Monday

Rain. A March-like, steady rain, the kind that gives life to the Creeping Charlie that should have gone dormant long ago. Sloppy, wet rain, over mostly frozen soil. 

Perfect for catching up: with my sister in Warsaw. With my friend, also in Warsaw. One likes Skype, the other Zooms. A cup of coffee for the first, a large cup of tea for the second. She comments -- that is one large cup. I smile. These days, you can have such conversations for free. Great distances away. And you can soak in the details of another person's life. Notice the yellow sweater that she's wearing, or the large cup that I always use for my teas.

Breakfast? Just before the calls. Ed is in and out, but comes back for the morning meal.

I can't even keep track -- did you go for more tools for your car or for granite samples at the quarry for your new machine? Can you tell that I live with a person who is mechanically gifted? 

The two older kids are coming here to the farmhouse this afternoon (no school, it's Martin Luther King Jr Day after all) and so I quickly bake up a tray of blueberry muffins. Snowdrop loves them and Sparrow claims to like them. Good enough!

(playing with the two of them is very different than playing with just one at a time!)

And after I drop them off at home, the rains really come down! In January, as if it were not even March, but April!

motivation

When I went out to feed the animals, we'd just crossed the freezing mark and the sun was definitely winning the battle against the clouds. Nice day -- I thought to myself and I extended my walk to survey the farmette lands beyond the barn.

When I looked past the photogenic (in my opinion anyway) landscape and focused my attention on what's growing here, I felt, well, overwhelmed. Two trees that fell during storms needed to be chopped up. Ed does this, but the trouble here is that it simply gets added to his list of projects. Apart from the fact that he is working hard to launch a redesign of a machine, he has, right now, a broken car (he worked on that all day yesterday and decided it probably cannot be fixed. Still, he's working away, pausing occasionally to pick up a new tool or part at Harbor Freight), and there is the stove project, which has now morphed into something else -- perhaps not a new stove, but instead an air filtration system. This means that he is reading every scientific publication of air filtration and the presence of particles in the kitchen that are produced by gas cooking. So, there are the felled trees and then there is everything else. 

Much needs to be cut down, raked away and reimagined. That last bit -- that's up to me, but I cannot quite get myself to plan something, when I see that I have a lot of work to do outside before I get to that point. Work that never got finished in the Fall and work that I wont be able to get to once I have my knee surgery. 

In other words, I better get to it now.

I propose, over breakfast, that we work on some of this today. The weather is decent, actually more than decent, considering it's January 15th. 

But the ground's frozen -- he reminds me. 

This is true, but we can snip away and clear some of the land. Like for instance around the baby peach trees. Or in the new orchard. Or around the 65 maples and nut trees that we planted two years ago. Or even in the flower fields by the sheep shed. 

It feels very much like the work is piling on and we are standing still.

Eventually he goes off to get those parts for his busted car (get a new used car! I tell him. There's none out there that appeals to me -- he retorts. A very old, cheap hatchback -- this is his preferred model). So I step out alone to do some small flower field clearing. But I'm not really motivated. January is any farmer's rest time, right? Not for us. We need to make a dent on our projects or else -- well, more will just pile on and we'll become one of those ancient couples, barricaded inside, while the weeds grow so dense that no one will reach us through the front or back doors.

In the evening, the young family is here for dinner. 

(the crackers and cheese station)

(oh, and beets and tomatoes...)

(wait, are three of you wearing Lilo & Stitch sweatsuits??)

(dinner)

(trying out a new look)

(just like mommy!)

(what she tries, he likes to try too...)

(too young to understand the importance of a fashion statement...)

Another January day... Low on gardening motivation, but high on so much that's good right now!

sunrise, sunset

The sun rises. Every day. Or at least it appears on the horizon. Though not always to the naked eye.

Last night, as I was getting ready to call it a day, Ed said to me -- so, shall we go tomorrow morning to watch the sunrise? And to visit the new Creamery in Paoli?

