Saturday

The chicken is stewing in a tomato-citrus sauce (I know, weird sounding, but so good!). The cauliflower is roasting. The salad is ready.





And I'm ready as well. But how can this be? Through vast swatches of your life you run, run to make it to the end of the day and suddenly, you need run no more? Can't we invent a more balanced approach to the span of life?

Fanciful thinking. I know that. But how can you not feel guilty for having time to do all that needs to be done when others are panting to get to the finish line?

So let me not belabor it -- it was a day of getting things done, slowly, methodically, thoroughly.

Starting with breakfast.






Onto errands (big item: finding cat food that Isis might like), while the snow covered the roads and fields around me.






Then home again.





And that's it for today. I'm feeling too mellow to grind through details. I'll save those for the days ahead. 

luck

Well, it was going to be a rerun of Monday! Light snow, a frozen car, a morning appointment. This time, I did leave the farmhouse quickly, right after breakfast...





...but halfway to town, I realize that I'd forgotten my folder of papers -- those very papers that I spent a whole afternoon preparing -- for my employer, for the State Bar, all ready to be filed right after my appointment, except that they were on the kitchen counter and not with me, where they should be!

I turn around to get them and now I am again rushing like mad not to be late.

Except, here's the thing: all the lights begin to be in my favor. I approach one -- green! Another -- same! And so on.

My appointment is at UW Hospitals and Clinics -- the place where there is always a long search for parking. Not this time. Someone pulls out, leaving me a space to pull in. And so I am actually, miraculously, on time.

Getting this appointment is a piece of luck as well. A scan of a lung on Monday sent my doc into a tizzy. A spot. With a possible diagnosis of hystoplasmosis -- something that we Midwesterners can readily get by working in the soil or with farm birds. I surely qualify. I spend the summers digging up the farmette! My doc insists I see a lung specialist before taking off into the hinterlands next week. Miraculously they have an opening today.

And the specialists that I see are the type that will sit down with you and address every concern you may have in the most sincere and compassionate way. And they tell you that the scan was read by a superb radiologist who - how lucky is that! - really knows hystoplasmosis when he sees it. (Because otherwise, one would worry that it's something much much worse.)

Because I am in good health, I need no treatment. Just a recheck to make sure all is fine down the road and that the diagnosis is a correct one.

Of course, the fact that I get a good medical outcome isn't really a matter of today's luck. That's more a matter of being born into one family rather than another, with a bunch of other lucky and deliberate events that build on that particular good fortune. But the fact that on this day I could see such wonderful, caring doctors is, I think, sheer luck.

And then, flying, flying as a result of my overall good fortune, I park briefly by the Law School to deliver some papers and I do not get ticketed! And then I park even more briefly by the Union to pick up discount Union member bus tickets for our trip Monday and again I get no parking ticket! And one more time -- I park by the State Bar Examiners office downtown and I would have paid the meter but I had no coins and again -- no ticket!

These are small details of course. And on other days, you feel that you get shot down at every turn. I have to remember then that there are days like today when surely you'll agree -- luck is riding along, right there besides me.


In other news -- in the matter of Isis. Honestly, I think he has an eating disorder. He is tantalized by smells, by the prospect of food when he wakes up. I give him something. He eats a little. A little while later, he meows for more. I give him a little. He comes back. And at some point, he throws up and we start all over again.

We do have a cat sitter for when we are away and I have to coach her to be tough with the old boy because it is quite obvious that Ed and I are both spineless.





(In answer to a commenter's Q -- Isis is old, but we don't know how old. He seemed old when Ed took him in some ten years ago. And it's right that he should be indulged. He's retired from mouse hunting, from climbing trees, from exploring the far corners of the farmette. He sleeps, he eats. And he meows when we ignore him. Retirement behavior, I swear.)

on a snowy winter day...

Let me say a word about breakfast. I know too many people who pass it by, or grin and bear it, or think of it as something to slog through on their way to better foods later in the day. As I sit here and write this, I'm thinking -- hey, that was once me! I hated breakfast as a kid. Absolutely hated it. Even if we were traveling and dining out -- a rare treat indeed! -- I would look at the menu and cringe. Eggs, cereal, toast -- all gross.

But I made an exception: during the summers in the Polish village, at my grandma's house, I devoured it: sour borstch, oatmeal, dark bread and cheese, berries, always lots and lots of berries -- I loved it all.

