Thursday

Up most of the night, out of bed by 6, with no naps in the game plan for today. This is a recipe for a very tired day going forward. You have to ask -- why the heck do I do this to myself? The answer -- a shrug. It happens.

I had some appointments this morning and so breakfast was on the late side. I was glad that Ed joined me for it because the table looked unusually uplifting. I had ordered some bunches of daffodils from the grocery store but they ran out. The shopper chose a substitution -- a primrose for each missing daffodil bunch. I mean, don't they all shout spring at you? 

 

 

 

Ah, the primrose... the lovely, lovely little flower of Parisian parks and English woodlands! And Wisconsin kitchen tables. I've tried growing them, but the animals chomp at anything that pops out of the ground that early here in Wisconsin. 

And speaking of animals, I have a flash bulletin on RD Berry, the cat we took to the Humane Society just yesterday. We checked in on him today. We see that they cut off his clumped hair and checked him over and gave him a name (to their credit, they did not ask us if we had named him). There he was, listed as Big Mac.

Big Mac?? 

There is nothing big or hamburger like about him! Still, his personality wowed them and wowed new owners. We were told they are very excited about bringing him home. And so RD Berry, aka Big Mac, is adopted.

This makes us so happy! May it be a forever home for this gentle little feline. 

In the afternoon, I pick Snowdrop up at school. I listen to her stories of recess play. She and her friend are working on a language that trees would understand. It's silent and takes place in the quiet of the head. I have to smile at this account: are they just playing? She would say no. They're very serious about it. Well now, don't I sometimes murmur a humble gratitude to the trees in the forests we walk or ski through? Why do it if the trees do not understand my words? Maybe speaking to a forest is a method of simply acknowledging our connection to the trees within. And what lover of the natural world would not want to do that?

On the way home she tells me she wants to be an environmental lawyer. (This after I cursed -- in a family friendly manner -- a truck that spewed a dark cloud of smoke from its exhaust.) And here I do smile. It's been a quick jaunt from dancer to chemist to veterinarian to environmental lawyer. It's wonderful to see kids excited about their futures.

Including this guy:

He graduated to munching on bread sticks before supper. Soon it will be olives and roasted beets and stinky cheeses. 

Kids grow up. They're good at that. And we just sit on the sideline, wondering what just happened...

 

With love...

puzzles

It's like jumping into the icy waters of Lake Monona in February to raise money for a cause. Or buying a pet rock. Or wearing cat-eye glasses. It's a fad. So I resisted it in the same way that I did not jump into a cold lake, nor own a pet rock, nor choose pointy frames for my eye glasses.  I did not play Wordle. Not until 7 days ago, when I said what the hell and took the plunge. No, of course I wont join the club of result posters. For one thing, a good score on my part may simply mean that I have more time to waste on thinking about the possibilities. Unlike, say,  team big T, composed of Snowdrop, dad and mom, whose goal is to finish the darn thing at breakfast (which they do), before they all have to leave to get to school by 7:40. I'd crumble under such pressure!

So it turns out I like Wordle. And I like the NYT Spelling Bee (which I just tried today), though possibly not enough to pay their extra monthly fee for it. I think word puzzles should be free for seniors. You want to keep their brains exercised so that they don't develop dementia and cost the taxpayer extra money in needed services. But how do I feel about adding these brain teasers to my "goof off" list? That list has things on it that take me away from my platinum level "awesome ambitions" list. Is it okay to not be inspiring or productive or mega-creative at age 68? Can I shed my life long ambitions, in the same way I have given up on bikinis and skinny low-rise jeans?

Ed asks almost every day if I will ever return to my book writing. But I think he's merely speaking to his own momentary laziness. He still aims to get things done. Big ticket items. Inventions and designs. People doing nothing make him nervous. There but for the grace of God walketh he. Me, I think my whole person is telling me to quit making grand plans. Puzzles are an important component of that process of letting go. I know that the president of the United States is ten years older than me and has to keep straight many important details like which country is an evil enemy and which is our best friend forever. But he also has a staff that walks his dogs and writes his emails for him when he's feeling not quite up to snuff. And I bet he did a good number of puzzles on that train ride home to Wilmington Delaware each weekend, because you can't just always read policy papers and write proposals for new legislation.

 

In the afternoon I got my shingles vacc no.2 (I still need no.3 down the road). I read a compelling piece (in the NYorker) about the unexpected consequences of being fully vaccinated (I'm talking about ALL your recommended vaccinations, not only Covid). And I had to smile: so, you think vaccinations may lead to unknown bad outcomes down the road? Think again. It appears that vaccinations may well protect you in ways beyond shielding you from the disease under consideration. Your flu shot may have boosted your resistance to Covid. Your polio -- to the flu. And so on. So, I'm loading up: shingles vax, get to work on boosting my immunity in general, so that I can do more puzzles, write at least a few stories and still travel far and wide.