Perhaps you'll recall that he had this idea that we should head out in the middle of the week -- both for the sunrise, as watched from the top of Observatory Hill (some fifteen miles south of us), and for the butter at the new Seven Acre Dairy Company that just opened in the village of Paoli under a grand investment idea by some locals with deep pockets. I poo-pooed that plan, saying that the only sunny day in the next week was slated to be this Saturday (today). Initially he balked at a Saturday outing ("on a Tuesday, at 7 a.m., it would be empty and all ours!") but I guess last night he changed his mind because here he is, before dawn, nudging me to get up and get moving. 

Except that it's cloudy outside. 

Still, does it matter? It's not as if it will be sunny on Tuesday! Besides, I look at my phone's weather forecast and it tells me "partly cloudy" by sunrise.

And it's so good to be up and out with him at these weird hours of the day! Ed is a great companion (when he is in the mood to be going). Not too quiet, not too chatty. Attentive (when he is not dozing off). Uncritical of anyone and anything. As your favorite yogi would tell you -- in the moment.

But the clouds are stubborn. We arrive at the bottom of Observatory Hill even as we know there will be no sunrise for us. Or, more accurately, we wont actually see the sun rise over the horizon. But rise it will!

He tells me -- park the car at the bottom of the hill. We'll walk up. I feel like forces beyond my control are propelling me up that hill, not quite a big hill, but we huff and puff anyway because it's cold and the air is sharp against our lungs.

At 7:27 a.m. the sun comes up. 

Or so they tell me! Nonetheless, we are there to greet it.

We walk down again and wait a while to see if the clouds will lift. They do not. It matters not at all. We drive the mile or two to Paoli to check out this new Creamery complex: an old dairy factory (that is on the National Register of Historic Places) has been transformed into a place where you can get some Landmark Creamery small batch butter, along with food and beverages. Too, you can cosy up at the beautiful inn there and perhaps sip something more potent along with munching on dinner foods in the evening. Right by the banks of the Sugar River. 

There had been an article about the opening of this place in the local paper and so indeed, at the weekend opening hour of 8, there was a small flurry of activity. Meaning we were not the only ones thinking -- what a great idea to get up and out before sunrise on a cold Saturday morning in south-central Wisconsin! 

That's how starved we all are for excursions into our dairyland, for a good cup of coffee, for a reason to get out of our chairs and see all that we can see, within a short distance of where we live.

We each order an egg on a freshly baked butter biscuit, served with sheep's cheese on wilted spinach from our winter spinach farmers (at $6, with or without bacon or sausage). Doesn't look like much, but the taste is right there!

I'm feeling mighty grateful for this small escape.

Of course, eventually, the time comes for us to go home. The chickens are not smart enough to have felt an absence of a morning feed, but the cats are pretty grumpy about having their early day routine disturbed.  So I feed them. And Ed cleans up one of the Bresse girls who has an unformed egg stuck inside her. The usual farmette chores.

During the day, after reading an article titled "Investing When Your Time Horizon is Short," it struck me that the author was addressing people like me!  Dang! My retirement strategy when Ed and I met was a strategy for a person who was just 52! And so I put this on the table for discussion. Me, I understand only a small fraction of how these financial systems work (despite my initial major in econometrics, back at the University of Warsaw, but hey, that was under so called communism so I have an excuse) -- that fraction which directly impacts me. It's time to get reeducated on what's next and there's no one who loves the challenge of explaining something complicated to me than Ed. So we explore strategies moving forward. This requires a lot of reading, studying and deliberating. Not sure I understand it all significantly better now, but, hey -- I can at least appreciate why stashing hard earned and saved dollars in wildly fluctuating markets may be, um, not a good idea for seniors.   

And toward evening, we go out for a walk in our local park. To watch the sunset, ostensibly. This should happen at 4:47 but honestly, the clouds, which had lifted for a few short minutes, are back now and the chickens need to be put away at dusk, so we cut it short a bit. Pretend that the sun went down just now!

It doesn't really go down after all, so who cares that we dont really see it not really going down! Besides, in our neck of the woods, the way to tell it's dusk is not by the "movement" of the sun but by the very real movement of the deer.

In the evening I cook up some fish for summer and I think -- what a beautiful day this has been!

Friday

Sometimes a few words can create just the right mood. Add to it a familiar (or imagined to be familiar) scent and you're off.

