finally, when evening comes (it takes me that long!) I settle on something that may work, unless we're completely on another planet by then, but hey, then it wont matter, right?

In the evening, I visit with Primrose. I'm fixing dinner, she's eating dinner. The end of a week for her, for me. She sings for Ed, we talk about Halloween. FaceTime is a beautiful invention.

 

Late evening. Fish, broccoli, salad. A dumb movie, a few more steps on the treadmill. And a good night wish to all!