I think, now, it was all in my head. 

When I was a young mom and working and going to school -- all three at once, breakfast was a blur. It was all about getting them to eat and be out the door on time. I can't remember anything else.

These days, as you well know, that morning meal, for me rules. It starts the day with a coming together of great foods and it is the one meal when Ed and I eat without distraction.






So where do you fall on the breakfast continuum? Indifferent to it? Spring out of bed for it? I wonder...


This afternoon it was time to take to the ski trails again. We had our doubts -- all that melting and freeing, covered by only a marginal layer of fresh snow? It can't be great.

It wasn't. At least that was Ed's verdict. Pretty? Yes, that. And at 34F, quite warm. My cap came off quickly enough. But the skis clumped the snow and when we weren't sticking, we were sliding precariously over layers of ice. Ed suggested early on that we call it quits.
But it's so nice outside!
We can walk instead...
In ski boots? Carrying skis?
To demonstrate that this was not as ridiculous as it sounded, he took off his skis and trudged alongside me, just barely keeping up.
I talked him back onto his skis and we finished the loop, but I have to say, it was an effort.

But the forest was, as always, quite beautiful.











Even as for skiing, we need more snow.

A great stack of paperwork waited for me back at the farmhouse. And, too, a pesky Isis who now likes to be fed many times, in small amounts, and preferably with someone holding the bowl up to his level and petting him while he is eating.

The cat is so indulged!






But then, so are we! Starting with that breakfast, which I am already imagining, even though it's still nearly twelve hours away.

I tell you, it's all in the head.

that quiet day

It was a sweet and kind day. Cold again, yes, quite cold (though not polar vortex cold!), but gentle in the wake up, slow and peaceful at breakfast...






...and then terrifically productive at the kitchen table, writing, writing as the sun poured in.











In the afternoon, I drag Ed out for a walk up the rural road (he does not love walking for the sake of walking as much as I do).






Cold, but it's to be expected.






And then, again in the afternoon, sunshine pours in and we make good progress on our various projects. It could not have been better. Well, one thing: I suppose I would have been happier if I hadn't learned that I need even more appointments in the few days that remain in this week. All squeezed and hurried, all needed before Ed and I take off next Monday.

On the upside, I have time. For both. For my beautiful, quiet writing spurts at the kitchen table and for the occasional interruptions that inevitably push their way in and try, unsuccessfully, to mess with my good time.

being late

If I'm on a plane or a bus and I see that we're running late, I shrug my shoulders. Nothing I can do about it. It will be as it will be.

But if I'm driving or walking, I struggle and I fret. I'm in control, after all. If I'm even later than late, it's my fault.

I have an 8 o'clock morning appointment. Stupid, right? Who makes such early appointments when their day follows no schedule and can easily accommodate a later time? Worse: today is the day of snow. The kind that grinds rush hour traffic to a halt. A fifteen minute drive turns into a forty-five minute trip and so I am late and panting and as anxious as I knew myself to be in the years that I rushed to be at work on time.

There is no lesson here (except maybe to pay more attention to weather forecasts). But I remembered the agony of rushing. And again I felt the privilege of retirement.


Breakfast was (therefore) late. Nearly noon by the time I returned for it.





And after? Well, I needed to go back to tapes I had of my father's recollections of his childhood. He had insisted on creating this record five years ago and now, nearly a year after his death, I finally play them again. No, not an easy task. But each time I listen to my parents, I hear something new, even if it is a repeat of a known to me story. So I listen. For several hours. Until Ed comes up from the sheep shed and suggests we go on a brief shopping expedition to Walmart. (Always fun exactly because it is so terribly not fun.)

The snow flurries pick up again and the winds howl.


 


It is a good night to come back to the farmhouse to a hot pot of homemade chili.

Monday

What a beautiful day! Glorious sunshine, a climbing thermometer, peaking at 40F, gentle winds, blue skies.

I saw none of it. I lived the traditional Monday: appointments, meetings (some of them quite delightful, don't get me wrong here), and time set aside to clear my office (remember -- I decided I'd give it eight hours total; today I put in my second set of two). All indoors.

A shame, you say? Well yes. But it's different when you know that these busy days are the exception. That there will be plenty of sunshine to take in -- if not tomorrow, then the next day, week, month, season.

So I succumb to it and I cluster as much as I can in this one day and so I disappear after breakfast...