(As a side note, I do find it remarkable that the recommended Shingles vaccine is not covered by Medicare. I mean, you're told to get it, right there on the state registry and on your MyChart page. And then boom! You get the tab for close to a couple of hundred. Our preventive health care system is so messed up!)

This is my day then. I did not take my camera out, except once, for breakfast, and only because I thought the tulips looked liked they deserved a moment of glory.

What, you think my day looks gloomy? It doesn't though! Oh fine -- here's a sweet bright spot -- a screenshot from tonight's FaceTime with Primrose. We both happened to be munching on apple chicken sausages and playing with our spinach.

There. Happiness abounds. Look left, look right, look in front of your nose. It's there.

With love.

things are what they are

Find the good, be grateful, keep the hope -- remember how hard it was to live by those words at the beginning of the pandemic? Things have improved. It's less of a stretch to search for joy when infections rates are going down and hospitals (at least here in my region) are discharging many of the Covid patients. And we are finding the good in this snowless winter. And we are grateful that we had this short time with the sweetest cat we're ever likely to know.

It's not that RD Berry has died. Quiet the contrary -- he is doing well. Ed did not manage to comb out many of his clumps of matted hair, but he looks only a little ugly now. And the face and the soul -- all charm.

But he wants to go out. It's not good to keep him in the shed, even though it is warm there and we bring him lots of food and rub his cheeks and Ed plays a solid hour with him each day. RD Berry looks out the window, he sees the other cats, he watches the deer graze at dusk and he wants to be part of it. Even as we have 6 stubborn cats who have marked their turf and accept no other feline into what they consider to be their farmette lands. You know, they pay the taxes, and feed the cheepers, so it must be theirs.

If we let RD Berry loose, they will chase her away, just like they've chased all other ferals and strays -- Pancake, Marmalade, Coon Guy -- they came, they stayed for a bit, loving the food we left for them and then they got chased away. 

The only thing left is to take the abandoned and neglected RD Berry to the Humane Society. They will care for him, they will chip him, and they will find him a good home. That is the hope. (I refuse to go through Craigslist again: placing two reasonably friendly feral kittens through  Craigslist was awful: they switched homes constantly and in the end one escaped and never returned.) 

We sure will miss his gentle ways and gracious acceptance of whatever is handed to him.

It's very sad to see him go.

 

At home, I bake. When in a kerfuffle, I bake. I pick out a Ricotta Blackberry-Blueberry cake. Many berries to honor RD Berry.

And in the afternoon, I bring Snowdrop to the farmhouse. 

She is in a philosophical mood. I should be able to handle a 7-year old's philosophical mood, but I find myself stumbling. She goes right to the heart of it: meaning of life, what if this, what if that... Surely it is not my place to punch holes in her belief systems, her dreamy imaginative world -- who am I to say no, Virginia (Snowdrop), there is no Santa Claus (quest for magic in real life). 

We stay in the car in the farmette driveway, motor off. She seems determined to get me to commit to something. I go for the copout -- "different people believe different things..." But in today's times, I feel this has to be further qualified. I mean, there are verifiable facts and there are wild conspiracy theories. How do you preserve fantasy for a child and at the same time teach her that truth is fact-based? 

I remember this happening with my kids too: when they were very young, I thought -- my, the physical work in caring for them is brutal! I can't wait until parenting moves to challenging discussions, rather than wiping noses and playing dress up. And then one day it moved to challenging discussions and I thought Holy Granola! They can really ask the tough ones!

And then, in one snap, Snowdrop turns off her serious deliberations and skips to the farmhouse.

I had moved a bookshelf from the upstairs bedroom into their playroom. The chapter books have been stacked in piles all over the place (there's no room on the picture book shelves). She needs easier access to them. Too, I have to get her permission to move out the endless series that she has outgrown. Sophie the Mouse -- all 40 books. Critters Club -- same thing. I doubt her brothers will reach for these. Maybe Primrose and Juniper would like these books with strong female protagonists. Daisy Dawson, Cam Jansen, Just Grace... But do I need to keep dozens upon dozens on the off chance they might someday like these when passing through here? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As I bring Snowdrop home, I find her two brothers playing with blocks and structures on a mat together. True, the little guy is content just clutching a block in his sweet chubby hand. Building is not in his skill set yet. But it will be. Very soon, it will be.

 

At the farmhouse, the cats come in, go out, come in again. I shake my head at them: guys, you shouldn't have chased Berry out. I know you cant help yourselves, but still, you shouldn't have. Sigh... We love you anyway you crazy animals! Yeah, we love you anyway.

Monday

A ridiculous day! 

The animals thought it was the onset of spring. Chicks hiked to the garage, the cats perched on tree stumps.

Breakfast started off well enough...

