Friday

You could say that the sails of the ship carrying my mom to her new living arrangement had been temporarily dropped this week, as we wait for that stiff breeze to push her forward again. Meaning -- I'd done the application for benefits, and when she was approved I'd selected her managed care program, I'd moved her stuff out of her apartment, and I inspected her next possible residence. Now came the wait for the managed care organization to interview her, draw up their own assessment, and send all the paperwork to the worker who would partner with me in the search for her new placement.

The sails were hoisted again today, the day of the big interview with her new care program. I am present for it and it takes up the whole morning (followed by an afternoon of phone calls to her various docs, with requests for goods and services that she will need going forward).

I'm neither surprised nor discouraged by the process, since I think everything has sailed as per expectation, with no glitches or snafus or ill winds. I don't think my mom shares my enthusiasm for it, but then, as the case workers confirmed after the lengthy visit, she has yet to accept the new reality. (The new reality is that she moves at a much slower pace than she did two months ago.) Nothing about it is particularly satisfying to her. Really, nothing. The hope is that once she is in a new place, her mood will improve.

All this means that my day has to be arranged differently. Oh, I still get up to feed the animals. And it is unsettling to go to the shed, because the two newly fixed kitties are still in hiding and indeed, I'm not even able to locate one of them -- Miss Calico. I hope she isn't stuck somewhere behind a machine, wasting away. Ed tells me that's silly and she can surely extricate herself from wherever she is hiding, but I'm not so sure.

Oh, and the poor guy does drag his sleepy self down for breakfast with me.






And then I am off to my mom's and I don't sit down to exhale until the tail end of the afternoon.

The kids are at home with a parent and I promised I would come over to read a book or two to whichever grandkid is hungry for a snuggle on the couch with a good story. After the reading comes the play!










And I pause to have a catch up chat with my daughter (and her entourage)...






(winners all!)





And then I return home. The farmhouse looks so sweetly quiet and serene tonight. There is a pale light cast by a near perfect moon. A cat moves stealthily across a field of snow, another sits on the path and watches me, hoping perhaps that I'll veer to the shed and open another can of cat food.

I do head that way first, just to make sure the kitties are there and still breathing.  And they are and so I head back to the farmhouse, throw down my jacket, my bag, my camera, and take out the frying pan. Salmon burgers tonight. Followed by popcorn.

Thursday

You must never feel 100% certain about anything. With the exception of love: if you feel love for someone, then you're good: you can trust your emotions. Otherwise -- proceed cautiously and listen to the evidence.


It's a pretty day today. Any day with this much sunshine feels like a gift. But again, I have to take pleasure at watching the sunshine stream into the farmhouse. I am too busy to spend time outdoors. (Too, it's cold. And icy and slippery. I'll leave the trails and paths in parks and preserves for the surefooted, or at least for those with spikes in their shoes.)

I seem to have permanently moved grocery shopping to Thursdays. Between our breakfasts, and the refrigerator raids of my fruit loving granddaughter, I have a fruitless fridge once again. (The girl has developed a great love for mangoes. Add that to her love of all cherries, all berries, oranges, apples and baby tomatoes!) Time to stock up.

But before I set out, I, of course, visit the shed. I see that the little kittens, just back from the vet last night, have been exploring. (In their sniffing expedition, they seem to have missed the litter box we put out for them!) That's a good sign. Nonetheless, they are hiding when I come in. Ed's sheep shed is filled with papers, tools, machines. It's tough as hell to find two kitties among all the workshop junk (he would not call it junk). And even when I do locate them, they stay put, out of reach. Cowering in fear. I leave them alone.

There is, of course, breakfast. But my afternoon coffee break makes for a prettier photo. I have added a fresh bunch of daffodils and freesias! (Here you have it -- a tribute to that pause at the kitchen table, be it morning or early afternoon.)





Later in the day, the clinic sends the documents with info about yesterday's kitty visit. I was positive that the little Calico is a girl and the bigger kitty is a boy. I was so wrong: they are both girls. Snowdrop's name for the bigger one ("Cutie") seems more fitting!
 

