the second eye

I've heard it all -- people who have had superb vision after cataract surgery, people who felt worse off, and still others who were horrified after the first eye, but cheered after the second was fixed. Me, I had my first eye cut up months ago and it wasn't exactly a winning surgery. In many ways I was worse off than before. But, you can't just rush to blame the doc with the scalpel. My eyes have issues, making them poor candidates for restorative lenses. I can see okay, just not exactly with great clarity. 

Now comes the second eye. Where I will land after the surgery is anyone's guess. It's exciting! Sure, I could fare poorly. But, I could fare well! And in any case, I most definitely will say goodbye to my glasses. (Even though I may need other glasses for any number of activities. We shall see! Ha!) 

Today is the day when I am slated to find out. 

But first, there are the animals to attend to. And I do a spot check of the farmette lands. We had quite the storm last night (I told you it was a strange 24 hours!) and though it's good for the plant life, those kinds of winds and downpours can really put a dent in an Autumnal garden, especially one that's in its last days of standing upright. 

Despite the night's chaos, things look fine!

Can't eat breakfast. Not before surgery. Ed drops me off and I am once again walking through the steps of getting an eye lens replaced and cataracts removed. And three hours later, I am home.

Breakfast at 2 pm! With Ed, sort of: he stays on the couch, I snuggle in on the loveseat as soon as I get the cat to move over.

Still later things go a little nutty. Neither eye is working well and as the meds wear away, I'm thinking t am now worse off than I have ever been. BUT, I know it's just a passing thing. By tomorrow, I should be on the road to two good eyes. For now, I type blindly. (For example, in an answer to my daughter's text I wrote: Do I’d it feel hrr er mogul for him?) 

Ed, sweetly solicitous, puts endless drops in my nonfunctional eyes, and we binge watch Longmire. Me with my eyes mostly closed.

Okay, it took some effort type this. Until tomorrow then.

With love...

Tuesday

You know the definition of eerie: strange, uncanny, sinister, ghostly. It's when the cats creep, low to the ground, rather than walk. Stealthily rather than briskly. When you find a couple of food tins on the path to the barn, so you know that someone had gotten into the sheep shed. A thief. An animal thief. It's when the weather is too warm for October 11th, and you check the weather forecast and you see that storms are heading our way. Cracking popping storms. Maybe. It's when one of the barn cats that never ever comes our way, to the porch, let alone into the farmhouse, makes his way to the porch, and into the farmhouse. And the winds howl and the lilies defy you at every turn, blooming once again, ignoring the coming of winter.

Eerie.

Even as the landscape around us looks so normal and innocent, unthreatened and calm.

Breakfast. I wait for Ed. He sleeps, doesn't sleep, says he wants to sleep, in the end comes down and joins me.

I will myself to finish up at least a basic weeding of the beds. I work up a good sweat. It's that warm outside. 

Ed asks -- want to do one last kayak trip?

No, I can't. No time. Besides, I'm spent. Weeding in this dry clay soil is tough work. You go.

He wont. He wants do something together. I'm hearing this theme a lot lately. 

We go for a walk. A beautiful walk, because, well, it's mid October in south central Wisconsin. 

But half way into it, the weather shifts -- from partly cloudy to drizzly and wet.

Weird. It was supposed to stay dry until evening. Hahaha! Caught you by surprise, eh? 

We don't care.

(this will definitely be the last photo you'll see of me with my trusty glasses)

I pick up Snowdrop at school. She's wearing pajamas because it's school spirit week and for some reason the schools consider pajama wearing to be a perfect act of solidarity. The kids love it. Snowdrop loves it. 

But we are in a hurry. Barely enough time at the farmhouse to make progress with a book she desperately wants to finish. Can't do it. It's ballet day. And things get twisted here. Her tights get muddied. We need to do a clean up and redress and then there's that mandatory bun! But, Snowdrop stays on task.

I can't believe we make it to class on time, but we do. I am so proud of us!  

(her school friend is also in this class -- reason enough to always come into the studio with the biggest grin)

Class ends, she goes with mom, I head home where the cats are vigilant (why?) and the chickens are hiding and, well, it's eerily still. I can imagine an owl somewhere in those tall pines watching over us all, waiting for her moment.  