... but in the middle of it, I got a text that my groceries had been delivered. Groceries included ice cream for the kids, so I needed to get up and refrigerate the darn yogurt pops. I checked the back door (where the bags should be delivered). Not there. I checked the front door (where they are sometimes mistakenly delivered). Not there. I checked the porch (where they are delivered when it rains; it's not raining, but still...). Not there. 

Finally, I clicked on the photo they take of the bags once delivered. Seriously? They're by my mom's mailbox at her Assisted Living residence.

Well, at least I got to say a quick hello before I scooted off to bring the bags with ice cream pops home.

And then I chased a vision. For the rest of the day. A vision of what I would do in March, given that March is never a great month here in south central Wisconsin, at the same time that this year, March may offer us at least a partial reprieve from Covid prison. So I made plans. Big and little, all day long. And it wasn't until the sun was getting low and the air was getting nippy once again that Ed and I looked at each other and said -- shall we? And off we went to move our legs some, because really, it's the only way to stay strong: get off that couch!

I'm still bracing the knee, but I swear it feels better rather than worse. At least that's the way the mind works when you look outside and you think -- my, next month we're getting sprung! And it will be spring! Amazing!

Sunday

1. RD Berry

RD Berry remains a big topic of discussion for us. Remember? She is that once lovely Coon-like cat who went backwards in life and turned into an ugly duckling. Her hair is densely matted and even Ed's patient comb has not undone what living in the wild had produced. But, she is darn friendly and easy to handle. So much so that we are convinced she isn't a true feral. She is gentle and kind and you could put her next to a baby and not worry that the kid will be scratched.

 

 

So what do we do with her??

For a couple of days, Ed tried out a new idea: he'd put her in the cage (she is so easy to handle!) and carry her to the sheep shed, so that the other cats to sniff and (cross your fingers) accept her. We don't want a seventh cat, but we prefer that than letting her cope with homelessness.

She hated being trapped in the cage while the cats sniffed. She threw up from the experience. So today, he brought her into the sheep shed and set her free. She looked around. One of the cats -- we call him Friendly, who knows why, he isn't that -- snarled and jumped at her from behind. She retreated and started marking space. Okay, time to call her what she is: She is a male cat! So, he didn't fight back, he just tried to carve out space for himself, away from Mr. Obnoxious.

Well that wont do! A marked up battle ground? The smell alone would be too much. Ed picked him up and took him back to the writer's shed.

Is there a Plan B? Nope.

 

2. Chocolate

Breakfast? Yesterday's pain au chocolat. I tell you, habit forming. 

I'm baking again today. Back to my Snacking Cakes book. I pick the "Chocolate Almond Olive Oil Cake with Raspberries." I know, that's a mouthful of descriptors, but each one is important. Without the dark cocoa, it wouldn't be chocolate. Without the almond flour, it wouldn't have that extra bite to it and without the Olive Oil, you'd be in milder territory. Oh, I should add yogurt to the title: without it, you wouldn't have the tang. The raspberries speak for themselves.

And it's delicious, though I'm wondering if the kids will agree. If ever there was an adult cake rather than a sweet and gooey concoction, this would be it. We will see tonight.

 

3. The End of Skiing?

While my friend in Michigan has been Nordic skiing for many hours each day, Ed and I have been slacking off. While the Olympics skiing event has showcased the beauty of this beloved sport of ours, we've been uninspired. Why? Well, there was maybe a day when the skiing conditions here have been perfect. On the other days, we made do. Either too icy or too thin. 

Still, looking ahead, I don't see any snow in the forecast and today's temps are going to creep over the freezing point. And so we decide it's worth giving it another try.

And it isn't great. Bare spots. Arresting twigs poking through. Ice on the trails. Basically, everything that could be wrong out there in our county park was wrong. Ah, but the air! Beautiful winter sunshine, just a dab of a cool breeze. We were glad to be outside.

But, unless we get a significant snow dump, we are done with skiing. A sad statement, coming as it is at the beginning of February!

 

4. Some Kind of Normal?

There is no question but that we are all putting back into our schedules activities that even a month ago seemed so out of reach that honestly I thought we would never return to things we did two years ago. Yesterday's trip to the bookstore was a great example of that. And this morning, I got a photo of Primrose, running with excitement to her ballet class in Chicago. They returned to in-person instruction last week. (I don't typically post pics taken by others, so enjoy this rare exception.)

Some of my firm pandemic holdouts (eating out and traveling) are going to be put to rest at the end of the month. What will remain is grocery shopping: I dont miss it, I dont want it, I'm going to stick with delivery, even if it does mean that I dont always get the veggie or fruit I want. Time. I am forever short on time. Ed keeps asking -- when  will I return to my novel writing? And I laugh at him and don't bother fabricating an answer. But if and when I again pick up my Second Book Project, it will be because I will have abandoned my weekly trudge to the grocery store. Three hours out of the day, right there, in my pocket!

