Friday

 Do you know the acronym FOMO? I was reading about it in the context of the big hit in Apple's lineup of new products this fall: the cleaning cloth. Yours for $19, but you have to wait, because they're sold out all the way through the end of the year. Of course, this little square of microfibers is, in typical Apple fashion, overpriced. Nonetheless, people buy it. They know they're being fleeced, yet they buy it. Why? Pushed into it by FOMO. Fear of missing out.

Oh yeah, the idea of chasing something that other privileged souls have accessed. It's a mix of a sheep heard mentality along with a desire to keep up with the jones. Compete, conform, scramble to be better or at least as good as those around you. And, too, I saw plenty of FOMO while living under so called communist rule. Lack of access to consumer goods and services triggered this fear in the extreme. If you heard that a store got a shipment of a consumer item, you got in line for it. Not to compete with your neighbor, but to make sure you got some of it in case you needed it in the future. You did not want to miss out.

I have vestiges of this very particular form of FOMO festering in me. Get it now, while supplies last. I almost signed up for the Apple cloth until I came to my senses. And here's the thing: I live with a person who doesn't have a FOMO fiber in his entire large framed body. Indeed, if everyone is going after a super Apple cleaning cloth, he is sure to let me know that paper towels or his tshirt are equally capable of cleaning his computer screen. (To say nothing of the micro cloths we have lying around everywhere, because they come free with glasses and, too, when you fly Air France overseas.) Curbing your inner FOBO: it's such a good idea. And so hard to do. 

 

In other news -- it is a typical late autumnal morning: wet and cold. I think these are the last days of the annual blooms, so I'm going to cast one last look at them now, with a nod of thanks for the color they have added to my gardens this late in the season!

Breakfast. The minimalist look. In the kitchen. Late.

 

 

 

And very soon after, I pick up Snowdrop and bring her back to... her favorite tree. It had been too wet to spend much time in it the past few days. Today -- dry enough.

(But honestly, it's indoor weather for us. With a lunch that she talked me into -- Culver's take out. Chicken tenders, cheese curds. She loves both. Happily for this gogs, she also loves the bowl of fruit I have ready for her.)

Once again we pick up Sparrow at the end of his school day. 

(With leaves, at home now...)

And once again we greet a cheerful Sandpiper waiting for his sibs to come home.

In the evening, I drive to the next town to pick up my repaired (once again) camera. It's a common occurrence here: the Fed Ex guy comes with the delivery to our "front door." We don't use that door and there isn't a doorbell hooked up to it and so if a signature is needed -- we're out of luck. We get a note rather than a delivery.

 

 

I drive back when it's already dark. This before we jump back into daylight non-savings time. Ah, the months of meteorological winter! They really push you to snuggle early under a blanket. And we do! Every evening, on the couch, we do.

 

Thursday

You know it's a low cloud cover day when your living room is dark even with the lights on. When your kitchen feels like it's supper time rather than breakfast time.

 

When your walk to feed the animals is quick, so quick that you don't bother thinking much about the photo opportunities. Possibly because you do not see many photo opportunities.

I don't mind such days, if truth be told. My candle adds that soft glow to the farmhouse, my couch time feels as good as I imagine a day in a spa would feel: relaxed, meditative, warm. I boil up water for a tea that I toted back from Paris. Leftovers from all the tea I drank in my little attic room on the Left Bank. Bliss.

 

At noon I head out to pick up Snowdrop. She is off from school (that's a Madison thing: schools close for a good part of the last week of October for inservice stuff) and so she is rested and energetic.

Still, we do a lot of reading. So much to take in! 

So much to enjoy. (She wants to bake. We bake.)

Because of the way the schedule plays out, she and I are picking up Sparrow at his school today. Oh, it does bring back memories! Until March 2020, I was at this school daily, picking up both kids, bringing them back to the farmhouse for their afterschool play here. Then, during the pandemic, Snowdrop grew out of preschool and Sandpiper was born and now the kids are spread over many different childcare situations. They are lucky though. All of it is good. No one is complaining!

 

 

Later, on the way back to the farmhouse, I stop and pick up our last CSA veggies. Two boxes today -- one making up for the missed week while I was away. Hey, do you remember the first CSA box of the season, back in May? It was full of green stuff. An exciting beginning to the growing season! Now the box is loaded with squash, brussels sprouts, beets. Celeriac, onion, kale, sweet potatoes. Is a spring box better than an autumnal one? Of course not. They're both amazing.

Evening. Still cloudy, a little drizzly. Late Fall weather. Ed and I like seasonal changes and so we take in this phase in much the same way as any other time of year -- with a little bit of curiosity and a lot of patience. In spring we wait for the flowers to appear. In late fall? For that first snowfall of the year. So that we can be out in the forest again. We just have to wait. And the lights around the house twinkle and shimmer, and the soy candle burns slowly, and I chase cats away from the kitchen counter as I reheat leftovers for supper.