I walk briskly into the farmhouse and turn on a bunch of lights. Ed looks up, looks down again. Day is winding down. I take out the big yellow soup pot and get to work on supper.

week of overdue cutups

How else can I describe this week -- one of cutups and fixes? Medical interventions? Bothersome annoyances? All of the above. One after the next. Two jaw implants today, eye lens change on Wednesday. Plenty of prescribed pills to pop for pain, though I never pop them because I think they're either for sissies or people who have real problems. I don't consider implants and my eye surgery real problems, unless one of them gets messed up yet again and I wont be able to see at all out one eye, and even then, arguably I will be fine. One functional eye will qualify me to drive!

In other words, this is a day of jaw pain and tiredness. But, the animals are oblivious to my (inconsequential) suffering and so I feed them and then tell them to enjoy the good weather because it is about to change.

(the pinks of Salvia and Gaura)

(the purple of Asters, Phlox, and Calaminta)

(one of the Bresse girls always lands in the corn bin when I open it...)

(I was wrong: that was't the last lily standing...)

Breakfast, after the surgery, of the light kind. I think I'm supposed to eat just mush today, but I'm never good at following such silly instructions, thinking of course that I know better. 

I'm not allowed to drive in the morning so Ed shuttles me back and forth for the predawn appointment, but by afternoon I'm deemed safe for the roads so I go and pick up Snowdrop as usual, though secretly I am hoping she will be on the self sufficient side, because feelings of playfulness are incompatible with morning cutups. In other words, I'm a little zonked.

We do read some of her favorite books together and then I feel that guilt: how can we not be outside on what has to be the last of our warmer autumn days? A completely gorgeous day, with plenty of sunshine?

Neither of us have boundless energy. Nonetheless, we drive over to the Arboretum. It's not peak season for the leaves (yet), but it's close enough and, too, it's certainly peak season for the weather. 

Snowdrop and I have come here in October since she was a babe. For the trees. For the grateful nod to the colors of Fall. [Only later do I discover that she and I were here six years ago also on October 10th, also with the cow from the Dairy Expo. Coincidentally, this cow is with her today as well, albeit waiting in the car.]

(Back then, just one and a half years old...)

(Today)

An incredible moment of beauty. All around us.

I want to do a selfie, of the two of us, but my camera is bulky and I can't get a good pic. I feel the girl's pitying glance. Just use your iPhone, gaga. Now why didn't I think of that... 

Both Ed and I zonked out way earlier than what I would consider normal. I'm still woozy after the jaw cracking surgery, he's still sleepy after being in woken what had to be the middle of the night for him (to be my designated driver). 

A sweet sleep, beginning on the couch, in the middle of a movie, to be continued upstairs, under the light of the Hunter's Moon. Well, a day old by now, but still bright and so very beautiful.

Sunday

I expect to be tired the day after a vaccine booster and I am indeed tired today. Ed asks if I want to go out to the Brooklyn Wildlife Area and help collect seeds from the prairie. I want to say -- only if it involves sitting down. 

In the end neither Ed nor I go anywhere. He says it's a boring outing without me. I'm glad I add excitement to prairie seed picking, but honestly, we have plenty to do at the farmette. House cleaning. Laundry. Weeds. Repotting the rosemary. Thrilling stuff, right at home!

(Is this the very last lily of the year? Maybe...)

All this activity comes after breakfast of course.

And after attending to these essential details of daily life, I am spent. Couch time never looked so good!

(looking out at our crab apple: soon it will be golden...)

And in the evening the young family comes here for dinner. 

(Loyal to her tree...)

("A fenced off area? What, don't you trust me?")

(Sweet moment of playing the xylophone; a few minutes later, he manages to disassemble the keys and eat one of the screw pads...)

It'll be the last time the seven of us have a meal together for many many weeks! In the coming month, one of us will always be gone, so we'll have to plan around these comings and goings. But today, we are at the kitchen table all in a complete set and of course it is wonderful.

Late evening: under the quilt, on the couch. Beautiful time to exhale and set the mind onto the week before us. 

With hope and love...

remembering

Well, that's it for me: last market of the year today. Oh, it will continue for another three weeks or so, but I'm not going to be here. Besides, the flowers will be gone. What's a market without flowers!

I'm bundled up almost as much as the sellers. We didn't freeze over last night, but we came pretty darn close and I feel that morning nip in the air as I cut through the square to get to my favorite vendors.