Here's how the company DS & Durga described their candle, which, significantly, had the name of Breakfast Highlands: top notes: oats, Scotch marmalade, heather honey; heart notes: heart biscuits, strong tea, toast; base notes: hay absolute, smoked things, gorse. Does that not pull at the heart strings of a person who loves the Scottish isles? Hey, you don't have to muck around at airports and take many flights to get that whiff of a Scottish winter morning! All you need to do is look outside (just a slight dusting of snow, always the gray skies)...

... and light your Breakfast Highlands candle and stir up some porridge. 

All that's missing is a slice of smoked salmon with toast. And a dram of Scotch whisky from Islay. 

And Ed.

He does make it down to breakfast, but just barely. 

*     *     *

The afternoon is an ambitious one. I promised Snowdrop that straight from school we would head to one of her favorite coffee shops (Barriques) and from there, we would find an ice rink for skating. 

I had the good sense to try on her skates on Wednesday. They were way too tight! I had the bad sense to have waited that long to try them on! I ordered new ones -- they are to arrive today. By sunset. Well now, that's super quick! Fantastic Amazon service! But it wont help with our planned Friday outing.

And here's another obstacle: it's been warm this week. The daytime temps have risen to just above freezing. That means that most of the park ice rinks are not being maintained.

But will these two obstacles deter us?? They will not! 

I pick her up and explain our choices. We hatch a plan: go to Barrique's on Monroe. Sit and luxuriate over a treat. Check then to see if anything had arrived at the farmhouse. If not -- use the old very tight skates one last time, on the ice rink that is open -- the one by the zoo that her cousin had tried a few weeks back.

(Rice Krispie bars! a favorite!)

The skates aren't yet at the house (they come literally ten minutes later), so we take the old ones and I push them on and lace them up. So many things working against us: it's windy and cold. She needs her snow pants, so off come her jacket, her mitts, her hat. Now she is even more cold. And the skates -- well, kind of snug! The ice is ripply and cracked. She feels wobbly. But she manages not to land on her rear end (always a goal for her) and more importantly, she still likes skating!

I ask her if she dares stand on one foot. She tells me -- yes, but without skates!

*     *     *

Our day ends at the farmette with a chicken hunt: Ed cannot find one of the white Bresse girls. We've been keeping an eye on a few hawks that have been circling this territory, but of course, there's little we can do to keep them away. Too, there is still a lingering smell of the skunk who visited the barn a few days back. So many predators! So much temptation for them! 

But in the end we do find her: asleep on top of an egg which she chose to lay underneath some farmette equipment. A lucky break for her that we went back again and again. She may not have lasted outside the coop for the night. 

A lucky thing... Snowdrop was saying how lucky indeed this day can be, even if so many have Friday the 13th worries. Lucky? Oh, this doesn't even begin to describe our good fortune, I tell her. Warm house, good food, a snuggle with people you love. Or on top of a rosemary bush if this is your wish (why, Dance, why?).

Wonderful, beautiful luck.

Thursday

Maybe I should just pack my bag and go out into the world and then I'd be done with exploring it for good! That's the feeling I had when I read this year's NYTimes list of "52 Places to go in 2023" -- they publish this each year and this year's list was posted today. If someone paid my way and if Covid would abate, I'd go and see at least half of them right now, before I get really old! (I'd been to some, but not enough to make me feel like I've seen enough for one life.)

In the alternative, I could be talked into a road trip in some part of North America, so long as you don't have to drive for ten hours along a boring highway before you come to some hidden gem (and my definition of gem is very broad!). 

In other words, the world seems like a beautiful place to me and experiencing its depth and breadth has always felt mind boggling, in the best of ways. 

Unfortunately, no one is paying me to hop skip through half, or even a quarter of the 52 spots scattered across the planet and if they were, I wouldn't just want to copy someone else's list, I'd want to create my own, with fewer hours in the air or on a road, but still, it was a nice little vision to carry with me as I went through the early morning tasks. 

It was a mixed bag of tasks, since I had to follow up on one of my Mystery Illness threads one more time, but though not all threads are tied up yet, most are, and importantly, this one tied up quite nicely (as Ed had predicted). 