In the afternoon, the kids are at the farmhouse.






It's a day of intertwined play.











Sparrow has figured out that his family loves hugs. You may be in the middle of baking a souffle or making strategic decisions about where to invest your life's savings and out of nowhere, you'll hear a plaintive "Huh! Huh!" and you'll know it's Sparrow, looking for a hug.






(In an attempt to participate in Snowdrop's story with babies, he finds his own (Lego) baby and takes her for a long, circular ride around the farmhouse.)






(All's well that ends well around the dinner table!)






Thursday is also Storybook Ballet day. Today's tale is Aladdin.






In the evening, Ed and I try to coax the kitties out of hiding in the shed. It's slow going. As we walk back to the farmhouse by the light of the beautiful (nearly) full moon, I wonder if they'll ever warm up to this new setting, and the shed cats that live there.
Maybe... Ed responds, in the safe way that you can respond when you simply do not know.

Wednesday

Ed and I do not agree on everything. And there is one thing about which we really disagree: it is the matter of trees.

The farmette has many, many trees. Firs, maples, walnuts. Lotus, birch, box elder. Willows, northern catalpas, russian olives. And that's before we even start listing the overgrown crabs and the fruit trees in the old orchard.

When I look at photos of the farmette from, say fifteen or twenty years ago, the landscaped reveals many unobstructed sunny areas. The trees were all here, but they were considerably smaller. Over the years, the sunny areas have receded. There are very few spots now that get six hours of sunshine each day.

This makes growing flowers or vegetables a challenge. Our tomato bushes yield far too few tomatoes. And increasingly, the flower fields, at the edges, are showing less vigorous displays of blooms.

I keep bugging Ed to trim the trees -- to remove some of the bigger branches. But he is a reluctant tree trimmer and honestly, his trimming would be like sucking out a drop of water from an ocean of branches. I surely would be happy to completely remove some of the more invasive trees (box elders!) altogether, though I know Ed would never agree to that. He'll chop down trees that are near death, or that have fallen precariously on top of something vulnerable (a barn, a shed, another tree). The others just keep on growing.

So of course, I get very excited when Madison Gas and Electric sends its crew of tree trimmers our way. Every five or six years, they come out to cut the branches that are growing into the electrical lines. I view this as my one tiny opportunity to at least clear the front, street facing flower bed of shade.

This morning, both Ed and I are out to greet the tree trimmers. My message -- be generous in your pruning! It's good for the power lines! Ed's message? Well, he doesn't have one really, except to grimace as they talk about removing one limb or the next.


Breakfast. We talk about trees and cats and Iowa. There was a photo, but in some moment of great distraction, I erased it.


The afternoon is slightly different in that I pick up Snowdrop earlier and we go over to the haircut shop for a much needed trim. We have a few minutes to kill, so we walk over to the nearby coffee shop...





... for a cookie treat. (It's the first time that I see her cross her legs like a person four times her age. Out of curiosity, I google this position to see if it is gender specific and I find out that in the US, men, in fact, rarely cross their legs, whereas in Europe it's far more common. You can come to your own conclusions as to why.)






Snowdrop does not want to wear clips in her hair, so the project of growing out her bangs has to wait until an age when she can control her cascading-into-her-eyes hair better. Today, her bangs get a good trim!






As I watch the now familiar hair cut routines, I have to smile. Snowdrop is such a cheerful kid. Throughout the whole time, she looks as happy as if she were eating birthday cake.






Okay, done.






We go together to pick up Sparrow, who is still in the thick of a deep sleep. Not for long. A few violent shakes from his sister and he's up, pleasantly surprised to see the both of us bending over his little cot.

To the farmhouse!






... where we also break with the routines. Snowdrop is inspired to make up a game with her babies and so I take charge of the little guy, as she creates a fantasy story the whole afternoon she is here. The little guy certainly does not mind the one-on-one attention from me!