4. Dinner

All three kids and both parents, here again, cheerful and exuberant. 

As to the cake? One child was okay with it, another loved it to pieces.  You can never predict how kids will react to a cake that's a little out of the ordinary. This one won them over. We'll see what next week's baking efforts will do for them.

the bookstore

I rarely unleash the emotions for things that are long gone. You'd think that in my senior-hood, I'd be more inclined to reminisce. To recall with fondness. To chuckle at a memory of some youthful transgression . But I don't often go there. Oh, sometimes I'll torture Ed by playing La ou je t'emmenerai ("where I'll take you") over and over on my smart phone. I consider it "our song" from years when we used to return each June to Sorede in the south of France. Hmm. Maybe I torture myself more than I torture him. But it happens rarely. The exception. My preferred path has always been to look forward.

But today I was pulled into one big nostalgic moment that lasted a good hour and it was intense.

It caught me by surprise. I had woken up way before Ed (whose sleeping cycle at the moment makes him a good candidate for watching the Olympics in China in real time, except that he's not a fan of watching the Olympics or any competitive sports period, even ones showcasing individual excellence; he says they're all too tribal and nationalistic). After feeding all those animals, I drove to Madison Sourdough Bakery because croissants on the weekend can be terribly habit forming.

And I took some croissants to my daughter's home, because that was the plan.

They'd munch on what would be their second breakfast and then we'd all bundle up and go.

Where? To the bookstore. 

Snowdrop had a Christmas gift certificate she wanted to use there and their mommy leveled the playing field a bit and told the kids they could each choose a few books to take home.  Sparrow was delighted.

Two things going on here: the fact that we are going to a REAL LIVE BOOKSTORE with a very large children's reading section (it's a chain -- Barnes & Noble, but still...), and secondly, the fact that we are going to a REAL LIVE STORE doing some REAL BUYING from REAL PEOPLE who take in cash or credit cards for your purchases.

When was the last time we all did any of that? The answer's too sad to think about.

Bookstores used to be an amazing place for me. When I moved from Poland to New York, once I finished my work as an au pair, I moved on to find work at a neighborhood bookstore. And I loved it! Despite the fact that it was tight and stuffy (the Paperback Forum, on Broadway, across the street from Columbia University), despite the fact that I was given the job of cashier -- way less sexy than actually shelving books and helping customers, despite the fact that I often had to close the shop at midnight and make my way back to the lower east side of the city, despite the fact that there were so many cockroaches that I could amuse myself by running an index card behind a cork bulletin board: it would always stir up a roach party -- despite all that, I loved that place and everything about it. If a book was hot (100 Years of Solitude!), I'd pick up a copy for myself (discount for employees!) and then read everything else the author wrote. In Poland I could only access English language books by raiding my parents' bookshelves. At the Paperback Forum, I had the written and published world before me. 

And that love of bookstores stayed with me. When I was looking for a home to move to after my divorce, I looked mainly at places that were within walking distance to Borders. And once I moved, I spent so much of my free time there! I was the person who hogged a cafe table with a stack of books to look through while I "sipped" my beverage. I spent a fortune in that shop! But mainly, I liked being there. I liked the proximity to great reading. So many shelves of great reading! 

 

 

(Sandpiper was a little gobsmacked by the whole outing today. A product of the pandemic, I'm not sure he's ever been inside a store. As for safety, for once I had no anxiety: one was vaccinated and all three had had Covid.

Many have said this, but I'll add my name to the very long list -- I surely think that Amazon has undone something fabulous and important, trading convenience and price (no small matter), and electronics (which do save trees), for sitting in a room with the smell of new books. Sure, the grandkids make frequent trips to the local library. They participate in the summer reading program there: read 50 books, get a free pizza. They love bringing home library books. But a bookstore -- that's a whole 'nother layer of pleasure. And my daughter was sweet enough to ask me to join in on the fun. And it was amazing.

is ignorance bliss?

1.  Avalanche

Last night I read about avalanches. The ones that typically slide down a mountain and bury anyone in their path. It appears that the spot I have decided would be the ideal skiing location, were I to travel anywhere to ski, is quite the hotbed of avalanche activity. I am curious how that plays out in the everyday lives of people who live there. Or travel to it. 

I learned that there are two types of avalanches and the ones that are the scariest (meaning fastest and doing, therefore, most damage) are slab avalanches, where bonded snow breaks off and roars down the incline. In spring, you tend to see many point release avalanches. The snow is wet and heavy and you rarely find people hanging out in danger zones. Deaths are less frequent.

Mountain ski areas rate the danger each day. They give a score to the likelihood of avalanche -- from 1 to 5. 1 Is the least likely, but they caution you it's not zero. There is, apparently, no such thing as a day with zero probability of an avalanche.