Wednesday

As Ed remains lost in his endless sheep shed based Zoom calls that begin before dawn and continue until nearly the dusk hours, I do stuff that I rarely do when he is in the farmhouse: play music. And think about what's next.

We have learned that the pandemic is unpredictable, that the virus may come and go, that vaccinations are working now, that kids will be safer soon. It took so long to get to this point that it's hard to adjust your behavior to any new reality. Maybe it's time to hatch plans, despite the fact that we haven't guarantees of their success. 

So, after my morning farmette walk...

And after another solo breakfast, I put on the music and, with the help of all kinds of informational resources, I think about winter, about spring. About travel. About kids, writing, visits, projects. 

You can help yourself with thought processes by walking and I do that too. (I also plant a few bulbs, which doesn't help with anything except in the growing of my blisters on my hand from excessive digging.) 

Forest walks. Today I head back to the Arboretum.

Here's a weird combination: we are just about at peak maple leaf season and at the same time, some of the lilacs are reblooming. Is it the fault of the excessively warm October?

Beautiful colors. 

Peace.

As I get ready to get back in the car for the short ride home, my phone rings. It's Ed. He's done with his calls. He's itching for a walk. What's a gorgeous to do but to oblige. We go to our local park. Yet another forest. We need all the forest walks we can get, don't you think? (No photos. I wont say that all forests look alike -- our local one is a little wild and indeed, it's open for hunting, so we wear our blaze orange garb -- but still, I gave you enough to look at in the Arboretum.)

Evening. Call with friends, frittata for dinner. Don't you think there's beauty in predictability?

last October Tuesday

Somehow I missed the first half of the day. It just passed me by. Oh, sure, I fed the animals, ate another solo breakfast (Ed was on a Zoom call all morning long again), took a few pictures for Ocean...

 

But I did not seize the moment and run outside. No bulbs went into the ground. I mostly stayed in, candle lit, hoodie zipped tight and read about the art of French baking. That's not a good use of a sunny morning, no matter how you slice it!

By the afternoon, I needed a forest bath. You know -- a walk in the woods where you pay attention to the trees, the fragrance, the quiet.

 

I wanted to drag Ed out with me, but that just wasn't going to happen. He was still on his Zoom call. Still, I needed that walk, if only to slow down the day a little and have me acknowledge its tenderness and beauty.

In the afternoon, Snowdrop comes to the farmette.

 

 

This, at least, is always a good set of hours -- ones with a child in them, where the child teaches you something about her young life, thus teaching you a little about yourself too. 

(tossing crab apples at each other)

(at home, with the brothers two)

(just outside their home -- evidence that fall is at her brightest)

In the evening I go back to my cookbooks. What is it with me? An imaginary trip into another world of cooking and baking? Or maybe I'm preparing for the winter months, where kitchen work is meditative and healing and, yes, joyful. 

So many grand cookbooks out there! Ed, are you ready for a winter of overeating?

Monday

We now have too many masks. Ed says my coat rack, where I hang them, looks like one belonging to an crazy person who has a mask fetish. I think I already explained that I was upgrading cloth masks as my travels were approaching and it wasn't until the end that I caved and switched to the paper disposable ones. These days if I'm to go indoors for any prolonged period of time, I take the disposable. Surgical or KN95, depending on my rudimentary assessment of how many angry anti-everything people are likely to be present. 

This morning, I handed a KN95 to Ed before dawn. I had an appointment to conduct phase two of my oral surgery. The part where the surgeon chops up my sinuses. I don't really understand why -- possibly to make room for the coming implants (that's phase three, out of a total of five). Anyway, Ed had to come with me because I'm enough loopy after surgery that I should not be let loose on the road. Since he had one of those 6 hour Zoom meetings scheduled for this morning, he took his lap top and planned to Zoom with his engineering colleague from the waiting room.  That's pretty public and my assessment was that it's high risk so I sacrificed a KN95.

The only good thing about having all these oral surgeries is that they wrap you in a very comfy blanket and they dope you up with something that feels awfully nice before you zonk out. So there we were, in predawn hours, me waiting for that blanket and that nice doped up state when the surgeon asks me -- how come your sinuses are so full?

Well, they've been tilting toward full since the pandemic started. Maybe longer. Maybe like decades longer. I don't know. Usually I can be accused of making mountains of small symptoms so I try hard to ignore stuff that doesn't really interfere with life. Full sinuses do not really interfere with life. They just lead me to take Covid tests a lot because I never know if it's sinuses or you know, The Big One.

Anyway, he says I should see someone about the sinuses before he chops them up. Why? Because if we proceed without an ENT okay, he may be accused of making things worse. Not that he would, he assures me, but these ENT people, they like to point fingers at oral surgeons. 