In the evening, Ed picks up the two kitties at the vet clinic. We take them to the sheep shed, where we had set up a temporary litter box for them. We open the cage door. Both scurry out, but the boy has just that much more confidence. He hides, but when I bring food to him, he eats. The calico is more traumatized. She walks in circles and trusts nothing. Some of the shed cats come in and in finding the kitties there, they go on guard. They may be friendly when they visit the porch, but this is their turf. For a minute, we wonder if the kitties will be okay left alone with their bigger half siblings.

Ah well, at least they will be warm for the night. We are crossing our fingers that they wont discover the exit door today. They do not know the lay of the land. Fleeing into random darkness could be catastrophic for them.

Ed plays volley ball tonight and I read a book that the reviewers called the best beach read of 2019. Funny that I should get to it in February, when it's so cold and icy outside.

Tuesday

With the animals, and with Ed you never know what you're going to wake up to.

He is momentarily up in the early morning, rumbling around, making just enough noise to wake me. I glance at the clock. Animal feeding time is coming up. I give up on the idea of more sleep.
You know, you need to fix the cage: the opening is not large enough for both kitties to go in comfortably.

He had lugged the animal cage to the porch. Now that the two young kitties -- Calico and brother, the last offspring of Stop Sign -- are hanging out on the porch, we feel that we have an obligation to catch them and take them to the vet for spaying and shots. They are the last holdouts and at almost 6 months, they are quite capable of getting pregnant (my guess is that Calico is a girl).

On the one hand, trapping the kitties should be easier: the shed cats mostly stay out of the porch and Stop Sign insists on having her own bowl of grub. So you can put their dish right inside the cage. Too, she sometimes takes off for a few hours to prowl around. She is a true feral: she never stays in one spot for long. She goes off for a day, two days, five hours. It varies.

Once the little guys get in the habit of going in the cage to eat, Ed can set up the door, pull a string and shut them in. So far though, Calico is resisting. I thought perhaps Ed should open the door more, giving her more space to wander in.

This morning, he mumbles something that sounds like he's in agreement and crawls into bed. I'm up feeding the cats. And I notice that Stop Sign is away.
Ed! So long as you're awake (ha ha), this is a good time to adjust the cage door.
He asks -- should I set up the trap?

We have a confluence of good factors: Ed's up, Stop Sign is away, the kitties are hungry.

Half an hour later, he has accomplished that awful job of shutting the door on the two innocents. You throw a blanket over the whole thing and they quiet down instantly. He gets in the car and drives them to the vet.

At breakfast...





... we talk about how to treat their release. In the summer, we let the teenagers out in the sheep shed for the night. (The recommendation is to keep them indoors at least for a day, until they recover somewhat from the surgery.) They were so terrified -- of the unfamiliar shed, of the unfamiliar us -- that they hid in weird places all over the shed and once we opened the door, they flew out at lightening speed. (Since then, we trained them to go for their food into the shed by way of a cat door and though they are on the prowl a lot, they consider the shed their home, hence the name "shed cats.")

Releasing the kittens in the winter is going to be a problem. If we let them out in the porch (a place that they heretofore believed to be safe), they may flee. These are very cold nights. After surgery, in the wild, they may not survive.

And we have this idea: maybe they should become shed cats. Why? Well, it's not as if Stop Sign treats them with any gentility.  So feeding them when she is around is always tricky. And here's the bigger problem: they like to climb up the screen netting. That's darn good netting, but it wont survive their constant clawing at it.

Still, we don't fully understand cat thinking. These kitties seem okay in the presence of the shed cats and thus far, the shed cats have displayed a sweet temperament toward each other, toward us, and even toward Stop Sign and her kids. (It's she who claws at them and shoos them away, nice mama that she is.) But will they be able to learn the shed routines? Will they know to exit when nature calls? Are we asking for trouble?



The day is cold and I stay indoors. Mom paperwork, with a sprinkling of travel daydreaming and a healthy allotment of time for reading. It's a good morning.


And a good afternoon! Filled with grandkid antics.