People that go off the trails (in North America, this is often not allowed, but in Europe it's permissible and many do this) are in far greater danger, and they are advised to travel with avalanche burial equipment. Transceivers, shovels, probes. The things is, you can't do yourself any good with these -- it's not as if you can dig yourself out of a burial -- it's for rescuing others near you who may have been swept away by moving snows. If you ski alone, all that stuff is pretty useless, especially since you have between 5 - 15 minutes before your own CO2 does you in. 

All this is super interesting, because frankly, in all my years of skiing, I never gave avalanches a second thought. For that matter, I never wore a helmet when downhill skiing. No one did. (Helmets are routine now: you're a fool to not put one on.) On my last Alpine skiing adventure (recorded here, 5 years ago), I ignored the dangerous winds, I was unaware of avalanche ratings, I was without head protection, and I seem to have skied through rib damage inflicted by some Russian skier who barrelled into me at top speed. 

I wonder if, knowing what I know now (about rib pain, about winds and avalanches), I would still have found myself on top of that Alpine ridge, looking down to Italy on one side and Switzerland on the other. Indeed, in these Covid times, would I even get on a gondola to get to that ridge in the first place?

Was it bliss then to live in ignorance?

2. Speak Your Mind

As you know, I maintain a strong connection to my friends in Poland. We often Zoom, I correspond heavily with one of them. I grew up in Poland as a little kid, then, too, as a teenager and university student. So you could say my formative years were spent in Poland. A Poland where even badass kids never talked back to a teacher. They smoked whatever they smoked outside of class, they skipped lessons and drank beer or vodka and probably snitched things that weren't for the taking. But they never talked back to a teacher. There was a line that you did not cross.

On the other hand, my elementary school years were spent in New York and I finished the university studies in New York and my mother herself spent pretty much all her formative years in New York. So there is a lot of New York in me.

I'm torn between the two cultures, that's for sure. And nowhere is this more evident than in the way I talk to people. Mine is a combination of blunt forwardness (the American influence) and cowardice in the face of authority (the Polish influence). And I don't mean political authority. I mean authority in school or at home. In my Polish world, young people were deferential to older people. Adult kids of my friends do not treat me as an equal. And my friends, I think, listen with horror when I sometimes lose the tone of respect that they maintain all the time when referencing those who are older in their family. My American side allows me to occasionally slip off that ladder of respect. Occasionally. Quietly, on the side. But, my Polish side (of my youth -- who knows how people act now) is rigidly in place: you never disrespect your elders to their face. Ed cannot understand this. He is blunt. He is honest. He does not cower. He hung up on his mother when she said things that were noxious. My Polish friends and I would never hang up on our mothers. (My mother shares the blunt speak that was handed to her in New York. She and Ed can blunt speak their way together through any problem.)

The thing is, the older I get the more I miss this here, in the US -- the reverence for age. Sure, in Poland you may curse your great aunt Jadwiga behind her back, but she will never know that you find her placement of a Christmas tree weird. She will go to her grave thinking that all those years, you loved her putting that tree on the kitchen table. 

Isn't it bliss to live in that kind of ignorance?

3. He Is Not An Angry Person

I have been together with Ed for more than 16 years and in all that time I have never heard him raise his voice in anger toward me. This is remarkable, because he is big, and he has a loud booming voice, and I am sure I have provoked him plenty of times. His preferred method is to grow quiet rather than grow loud when someone crosses him.

I should say that anger isn't something I have within me either, but I do get upset. You wont ever hear a torrent of curse words from me, but every half year or so, maybe even less frequently, I will unleash the fountain of tears and they will flow, and flow, and flow. And then I, too, will grow quiet. We are just not shouters, here at the farmhouse.

Some people will say that quiet aggression is nonetheless as noxious as hysterical wailing and shouting. I disagree. I'm with the opinion writer in the NYT today (read it here) who wonders whether we overuse and hyper-inflate words  to give them the strength they don't deserve. Experiencing obnoxiousness in another person doesn't necessarily inflict trauma. And no, every retreat into silence is not passive aggression. Just some of it is. You can usually tell the difference just by looking at the quiet person's intent.

I've always wondered if Ed had been different as a young guy. Surely in a house full of rowdy brothers, he was rowdy and angry right back at them. Surely he complained and yelled and whined when he was a little guy. But I prefer not to think back about him that far. I prefer to see him always as I know him today -- the quiet guy who never gets angry.

 

 

 

Isn't it bliss to live in ignorance (of someone's past behavior)?

4. The Knee

It turns out that the Ace bandage is fantastically effective on knees that have whatever my knee has going on inside.  So of course, living in a consumer culture, where more is thought to be better, I want to get the next better guard: the knee brace. 