Well fine, but that means that my five phase dental job has just earned itself two extra phases, belonging to an ENT doc. And more importantly, I wasted a good KN95 for Ed, who, it turns out, did not need to take me, and did not, therefore, need to wear it. Perhaps I did not mention this, but my guilt over purchasing so many cloth masks has made me extra strict and downright stingy in acquiring disposable ones. Each one is, therefore, precious. And now we're down by two. (I wore one as well of course.)

 

Back at the farmette...

... breakfast is solo because it was either that or having Ed join me with his computer and Zoom call. I thought that was okay for a one shot deal a few weeks ago, but listening to them speculate about the twists and turns needed to place a machine on slabs of granite just isn't great fun the second time around.

I was supposed to be "resting all day," so I had nothing planned but of course, there is suddenly nothing to rest from, so I (reluctantly) planted a few Fritillaria Imperialis Lutea and a couple of Narcissus Le Torch bulbs and then settled in for a Zoom chat with my friend across the ocean. 

I could have used the remainder of the day to write something. It would be really cool to get back to my second great writing project, but unfortunately, being away from it for a couple of weeks makes me realize that I like the sentences enough, but I don't like the story at all. Meaning the forest sucks even if the trees are agreeable enough. That's not good. 

Maybe with the new year I can resolve to do better. Isn't that what New Years are for? To resolve?

In the meantime I light my candle and sip my tea and bring back concepts I'd abandoned last March already -- concepts such as hygge and cozy, and I bring out socks that have a bit of wool in them. For the days ahead.

Sunday

 In a large household (to me, anything over four is large), if one person falls, the rest may soon follow. And so, in my daughter's home, first the baby sitter caught something, then last week Snowdrop picked it up, and today her mom came down with the mysterious "it." Thankfully, not Covid it, just some random bug that seems to be on the prowl for new victims.

It used to be that we would ignore such stuff and tally forth with whatever plans were made. That was then. These days, when a household member is ill, everyone, and I mean everyone -- family, friends, sitters -- wants to stay away. Poor you -- nobody wants to see you! They don't want the baggage of feeling under the weather these days. You need tests. You need isolation, You need clearance to attend school. To see a dentist. To get a haircut. No one wants to go down that path and so we give a wave and say -- call me when it's over. 

And so when my girl texted this morning that she was the next to fall, we all agreed that Sunday dinner should be called off.

A wet and cold day. Best spent on cleaning the house.

Cozy breakfast indoors.

But all this didn't feel right for the kids. They aren't sick. And we haven't had Sunday dinner here for weeks. Can't they come over without the parents??

Of course they can!

And that's how Ed and I end up entertaining the older kids at the table tonight. 

 

 

 

Or is it that they entertained us? ("Let's eat wit the lights off!")

Evening: dishes done, house is quiet. But with the echo of little voices and the movement of small ones still lingering in the air. 

breakfast outside?

We have this routine: on Saturday mornings, I go to the downtown farmers market, Snowdrop goes to a class, and eventually Sparrow is off to play ball games. This means that Snowdrop, her mom and Sandpiper have a window of free time late in the morning where they can meet up with me for a second breakfast. We've been doing this outside of course. No one feels comfortable going indoors to eat, least of all us, with two unvaccinated kids. 

Since the morning began with a 32.5F temperature reading (so all my outdoor annuals almost collapsed, hanging in there by the thread of half a degree), I thought perhaps that a better game plan would be to bring the croissants to Snowdrop's home and eat our second breakfast there. It's cold outside and nice and warm inside. But the girl protested. She loves winter, she tells me. She is never cold, she proclaims. She'll bundle up. 

Okay then. I get up, feed the animals...

...go to the market (very few farmers are still out selling stuff)

... then drive over to the coffee shop where we have been meeting up on the weekends. And I wait and no one shows up. 

 

 

 

I'm in the sun, but it's windy and that coffee is getting mighty cold and I'm thinking maybe I should text...

And I find out that we have had a total miscommunication and they are waiting inside in their home for me.

Such a relief! Eating breakfast in temps that hover in the 30sF (so, low single digits C) may be charming in theory, but honestly, I think we're done with outdoor meals for the year. Now if there had been heat lamps...

 

At their house, I shed my scarf, jacket, and gloves. Warm air never felt so good!

(older brother returns from his games)

I come home right around noon. This is when Ed and I sit down to our own "breakfast."

In the afternoon, I work outside in the farmette fields. More bulbs to plant and the Great Mowing Job to accomplish: all the tall grasses we've let grow all summer long? They have to be cut back so that new stuff can easily sprout come spring and more flower seeds can be tossed into the mix. 

I am not a fan of mowing. Neither is Ed. But the guy is busy fixing barn roofs and painting house trim. So I run the tractor mower and as usual, I shake up my insides and make my head and ears buzz and after about an hour I get off and say -- never again, which is something we say to make ourselves feel good, not because we mean it.

Dinner? Leftovers. I'm spent!