(Sparrow likes to dump out all the puzzle pieces from all his rubber puzzles into one big heap; Snowdrop patiently helps him fit the pieces into the right frame... then hides the puzzles so he wont do it again. Repeating a toddler's game again and again can be exhausting!)






(She plays with a ball, so he must have one too!)






(the man who would be king...)






(She wants to draw...)






(He likes to... do stuff that makes us all laugh.)





The animal clinic calls to let us know that they did not have time to do surgery on the kitties today. Poor guys, huddled in a cage for such a long time! Ah well, it gives us another day to think of what's next for them. It's a very cold night. At least we know the littlest guys are warm. And together.

In the evening, after dinner, Ed says -- gorgeous, watch this.

He plays me a youtube that just makes me smile. It's a lively lecture on Possibilianism. After it, we "argue" over which one of us has a more open mind. Which one, when asked, is more likely to answer "I don't know." 

Day is done. Goodnight clouds, goodnight cold air. Be kind to the kitties when they come home tomorrow eve.

Monday

The lovely drip drip drip of melting snow, trickling down from the roof. Drip drip drip, spring is coming, drip drip drip.

(Of course, the spring-like weather wont last beyond this afternoon, but still, it's a good reminder of how sweet the days can be. Chirp chirp, drip drip drip.)

I do not seize all that wonderfulness. I spend almost no time outside. I'm back to dealing with mom stuff (by phone, many agencies, no rapid movement forward, indeed, as far as her move goes -- no movement at all), alternating with a more pleasant task -- thinking about spring travels. Ed laughs at me. You love this detailed research stuff more than anything, dont you? Well, not more than anything! Still, it's a sign of how well he knows me: I can easily get lost in exploring the possibilities. So lost that all that sunshine comes and goes and I catch none of it on my face, though plenty of it in my soul!

(I'm back to having sniffles again, so I can blame my stationary day on lack of great enthusiasm for anything that's physically challenging.)


Breakfast.





Kids.

Sparrow first.





Snowdrop. Trying to push her bangs to the side. They're getting long. She's thinking of growing them out.






You come to expect these grandkids here, on Ocean, no? Well so do I. Every activity, every chore, every detail of my day is calibrated to fit around the schedule of meals with Ed and playtime with the grandkids.


Today, he tries to join in every one of her games. She's agreeable.













And the evening? Ah, that's my quiet time. A phone call to my mother, a video chat with my younger girl and then all is quiet. Except for the popping corn and the music that introduces the last episode of the Band of Brothers.

Sunday

Days like this are precious. I don't care if you live in a city or out here, on the farmette -- you just have to step outside and take a whiff of that spring-like air! It's exhilarating! Oh, that cornflower blue sky of a sunny February day! How deliciously sublime!










We knew this day would be grand. At one point I thought of stepping out after breakfast and staying outdoors until dinnertime. But of course, those were idle dreams. After feeding the animals, I glance at the mess in the living room (the piles and piles of old letters dumped from the trunk last night) and conclude that I would have to put some order inside before I could truly enjoy the splendid outdoors.

Too, we get a couple of calls for some of the Craigslist items we posted yesterday. People came, people picked stuff up. This was exceptionally satisfying, because the buyers got superb deals on items that they needed. And, with every disappearing piece of useless (to me) debris, the farmhouse seems more voluminous. I'm sure it's in my mind, but it truly is the case that less is more: homes look better when they are uncluttered.

One sale, however, does puzzle me: it's of an old SLR digital camera. I'd stopped using it maybe eight or nine years ago. I also managed to lose the battery charger so that it's impossible to tell if it works at all. Ed kept nagging me to offload it and I always hesitated. How can I sell it when it may be broken? Someone will want it -- he kept saying.

Indeed, it is by far the most popular item of all that we listed, despite the fact that we clearly stated that it may not be in working condition. The first caller got it and he seemed so pleased!
It must be a guy thing... I mutter, acknowledging that Ed had been right.
You just don't understand, Ed tells me. Guys really like a challenge. All those youtubes on how to tinker with Apple products, even though Apple makes it practically impossible to tinker with their stuff? It's the same thing. Tell a guy he shouldn't be fixing something and he'll say -- oh yeah?