Ed is skeptical. Wouldn't it be better to simply stay off the knee? Oh such naivete! There is no staying off the knee when you're around little kids, or when your home bathroom is up steep stairs, or when dinner preparation is all on you. (Please, no advice needed here: I do not want to eat meals cooked by Ed.) Besides, knee injuries take a long time to heal. I've had this one go down on me once before (from overuse, after days and days of nonstop walking/hiking). I need immediate relief. Life goes on! I need to move!

But, but aren't I asking for trouble in the long run?

Who can tell. My speculation about "trouble in the long run" did not anticipate a pandemic that would rip two years out of my senior travels. I do not know what next year will bring.

And perhaps ignorance is bliss.

5. The Child

Once again I am with Snowdrop. She had proclaimed, in a very Anne of Green Gables way, that today is going to be the best day of her life! I wondered if we should do something in the afternoon to commemorate that, but in the end, we just came home to the farmhouse. The sun was out in a patchy sky for a bit, but then it disappeared and a haze of insignificant light snow rolled in. Snowdrop just wants to come in and do what we always do: play, read, eat. The trilogy of pleasures.

As I watch her play and spin her stories, I think about the defining characteristics of this child. In many ways, she is like any other seven year old. But I do believe that each child has her superpower. And there is one place (well, more than one, but let's stay with this for a while) where I think she stands out (and this is what draws kids to her): she practices intentional kindness. It's on her mind. And I distinguish this from politeness (I still have to occasionally remind her to say hi/bye and please/thank you), or from compliance (Snowdrop, put that down please -- will not always have the effect of her putting that down; she negotiates!). This girl worries about saying or doing something hurtful.

[I should note that on the car ride home I asked her what she thought was her super strength or power. She threw the question back at me and I gave my answer. Then she said -- I guess I'd add imagination. I think I have a good imagination!]

(snow?)

Her empathetic soul makes it difficult to introduce stories or a history where people deliberately hurt each other. Not even just physically, but at the level of feelings. She can watch Disney movies where monsters chase innocents and horrible storms wreck ships and swallow up the universe, but show her a movie where someone says something intentionally mean and she runs to the art room and closes the door. At this age, my daughters already knew about the Holocaust. But Snowdrop would have an even harder time processing something so violently cruel.

For now, for her, ignorance is bliss.

Evening. Soup's on the stove. A mass of veggies and beans, a squirt of lime, a sprinkle of Parmesan. Twinkling lights, a sliver of a moon.

With love...

 

Tuesday

There is the question of the knee: yesterday, my doc person handed me an ace bandage, patted me on the back and told me how wonderful it feels to elevate a leg that's sore at least in part due to tibial plateau osteophyte formation (I'm just ripping a few words off of an xray report). Yes, but can I ski? Not that I want to ski. It's so slippery out there that it feels like you're skating, not skiing. On big wooden boards that have no good edges to stop your descent into the lake (thankfully frozen, but still...) or flat up against a tree. Go ahead and ski, she says. As long as it doesn't hurt. Well, that ship has surely sailed! Knees of a ten year old don't hurt. Knees of someone my age have one of three states -- knees that are bothering the hell out of you, knees that a bothering you just a little, and knees that one day are this, another day are that.

I think wrapping a knee at this point would be more for show than for strategic healing purposes, but I'm just guessing. And maybe it's not a bad idea to overemphasize to the world that I have a bad knee. No, Snowdrop, I cannot pick up any of the stuff you scattered coming into the farmhouse. Can't you see that I have a useless knee? (The girl is so neat! Except when she enters the house and leaves her trail of scarves, socks, shoes...)

Or, I could milk Ed for more of what he willingly does anyway -- get a bowl of this or a glass of that, as I sit back, with my leg up on the coffee table. 

I do think it's funny that my doc person is lecturing me on winter movement and knees and fractures, coming into the exam room as she did with a bandaged arm

What happened to you? -- I asked.

Broke my wrist while snowboarding! Never doing that sport again!

Wimp.

Still, we haven't had the best winter. Friends sent me pictures from the mountains in Poland and another from the mountains in Austria -- happy smiling faces against a backdrop of real honest to goodness winter heaven. We're cold, here in south central Wisconsin, but there's nothing fresh about the snow on the ground. Old and brittle. Just like my knee!

 

 

 

Breakfast, with spring tulips and hyacinths.

 

And Snowdrop, at the farmhouse. I do not suggest skating. Not a chance, little one. Don't even ask! (She doesn't.)

Little one, I think it's time to do your homework.

Gaga, I'm busy! Can't you see I'm playing??

(How the girl loves graphic novels! I'm working hard to find new ones for her. This particular set, featuring a middle school 11 year old, Sunny, has a brother who does drugs and smokes cigarettes with his high school drop out pals. Initially I thought we're hitting tough issues too soon, but honestly, it was a really good read!)

As always, I drive her home and visit with any brother that's available!