So,  animal feeding walk:

And then a spin through the medical establishment, followed by a visit to a wine shop for balance, and finally to a pharmacy to have a discussion about the very mixed messaging on seniors taking Paxlovid with them (the recommended Covid antiviral) when they travel. Medical experts, cited in NYT, say do it! But go ahead and find me a doc who will write a prescription for it if you haven't yet tested positive. Go ahead! I'm totally stumped on how I can accomplish this. 

Best part of the morning? Breakfast when I got home at 11:30. With Ed, who did not seem to notice that we were eating oatmeal at a very late hour.

Now, back to the main theme of this post which is"the world is such a beautiful place." I asked Ed just after breakfast, when my two favorite cats -- Dance and Unfriendly Snowflake -- were cuddling on the couch... 

... and our stomachs were full (in other words, everyone was in great spirits) if he would consider going to any place on that list of 52. Some of the destinations are quite remote and require a certain adventurousness to get to them. I said I was willing to tag along to any, so long as he was by my side.

I was not really surprised that he answered "no." What did surprise me was that he had actually studied the list earlier this morning. Was he smugly eyeing stuff he believed was not worth the air travel carbon footprint  to visit? (Actually, not all the destinations would require flying and besides, the guy did board a plane to go on his sailing trip so he's not 100% opposed to catching a flight when "necessary," by his own definition of "necessary.") Or was he evaluating what he might be missing? I'll never know. What I do know is that we are running out of travel years and I do not want to twist his arm so hard that I would have him reluctantly agree to a trip that he then would sulk through (a.k.a. sleep through) every single day of our journey.

So, I'm slated to pack bags without him. From that list of 52? I'll probably get to maybe one this year. Hey, one is always better than none!

In the afternoon, Snowdrop is here with me. Happy girl...

But this time I put my foot down earlier on snuggling over books I don't adore, so she is on her own for a good chunk of time, reading through stuff that only a kid would like. Oh, and throwing socks at Ed -- a game they both seem to enjoy.

And in the evening, Ed asks -- hey gorgeous, you want to go out early next week and watch a sunrise and get some freshly made butter? I point out that it's slated to be cloudy every morning next week. He responds -- so what. I am not one to say no to a trip with him, no matter how short and pointless! In the meantime, we sit back and watch one of the last episodes of Jack Ryan. Snowdrop had asked -- what's that show about? I told her -- well, first the bad guys chase the good guys, then the good guys chase the bad guys, then some of the good guys are actually bad guys, and some of the bad guys are actually even worse than bad, and so they all chase each other all over again until the end, when I imagine the good guys will win.

Did I get that right?

A happy night to you as well!

with love...

Wednesday

I have my limits! A week of les medecins? No way! I cancelled my appointment for today and baked a blueberry thyme lemon cake instead. (I am not a total jerk: I cancelled it earlier in the week to free up the slot.) Lesson learned: one (in a week) is fine, two is tolerable, three is pushing it, four is crazy, five? Forget it. I'm staying with three this week!

It's a hazy morning, with a promise of some solid hours of sunshine. Just above freezing. Not bad for January! In fact, a tad worrisome: when you live in Wisconsin, you may not always get good skiing snow, but you're guaranteed good ice for skating in January. Not this year.

Here's our lovely hen, foraging among my flowers, enjoying the bits of old lavender and dried asters.

And here's Ed, taunting me by encouraging Dance to join us for breakfast.

And here's lunch!

Before I pick up the girl at school, Ed and I scoot out for a quick walk in our park, just to zap in some Vitamin D and to keep my do better ball rolling.

On the walk, we discuss whose fault it was that we never switched out the gas stove this summer. I thought it was mine, he believed it was his. Haha! Actually quite the reverse. 

It is, of course, a huge project. As he listed the steps involved (and note that each step is tedious and risky because all systems may fail and we'll be stuck without gas or even electricity for a while -- hence the need to do this in summer), I once again committed to helping move it along. Electric and induction. Eventually. This spring! Right after I get a new knee!

At the farmhouse after school, Snowdrop brought out my least favorite of her books to read.

After putting up with thirteen gross chapters, I leave her to continue on her own, and turn to searching the web for new, inexpensive hiking shoes for myself (mine are millions of years old and are splitting at the seams). You'd think they'd have great sales now -- who hikes trails in the winter! Oh, I guess we all do, now that there is no more snow for skiing. 

(an unusual January treat: cherries!)