$15 buys me lots of flowers. Excessive amounts! Going forward I'll have to pick out grocery store blooms for the kitchen table. Until April, when local daffodils will show their spring faces once again.

Remarkably, there is still a stand with corn. In October! I'm glad, but it doesn't feel right. I buy my baker's dozen anyway. We have had a lot of corn this year!

(other things I did buy)

(and more flowers)

(things I did not buy!)

Breakfast. Bakery items, from here:

With flowers... 

... and with Ed.

Today is the first day that I am allowed to get the new Covid booster and we are both wanting it exactly now. Ed's going to be out and about and I'm going to be out and about at the end of the month and we welcome the added protection. But it was hard to find a pharmacy with any available slots for this day. In the end, a small drug store out in a nearby small town agreed to take walk-ins if we came during what had to be their lunch hour. And here's a coincidence -- it is the exact same pharmacy where we got our very first Covid vaccination back on January 25th 2021. Back then, too, I was so grateful! Excited even! Thrilled! It was a turning point for us. 

Of course, millions continued to be very sick with Covid, to die from the virus, but so many were saved by those vaccines! Ed and I never got Covid (to the best of our knowledge), despite our contact with school kids and despite all my travels during lulls in the pandemic. Yes, after that first half year, we had access to great masks. But the vaccinations were our protectors as well. And, importantly, they lifted a good chunk of fear from my shoulders. I felt myself to be responsible for protecting Ed. I still do, since in our DOL (division of labor), I am the one who follows all the literature on Covid. With that vaccination, my relief soared. We weren't totally safe, but we were a hell of a lot safer than before entering that little drug store on that very cold winter day.  

Pandemic milestones: us getting vaccines, kids getting vaccines, surges abating, and here's a big one: learning that I do not have to wash all the groceries after all. That one was huge!

In the afternoon, though it's still on the cool side, I get plenty heated up by working on the weeds. It's great to be outside on this gorgeously crisp day, though digging up weeds from fields that are dry from lack of rain is tough going. In the past, I'd clean the beds with greater care. I remember when putting the flower fields to rest for the winter was a big deal. These days, I shrug my shoulders and weed a little here and think about snipping stuff there, maybe tomorrow, maybe next month, maybe come spring.

Our dinner tonight is odd, but it has a sentimental tone to it: we were driving back from the little town with the small drug store and we happened to pass Fraboni's -- an older Italian deli that was certainly part of my young family's history and, too, was frequented by Ed when he lived alone. Want to pick up some stuff there for dinner? Like what? Maybe sandwiches? Some deli salads? Anything!

For Ed, a sub sandwich is as much a dinner as any other food, and though I'm not exactly on board with that on most days, it's fun to stray occasionally and do something just a touch weird. We get an antipasto salad with meat in it. Meat! We never eat red meat! He picks out a turkey sandwich and I go all out with roast beef. (Last time I had roast beef? Decades ago!) 

Such a beautiful month we are having! Following a beautiful September and a beautiful August. Surely not perfect -- I could have done without the days in the hospital! -- but perfectly beautiful.

vegetable

That's what I am today: turnip, pumpkin, eggplant. No, potato. On a couch. Moving nowhere, doing things like watching the clock tick forward, while my fingers click through hundreds of websites doing research here and there, useful, yes, but honestly -- I am not thinking of productivity of any sort, I'm just doing a good job of feeling retired.

In part, it's because the chill came quickly and I'm not yet used to needing a jacket to step outside. 

But to a great extent, I am just feeling the comfort of being totally unscheduled. Sure, I have a Zoom call in the afternoon. That is not what you would call an intensely busy day. 

I sit and click until Ed nudges me out of my hibernation. And so in the late afternoon we walk and slowly I warm up and and the couch receds into distant memory. 

He coaxes me to go back to the Hook Lake Wildlife Area -- just about ten minutes south of where we live. We could not find any access a few weeks back and so he went back to studying maps and DNR plans and now he is sure. Yes, there is a parking spot and yes there will be trails. Somewhat reluctantly I agree to give it a try. 