Ed sometimes appears to have a very gendered view of the world, but I have to say, at least with respect to mechanical challenges, he is not off base. He should know. He has spent his life around designing, making and using tools and machines.


My work on the trunk papers progresses slowly. I don't quite know how to handle all those thousands of letters. My daughter tells me to at least save the family stuff, but there is just too much! I left my family and my country when I was 18 years old. From then until the time when the world shifted to computers, my parents and I communicated through letter writing. Do I pick out a sample? What good is that?

I dont even try to read much today. It's too hard! Young people dont appreciate how convenient emails are in terms of visual display. Nearly all the letters I have were written by hand. My mother's handwriting was good. My father's -- not so good. My guy friends from Poland -- also not so good. Small letters, dense text -- you can't just glance at this stuff. You have to really focus and decipher.

Still, the afternoon brings several interesting surprises. I see that I was an irrepressible note taker myself. So many notebooks, filled with... stuff. Not exactly journal stuff. Small story stuff. I dont remember this about myself. Journals -- I had long gotten rid of those. Too much emotional angst to stomach. I'm done with that approach to life! But these notebooks are different and I pull out some to look at sometime in the near future.

By early afternoon I'm done. Ed carts off an empty trunk and several boxes of stuff to Goodwill and then takes off for a bike ride. I don't quite have the time for bicycling, but I do take a walk in our county park.

 


And yes, it's lovely!





In the evening, the young family is here for dinner. Note how not dark it is at the time they arrive (5:15pm)!











Cars, books, puppet shows -- it's all so lively and joyous!











Is it the sunshine effect? Or is it that little ones bring out the play in us? Maybe both! A double whammy of goodness!

Saturday

Talk about a good work ethic! The day was not wasted! Ed spent half of it plastering the walls in the farmhouse bedroom (a roof leak had done significant damage to one of them) and I pulled out used items that I had been meaning to toss or sell for a long long time. In the afternoon we painstakingly dusted off and photographed one thing after the next, listing each on Craigslist, just in case someone needs that exact ancient camera or perhaps that particular suitcase or toy or baby carrier.

There are four things you can do with all that you really don't need or use. You can stuff the items in the back of your closet, shelf or basement and forget about them. Or you can throw them away. Or you can give them to Goodwill. Or you can sell them. Too many of us fall back on the first and second. Me, I'm always tempted to fall back on carting it all to Goodwill. But Ed pushes for the last route: list and sell. I can see why. We don't get that much money for these items, but they are, in fact, matched with people who need exactly your stuff, even if there's wear and tear on it.

I suppose I ought to have some satisfaction in offloading useless stuff, but of course, we still have to wait for someone to come, inspect, reject, forget, comeback, cart any and every item away. Too, because the kids still do come to the farmhouse on a daily basis, many toys remain. The place is no haven for the minimalists at heart. That wont happen for a long long time. (No complaints there! I'll take kid clutter, so long as it comes with the grandkids!)

Otherwise, this day was so very normal. The cheepers still suffered when crossing snow drifts...






... breakfast was again very late.





And here's a wonderful little tidbit: sometime between the noon hour and my coffee break, I saw a sliver of sunshine. It did not last, but I swear it was there. And tomorrow there will be more. And that's such a good thing!

Toward evening, when all thoughts of sunshine are behind us and I'm about to reheat a dinner,  Ed, perhaps hoping that I still have some cleaning and clearing energy left, suggests that I go through the papers in my steamer trunk. We'd brought this trunk over to the farmhouse from the storage space and I promised I'd sort and chuck most everything in it.

I agree, thinking this would be easy. Letters, old letters? Discard! Papers, cards? Chuck! Save maybe one or two items, the rest? Dump them.