In the evening, Ed and I settled into our leftover frittata. It isn't my best: overcooking it for ONE MINUTE, can destroy the texture (and therefore flavor). I did that yesterday. Luckily, my beloved eating companion puts up with cooking snafus. And, to my credit, I labored hard with creative salads tonight to compensate for the rather dry egg/spinach/mushroom/cheese dish.

An ordinary day. With very sweet moments sprinkled throughout!

Tuesday

Day number two of my week among les medecins. It's a foggy Tuesday and a stinky one too: on my morning walk to feed the animals, I pick up that powerful odeur of une moufette (skunk). [Why the French? I'm out of practice. Have to keep that language ball rolling!] Well that's not good! Moufettes eat poulettes (chicken, but poulette sure sounds prettier for our French Bresse girls!). 

All chickens are accounted for, but it is a warning to be vigilant in the next few days. 

Breakfast. Oatmeal and fog go well together, don't you think?

Now comes the fun part: I get to discuss my knee with a specialist. Because I have the unfortunate probably genetic trait of liking new things, and am willing, like no other person I know, to get rid of old stuff, I'd been a little bit looking forward to getting a shiny (it's metal, no?) new knee. 

[Just to reassure you that I am not totally loony, when my knee acts up, walking up stairs, for example to the bathroom, or down stairs, for example to do the laundry in the basement, are acts of courage!]

My doc (whom I meet today for the first time) has a lot to say: about my knee, about replacements, about skiing, about my background: people hear my name and right away impute an identity to match it. Fact is, I was not born a Camic -- it's my ex husband's name. I was born a Lewandowska (the feminized version of my father's name). My doc explained to the resident in the room that "ska" means you're female. His wife is a "ska." What would be truly my own name? Not Haracz either (my mother's birth name). That came from her father. It's hard to escape the patrilineal descent of names! I liked being a Camic in the US far more than I liked being a Lewandowska. No one could ever get the "ska" part right (except for my doc today) and absolutely no one could pronounce it (my daughters and the doc today are exceptions).

It's clear I need a new knee. But, he did strive to level off my expectations. We spend some time discussing  what I could and could not do with a replacement. "You can ski, even downhill. But stick with Blue runs. No more Black Diamonds. " (I did not tell him that I never, ever liked Black Diamonds and wouldn't be caught dead on one now, especially when climate change means there's more machine snow than natural snow, which in turn means icy skiing.) "And stay away from Intermediate runs too. People are crazy on those. They don't know what they're doing!" I let him talk. I'd already told his resident that I have forsaken downhill. It's not what it once was. All of it seems crazy to me.

Excited as I am about the new model, coming up soon, I now face the biggest hurdle of them all: when to do the surgery. I do not have time for it! "You wont be able to drive immediately" Well that wont do! "You wont be able to go on trips far away for several months." You're kidding me! "It will take up to six months to get to your full capacity. Which, BTW wont be your previous capacity." 

You know, I got an ad in my inbox today from my Subaru dealer enticing me to buy a new car. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Blue Moon, but the newer model sounds so much better! People there know how to make you feel good about wasting money on a new product ("brand new safety features! it will only raise your monthly payments by $24! and you'll get a moon roof!" Oh wow, I love moon roofs!) Here I am, about to get a new, imperfect knee. Well, never mind. It's an improvement over what's there now. And I promise not to have wild expectations. Once I figure out when this year I could possibly schedule the replacement!

I drive over to pick up Snowdrop at school, stopping for a cup of coffee on the way and reaching into my bag for a couple of those free Kind Mini bars to munch on (lunch!). It's a long drive and it gives me time to imagine what life would be like with a new knee. Such privilege to be able to do this: new eyes, new teeth, new knees. To say I am grateful is an understatement.

Snowdrop's schedule here is so routinized that I need not say no more than this: eat, read, exhale.

(tree climbing is so... yesterday)

(today? much more interested in analyzing human relations! like -- why do some people not get along? she has theories!)

And in the evening, I catch up with Ed. He'd been preoccupied with the testing of his new machine design. Once he is focused on something, it's impossible to get him to pay attention to anything else. Not a problem! There is always the dinner hour: frittata tonight. And a piece of chocolate. And shared stories about a very good day!