And what a surprise: there is parking space and there is a trail and because we are in the month of good colors, the walk is absolutely beautiful! Well over an hour, maybe two hours of hilly trails and we did not even push ourselves to do every last one of them. A few photos for Ocean:

It is remarkable how many hidden paths and secret trails there are all around us. If Ed wasn't so curious about the landscape in this part of the state, I would have never discovered half of them. And now we add this one to our dozen nearby hikes. We're already imagining how pretty it would be in the winter or spring, because yes, those seasons cast their own magic on the fields, lakes and woodlands up here in south-central Wisconsin.

There is a freeze warning for tonight. I don't think we'll quite hit a hard frost yet, but it doesn't matter: if not tonight then next week for sure. We are ready for it, though I do feel sad to be losing my pots and I clip a nasturtium posy and a dahlia posy tonight for the kitchen table because I know these are the last blooms. We're done with flowers for the year.

Ed in the meantime snips lavender. Remember the wee plants I put in last spring? In the end they grew big and strong and he asked me if I wanted to expand the lavender field with cultivated cuttings that we can overwinter under lamps. I thought about this and in the end agreed. If he picks and plants them, I'll tend to them over the cold months. 

And finally, he picks the dozen or so squashes that have been growing behind the barn. Me, I would love to roast them and perhaps puree them into a soup but my dear one does not particularly like squash so the challenge will be to create something that he'll find acceptable.

And now I am on that couch again, because, well, it's that kind of a day. Vegetables stored, flowers picked, furnace on, candle burning. 

those years

When I moved out of the house where my girls, their dad and I lived for the better part of their childhood, I thought perhaps I should live in downtown Madison. That trial run is well documented here, on Ocean. The year was 2005 and I was already writing daily posts. But eventually I moved away from work, students, football tailgates, Saturday brawls. Away from the university that so dominated the blocks I had chosen for my new home. I moved closer to two essentials: a grocery store and this was key: closer to a bookstore where I tended to spend a great chunk of my free time. To me, sitting with a milky coffee in the book shop cafe with a pile of books picked for browsing that day was nothing short of bliss. I'd eventually buy the books that really gripped me. Several of those random choices, picked off a shelf, stand out. They were written by people I'd never heard of before: Mary Oliver. Annie Ernaux. 

That bookstore is long gone and I've given away most of the books I acquired over the years. Shelf upon shelf of books, packed and given over to libraries, Goodwill. I kept only several dozen. Books I could never give away because of the impact they once had on me. Ernaux's book, A Frozen Woman, is on that shelf of coveted life's favorites. (In those days, it was hard to find more titles by Ernaux. She wasn't fully translated and it was the rare store that had even one of her titles. I did find another -- Simple Passion, which also rests on my shelf of gold.) 

I can't say that Ernaux's life was like mine. And I can't say that every emotion she expressed in that autobiographical novel was my own, but there were damn many. Never before and rarely after have I felt so... understood.

It is with something akin to enormous joy, to the point of tears of joy, that I read today that Annie Ernaux was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. 

I could never write with the same fiercely penetration precision that she does, but it is her voice, echoing now constantly in the recesses of my head, that prompted me to start in on Like a Swallow. LAS is a memoir, written in the style of one. Ernaux is, of course, in a different stratosphere of writing. Nonetheless, she'll be for me forever inspiring. Go boldly inside your head, don't hold back. Don't pretend it was like it should have been. 

My very early morning today is spent leafing through Annie Ernaux's two books, remembering those years when they felt so deeply mine.  Now, living as I do, retired, with Ed who has no intention of ever charting my life in any way, Ernaux books are simply literary gems, bringing out a smile of appreciation for her stories, rather than causing my heart to race. 

I see pencil markings in the book. Made more than two dozen years ago. Some are obviously there because her words were like a thunderclap in my soul. Other markings must have simply reflected my love for her style of writing. And now, here she is -- with a Nobel Prize. Fantastic.

At some point I remember to feed the animals and to appreciate the last days of blooms.

And then I get to work. I finish weeding the bed that is suddenly so sunny that it begs for perennials. And I bake a rhubarb cake because we continue to have rhubarb growing right by the path to the farmhouse door.

And I make the decision which plants to bring in. Ten in all. They'll over-winter on our window sills. 

In the later afternoon I pick up Snowdrop and we follow our very established routines.

And I take her back, and I visit with my daughter, then return to the farmhouse. With Ed, on the couch.