And now I am home at the farmhouse and I am not moving anywhere tonight even if you paid me! Leg up, all essentials within reach. Ed, do you mind getting me an ice cream sandwich? 

What more could a person want....

friends

Did you know that it's tougher to write a post of rapture than a story of all that went wrong in a day? Creating a narrative around a mishap is delightfully easy: words tumble over each other in their eagerness to find their place on a page. My first thought when I crash or bruise or do something ridiculously ill-fated is -- at the end of the day, this will make for a good story! But to give life to sweet moments, to explain why you feel joy over something seemingly trivial -- now that's difficult.

So I've been thinking about writing this post since yesterday, but in rehearsing the text in my head I almost threw it away. Too saccharine, too mushy, with too many forgettable details that cannot possibly interest anyone but the parties involved. I cannot get it right! Move on! 

But maybe not. This afternoon I came back to it. Fresh off a rather long phone conversation, I decided the time is right to give it a try. Maybe some of it will reverberate and trigger your own thoughts on your own situation. The topic? It's an immensely important one: friends.

The thing is, I don't often write about them. You can't help but sense the great love I have for my family, for Ed. But friends? I keep them to the side of the story. Even as they are so central to my well being!

Our friends are often the people we see on a regular basis. Lunch dates, coffee chats, visits, walks together -- it's what friends do, right? 

But I don't have that luxury. I am 68 years old and I can, by now pinpoint the people who are my close friends and who will likely be my close friends forever. Those whom I would call in a split second in the hope that I could support them in times of need, which happen to be the exact same people I would call or text if my own world was turning into a pile of crap. People who track my life in some detail (and I track theirs). Of that bunch, hardly any live in Madison. So nearly all my friendship building takes place via emails, texts, calls, Zoom visits and the occasional, all too rare, in person visits. I love them all to pieces and if you ask me what I do in those hours when I am not with the kids, or with Ed, when I'm not catching up with daughters or reading the day's reading material --well, chances are I'm with friends. Not in person, but in some form of writing/chatting/connecting with them.

My oldest super friend (honestly, she has superpowers!) is Polish. She's actually a spouse of a college pal. Has that happened to you? Girls and boys, flirting, traveling, palsing around and then bam! Everyone starts to settle down and there are weddings and there are partnerings and you either lose your friends or, as in my case, gain the most wonderful person imaginable! And now she grows to be your close friend, your true friend for the ages. 

I moved to the US in the middle of my university studies. I loved the people I left behind. I didn't really get the American college scene. I was working as an au pair, so I didn't live on campus and the people I met in my classes all spoke a language I could understand, but there it ended. They surely were from another planet. We had very little in common. I traveled back to Poland every chance I got. To be with my pack. But one person in New York stood out for me: a young woman, an American but with a broad gaze, a fellow student who became my best friend. And she remains one of the most important people in my life (she is the one I talked to this morning). For many of you, college years netted you a pool of life long friends. For me -- just this one. But she was (and is) gold. 

Grad school however, was a bust. I fell in love and let go of all my friends in favor of this guy who occupied all my free time and waking and sleeping hours. I walked away with him in my life and in many ways, though we're divorced, he remains a kind of peculiarly friend-at-the-side. I mean,  mixed gender friendships can be weird just by virtue of their mix genderdness (though tell that to my daughter who has among her very best friends a guy). Then add to a mixed gender the fact of a once-spouse-dom, with all the divorce memories thrown in, and you have kind of a strange bag, no? Still, we have some history and so a friend-at-the-side he shall be. No one else from grad school has survived. All gone our separate ways.

Law school -- a last shot at easy friendship formation and here, I got really rich. Two friends who are so close to me that even you, readers, know them, because they are so enmeshed in my life, to the point that we have often traveled together and done things with families when our kids were were tots. These two are superheroes -- they've put up with all the worst of me and I can only hope to be as generous in my gifts to them (of an ephemeral nature) as they have been with me. 

So, school has been my pool. The friends I list are from those days. But Ocean has been a source as well. One Madison female friend came to me also as a spouse of a fellow blogger. He stopped blogging, her friendship stayed. And then there are the three of you out there, in distant parts of the globe, who are my friends since the day you first contacted me because of something I wrote. And you are my friends way beyond Ocean posts now.

In all this mix, friendships endured even though most of them suffered setbacks. When I got married, I "dropped" Poland. I closed myself off in my new life, and since these were times when only hand written mail kept you connected, well -- for many, many years, we all sort of ignored each other. (And then picked up again with email, and travel, and all those modern technologies that make it so easy to stay close to people you want to stay close to.) My college friend for the ages? Well, somewhere in the last decade or two, we let go of our phone calls that had sustained me for so, so long. I was sure I had just been too big a handful for her. But maybe it was simply a pause and a reset. Maybe we needed to figure out what's next, now that the kids were grown. And yes, even with my two law school heroes -- we dropped back for a few years, and then resumed.