...and knowing that I would be immersed in people, and not ones who would wish or expect to be photographed, for the first time in a very long time, I leave my camera at home.

And so the next photo will be from when I came back to the farmette. After the sun had already set.





It is still quite warm -- just at freezing -- and I chip away a little at the ice in the driveway, though I can do no more than create a path leading to the road.

A magnificent moon rises to just above the pines at the edge of the farmette.  I have to smile then. No matter what, at the end of the day, whether you work or you're retired, we all share that moon and that's a good thing.

not thawed enough

Warmth, or pseudo warmth in January -- it's a mixed blessing. You love it, reluctantly. Snow gets really brittle. It melts, it freezes, there's ice.

So much ice.

My little girl and her fiancee drive back to Chicago. After breakfast...





....I mope about the fact that kids don't stay tied to apron-strings, even as I don't really mean to mope about it.

The temperature outside climbs.

I suggest a walk. Oregon maybe? -- this from Ed. We rarely walk around in this town just south of us.

It's dismal: windy, slippery, very very slippery. One person out and about. That's it.





Still, this is winter in the upper Midwest: days of ice, days of snow, gray days, sunny days, mixed up days.

We take out shovels and chip away at the thick ice in the drivway. Forget it. Visitors will have to slide their way to our doorstep.

Sunday. My older girl and her husband are here for dinner. We eat, we watch a bit of the Golden Globes.






When they leave, I tell them many times to be careful in the ice. This will be my parting piece of advice to anyone who comes to the farmhouse in the remaining months of winter: watch out for the ice! Yes, watch out. Stay warm and happy, walk cautiously. Winter words. Winter weather.

birthdays

We're big on them: family birthdays. We travel for them -- or some date close to them, we wrap presents in colorful paper, we sing and blow out candles. (Of course, when I say *we,* you surely will have guessed that I exclude Ed from that configuration. Though he is, these days, so content to observe from the sidelines.)

Today is the day we celebrate my little girl's birthday. And she is sweet enough to drive up from Chicago with her fiancee for the occasion.

So that sets the day. Ed and I scrub the farmhouse. Breakfast, therefore, is very late.






And then the children come...

And for once, Isis doesn't run away. In fact, he takes to drinking water from anyone who places a glass on a table. (I wash a lot of glasses this evening.)






We go to Brasserie V for dinner. No reservations there, so we spend some time at the bar waiting for a table. Here they are -- my girls and their guys. I tell Ed that this is the most heavenly of moments.






But the evening really belongs to my littlest one. It's her celebration!






Out comes the cake piece, the candle... She hushes us as we break out into song perhaps a bit too loudly. She's onto her thirtieth year. An important year, a great year.

Happy birthday to you!






And the kids stay on in town and Ed and I retreat back to the farmhouse, because really, we succumb to Cinderella dust far earlier than they do. And that, perhaps, is not a bad thing.

return

Break's over. Time to go back. The predicted rain never came to Venice Florida. The air was warm, the skies were beautifully varied. I'm grateful for that.

This morning, I have just enough time for one quick look at the sea, the birds, that half-brooding sky at sunrise.









And, of course, breakfast with my friend.





And then it's back onto the highway, back on the plane, this time on an aircraft without a missing window, back to Detroit and back to Madison. (Which greets me with dense fog and freezing rain -- thanks! This, after I swore my allegiance to all seasons here!)

Still, I am back. It is officially my last day of work but I don't go in. I mean, this date is so oddly out of sync with reality anyway. I felt retired after I handed in graded exams and now I feel a little less retired as I have a half dozen students wanting to meet with me and review their tests. Emails from so many of them come in, nice emails, super kind emails, but student needs are ongoing. Should I respond -- no, I am off payroll now? Of course not.

At home I cook up whatever has lasted in the refrigerator this long -- vegetables, eggs, salad fixings. A typical farmhouse thrown together supper.
Did you miss me? -- I ask Ed.
Of course! -- he responds, but it's an automatic pilot response.  I smile. I'll take it in any way it's offered. Isis comes up on the couch and sits between us, pushing his nose into me. He needs a pat and a kind word. Not hard, not hard at all. 

interlude

I love seasons. I do. I'm one of the few that didn't even especially mind the polar vortex! But I do think that during winter, I simply forget (in other words block) how heavenly is to live more or less outdoors: to take the computer to a deck or porch, to walk on a whim, without coat, fuss or bother, to go in, go out, go in, go out all day long.