It is not easy. Hundreds of letters. Of notes. Marriages just starting (mine), marriages falling apart (my parents). Everyone writing everything down. Friends, forty, fifty years younger, writing to the one who went away. I can't read them. It's all too much in the past. At the same time, I can't just throw them all away. Why can't there have been email? SO easy to store, to forget even as you never have to press delete on an era in your life!

In the end, I keep a handful (well, or two or three) and throw away the remainder. Who knows, someday I may want to go back and recall what life was like back then. Now, glancing at my endless notes and notebooks from that period, I just have to shake my head.  So very young and terribly anxious about life! It sort of makes you grateful that those years are behind us.

February is off to an interesting beginning.

Friday

The last day of the week, the last day of the month, and I hope -- the last of total cloud cover. Hungry for February, hungry for sunshine, hungry for the color that comes with dappled light.

Still, it's a calm and satisfying day. If a bit gloomy.





I continue to wait for the phone call that will jumpstart my mom's Act III of her saga. I'm eager to take that final step of moving her to a place she'd like. But it's not in our hands. Right now, all that I can do is wait.

It's not unpleasant to be in a waiting mode on this particular day. I do garden planning. This is huge for me. Remember how in late August I had no interest at all in doing anything in the flower fields? That was then. Now, I want to completely replant the field that had succumbed to a fecund sprouting of weeds. It's close to the sheep shed and I always told myself that no one looks at it anyway, but of course, very few people look at the Big Bed and the Lily Field and yet I work hard at making it pretty each morning. So I will prettify the more distant bed. And today I conceive a plan for it.

And yes, it will include the pretty Avante Garde. In a place of honor! And I will again attempt to plant sweet peas that will never make it even halfway up the fence, because the animals will chomp them down, but hey, maybe this spring they wont! Maybe I'll get lucky.

And there you have it: I'm full of that prespring belief that luck may take hold and grow along with the peonies and phloxes and foxgloves. Spring, on the horizon (a still distant horizon, but still, it's there) allows you to dream big.


Breakfast.






On Fridays, Snowdrop is the sole visitor at the farmhouse.






This is the day when she and I catch up on stuff. We finish a longish book. She brings out her babies for a happy return to the world of baby stories. We hang out.

I show her the painting she did of birch trees last weekend in art class. I found a frame for it. We'll hang it in the second farmhouse bedroom.






Everyone I talk to these days is tired. The month started off well, but the tail end of it seems stalled. Maybe we just need a dose of good old February. The cornflower blue month. The short final burst of true winter.

Thursday

Slippery icy surfaces, gray skies, and a stillness that settled in, as if to trap the winter gloom, keeping it in place day after day after day.

The chickens hate this. They walk slowly and sometimes they seem stuck -- frozen on an icy stretch that is so unkind to their bare feet.






I go out and pick up first Java, then Peach and carry them to their destination (the garage). Normally, you cannot pick up a free ranging chicken in broad daylight. Only at dusk do they grow limp and sleepy and easy enough to handle. But today, the girls were oh so willing to have me help them along.

Breakfast. I'm scraping the fridge.






We're out of a lot of foods because last week I had shopped on Thursday. And so this week I must also shop on Thursday. That would be today.

It always amazes me how long this weekly ritual takes. Finding the best produce fills a good half hour. Maybe more. Another 45 minutes goes to reading dates and labels on everything else. By the time I am home, it's noon. And there goes another 45 minutes in unpacking and shelving the purchased foods. And when I'm done with that, the kitties are asking for food again.






How quickly the day goes by!

Thursday is storybook ballet day for Snowdrop and so the time for reading and playing at the farmhouse is limited.






(Not so limited that you can't take off your socks and make flags of them!)






(Or take a moment to show what really counts...)






So starts ballet again...






I believe the story is the Princess and the Pea. I could be wrong. I pay attention mostly to the face of Snowdrop. Her joy is worth capturing and preserving.





It's always late when I return home after ballet days. The skies are dark, the deer have come and gone. Cheepers are in the coop, eyes closed. Another January day at the farmette behind us. Tomorrow, we'll kiss January goodbye.