And so much love...

good better best

I was about twelve when the autograph book craze hit my school. I loved my autograph book! Girls would write in it dainty rhymes about, well, having babies. Cut us some slack -- it was the early 60s after all. "When you are old and have eight or nine, bundle them up and come out to see mine!"  Or about boys: "2 young 2 go 4 boys!" Boys would write in your book, but mostly braggy things about themselves. One English boy (the one who was my first crush) wrote "I'm the centre of the theatre!" Clever, but braggy. And then there was one written by my more brainy friend: "good, better, best, never let it rest, until your good is better, and your better best." You do not structure your life by what someone wrote in your kid autograph book, but I cannot tell you how many times I have thought of this line over the course of my life. Including this week.

My first morning of getting the kids up, fed and ready for school was good enough. I mean, everyone ate something and dressed appropriately for the weather and got to school. But it was rough around the edges. Improvements were needed! Yesterday, things were better. Baths were spread throughout the day giving me more time. Lunches and backpacks were put in car before the kids were even up. It was a smoother run, but still, we were one minute too late!

Today, I tweaked some more. Kids had a better night's sleep. Clothes were carefully inspected for the fit -- socks not too bulky, pants for the most part staying up on Sparrow (though honestly, nothing fits that tall hip-less boy, absolutely nothing!). All laid out and ready. They ate a reasonably leisurely and reasonably wholesome breakfast together. And at 7:25 I said -- "time for the car!" and away we went, arriving at the school at 7:35. We watched Snowdrop go in at 7:36. A personal best for us!

I whooped up a (very loud) cheer as we drove up!

You can get used to a lot in life. Being in charge of three little ones for all these days seemed daunting in the months leading up to it. Less so this morning. A few photos for the record!

Breakfast games between brothers:

Happy eater:

"Look what I found!"

Tumbling around:

"Here, let me bring him over to you!"

In a daredevil moment I decided we had a minute for a group photo. I mean, after all those days with them, I just have to do a timed release! But, the clock was ticking and so I put the camera in the only obvious spot -- on top of the garbage can. We are standing underneath a beautiful maple, but of course, the color is way up high. Our background is... less interesting. And it's not even our car!! But, no time! One chance at a photo -- I'll grab it!

When you are holding onto packs, jackets, toddlers and who knows what else, and the camera is dangling from your neck, chances are not low that you will accidentally trigger a preset or a filter. I did just that! The next two photos are extra colorful!

The boys, waiting for their school to open:

And then I am back at the farmhouse. Breakfast, with Ed.

(Pears, picked from our youngest pear tree)

In the early afternoon, I pick up Snowdrop. We are now officially on schedule. The parents are driving back from Chicago's airport as we speak. They will all be reunited after the boys are done with school. But in the meantime, Snowdrop is with me.

I should not be surprised that she remembers something we saw yesterday when driving to pick up her brothers: the World Dairy Expo is in town.

Ah, the World Dairy Expo. I used to call it the Cow Show for her when, before the pandemic, she and I would explore its offerings. Every year, from the time she was just one. Cows, beautiful cows on display. Ice cream to sample. Stuffie cows to bring home. And now she tells me: let's go!

Whoa, wait a minute. We need to go home. Have a snack. Clean up. Read a book. Find out the hours. Buy a ticket. 

We do all that. And she climbs her tree, with a cow purchased at one of the earlier expos. 

And then we head out, parking the car by the boys' school and walking from there. For the cows.

Take a photos of these! But all I see is their rear ends! I love the udders!

And for the gift shop, because what she and Sparrow and Sandpiper need is another little stuffed cow.

And for the ice cream. (You know, it's my 7.75 birthday! We can celebrate!)

Wait! No more ice cream? You sold out of ice cream? At a dairy expo you sold out of ice cream??

Well, there's the option of fudge. We pick up some fudge and walk over to the arena where the competitions are taking place.

And then we walk all the way back to the boys' school, tired but so happy to have continued a tradition that was suspended for three years. 

Their dad is there, waiting. I leave them all and return home, a quiet home, a home I love so much! But my, it's so quiet here!

And I do think back to the chaos and adrenaline rush of the past four days. What a fantastic challenge! How beautiful to have had this time with the three of them. Snowdrop said the other day -- gaga, you are getting to be so gray! Maybe, but it's a happy gray!

With so much love...