So of course, with my friend down south, by the sea, I am luxuriating in the effortlessness of slipping out early in the morning, to catch the overcast but warm air. A snapshopt from that: in the lagoon, a bird on a rope:







And then my friend and I eat breakfast...






And after, we both go out and this time we take a seaside path...






And we spend a considerable amount of time watching the birds, always a vaudeville show of hilarity and charm...





















...and then turn around and return, ankle deep in water.

I mean, it's heaven to a starved for warm air soul. Even as I do love Wisconsin! All season! I do!

But it is great to be here for this interlude in Florida.


Not many words today -- no time left in the day for that. But I will take you back to the sea as I walk yet again, for miles (my friend has to work), from lunch until sunset. Here are pieces of that walk, to keep us all warm until spring:




































In the evening, my friend cooks dinner at home and it's all such luxury because I do nothing at all (except continue to try to learn Lightroom5, resulting in a corruption of all my flicker/lightroom photos -- sorry evening Ocean readers! --  but this is the way it is when you learn new things: you stumble).

A huge thanks to these guys for hosting me here for this heavenly spell in their beautiful little white house by the sea:






Tomorrow morning I fly back to Wisconsin.

Florida

I am on a flight from Detroit to Ft Meyers and I am breathing a deep sigh of relief. There are a thousand reasons why a flight out of the Midwest this week may well have been cancelled, but the biggest reason for my quite possibly not being on this flight had nothing to do with the polar vortex. It had to do with me being just too damn cavalier about travel.

To have you understand how stupid I was about this trip, I'll say this much. At 8 a.m. I considered fitting in an exercise module before heading out to the airport. I began watering plants that only more or less needed water. I asked Ed what he would like for breakfast. And then I glanced at the kitchen clock. 8:02. Wait a minute! Doesn't my flight take off at 9?!

It does. And it did. And I was on it only because Ed knows how to fly down stairs when called upon to do so, and the Ford Escort started despite the -11F reading outside, and I live twenty-seven minutes away from the airport (if I really step on it and no police officer flags me down). Credit should also be given to passengers who let me budge toward the front of the line at security, though honestly, by that time I knew I was safe.

I cannot easily explain my lackadaisical morning. Ed and I were exchanging Internet stories as early as 6 in the morning. I was in no hurry -- I had plenty of time. But somehow in my mind's eye, I fixed the departure time from the farmhouse at 8:30 instead of 7:30 and I simply never altered that image, even as another part of my mind knew that the flight took off at 9. Put it this way: I know how to compartmentalize and sometimes this serves me well. This was not one of those times.

So no photo of breakfast today. I popped a granola bar into my pocket and in Detroit splurged on a Starbucks (it's been years, it seems) and there, too, I was lucky because I had the briefest possible connection time, which this week should have made for a disaster, but I am flying on the first day of the year when there are no flying issues at all and so now here I am on the plane to Ft. Myers.

And as the plane pushes off above the frozen tundra that is the Midwest, the passenger behind me says (in between coughing fits, how pleasant is that!)  -- good bye ice and snow for the year!

There are a lot of seniors on this flight heading south for the season.

And I am one of them, albeit for the briefest possible season of only one day.

Well you might ask -- why go now, why Ft. Myers and why so short?

I hadn't planned on a Florida trip, but my good friend just this week moved with her husband to a new home by the sea (in Venice) and everything about this move spiked my curiosity so here I am, their official first overnight visitor.

How is Florida, you ask?

Well, actually cloudy on the day I arrive, but my God! It's in the sixties! I'm tempted to drive from the airport with the window down, but I'm still fighting the chill of the Midwest and, too, of the Delta flight which, quite unfortunately, had a window that was broken on the plane and that window happened to be by my seat and so I had a nifty breeze coming in from way up high where the temps are EVEN COLDER than down below (if you're wondering why I wasn't sucked out and sent flying down to earth -- well, there was one thin piece of glass still standing between me and the great expanse out there... but it was cold!)

I cannot come to Florida without posting this:







And of course, the sea. (Is the Gulf of Mexico a sea?)







And at dinner, I'm told that grouper is to Florida like whitefish is to Wisconsin. So we go to their local pub and get grouper sandwiches.







And tomorrow I plan on spending most of the day outdoors because you know what? I'm not likely to get frostbite.