You'll just say -- these things ebb and flow. But I think when you are younger, you grapple with what it means to be a friend and it takes you a while to figure out that the requirements change over time. You need to adjust.

And while I'm on this topic, let me be clear: some slides never recovered. Have I ever told you about friendships that failed? Oh my God. The handful of anti-success stories. The woman who was my best friend during my teaching years, who then stopped being my best friend for reasons known only to her. My students -- some were really good pals in their years after graduating, but, well, they grew up into busy lives and the connection is there, but you know, its strength lies in mutual respect rather than actual conversation. And friends that came out of my ex-husband's porthole: such good friends they were, but once I divorced, they chose him over me. Honestly, from those married years, my ex is the only one who survived as anything even resembling a "friend." That's okay: with Ed came a new crew. Not too large, but a wonderful handful of people who keep telling me that I've changed the guy, which is funny because Ed is actually unchangeable. 

So today I talked with my college friend. And that was my morning. And later, I texted with my law school friends and I emailed my Polish friend and emailed my Ocean friend. And this is how it works for me now -- this world of closeness that makes me feel so good and rids me of any reasons to complain about anything. They people are rock solid and I love them tremendously, totally.

And the above? Those are chickens. Not my pals. Just chickens. Though lately they seem to have developed their own tight little circle of cheeperettes. They're not sibs, not offspring, not even cousins. But tied to each other by heartstrings nonetheless. Friends for life, however long or short a chicken's life may be.

First Day of a New Month

We're done with January. It was messy, unpredictable, sometimes beautiful, sometimes filled with frustration, oftentimes filled with great hope. February builds on that: we're still in the thick of winter, so yes, it's going to be cold, very cold here, in Wisconsin. But I'm with those who believe that this is a time to maybe relax just a little more. Let go of your frustrations of the past two years.Yes, I do believe that there is something better around the corner. I'm not a fool: I'm not predicting it's forever, or even for the rest of the year, but those of us who are vaccinated and boosted and haven't great health worries or tiny infants at home should think about what's been missing in our years of Covid anxiety. Maybe we can reintroduce some of those missed moments?

I'll be reintroducing some of those missed moments. (My sidebar tells it all!)

But not today. I'm still very much focused on figuring out a future for Razzle Dazzle Berry, the cat we took in a couple of days ago. This ball of matted fur.

One Ocean reader has a lead for a possible placement. Ed and I are working hard to make her more adoptable. But it's a challenge, despite the fact that this kitty has the nicest personality of any cat I have ever met.

She just *looks* awful. Plain awful. (It takes 3-6 months for a long haired cat to regrow her fur. But first you have to shave the old stuff off. We haven't quite gotten to that point. We're hoping we can save some of it.)

The kitty worries are paired this morning with a quick baking project. I mentioned Yossy's book now in two of my recent posts. Today I poked around my cupboards to see if I had what's needed for one of her snacking cakes. I do!  So I whisked up a Whole-Grain Strawberry Cake. 

And as I would have predicted -- it's a winner. Normally, as Yossy would tell you, stuffing your cake with strawberries will give you a soggy batter, even when fully baked. Her idea is simple and clever: slice the berries and arrange them on top. Oh, and add cardamom to the batter. (Cardamom is such a fantastic spice -- it's like mixing up ginger, cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon, without overdoing it. People say it's citrusy. And earthy and warm. Wouldn't you want something earthy and warm with your coffee in the morning? The whole cake is so perfect for breakfast!)

I take a walk afterwards. Ed is busy, but I need movement. My knee and ribs need movement. So I walk, thinking about cakes and kittens and kids and the beauty of February.

And in the afternoon, I pick up Snowdrop. We are having our proverbial one-day-and-one-day-only warmup today, and I suggest skating. No, I urge and coax and cajole her to skate.  A short spin on the ice, before the evil Arctic air blows in tomorrow. 

Not today. I promise I'll go when the warm air comes back again.

I smile. It will be a while.

But we do something special at the farmette. I introduce her to Berry. I'm curious how this cat will react to a little girl. (All our ferals, even Dance, are terrified of young kids. Little people move fast and in unpredictable directions. Dance will let Snowdrop come near once in a while but for the most part, even she keeps her distance.)

And inside the writers shed, Berry gets up, sees the two of us and in her usual slow meditative way, she walks over and looks up with hopeful eyes. 

 

A petting child? I like that! Thank you! -- all this I read in the sweet gentle cat eyes.

In the farmhouse, Snowdrop and I read and play and the day passes and it is a good one. Really good. 

(deer come out to say good bye when we leave...)

(Sandpiper aims for a high five with his usual happy grin when we arrive at my daughter's home...)

And a warm February hello to you too, little guy!

With love...