Holed Up

Inspirational song: (I Never Promised You a) Rose Garden (Lynn Anderson)

On my personal Facebook page, I have a habit of sharing memes that center on chronic illness, for myself and in support of my friends who have them as well, partly in the hopes able-bodied persons might approach us sufferers with gentleness and understanding. If I had one handy, I’d make tonight’s entry just one big meme that boils down to “Welp. It happened again. Sorry.”

I barely left my bedroom all day. When I woke I was just still a little fatigued, but after maybe half an hour of getting caught up on a hugely significant news day, I was exhausted. I wasn’t interested in getting up for coffee, much less in making myself food. I dozed off several times, and with each waking I felt worse. Nausea. Headache. Body aches. Difficulty regulating my temperature. Intense fatigue.

I assume that most people experiencing these symptoms would conclude they caught a virus. It has been so long since I thought that way, I really don’t know how you all react. Me, I had two theories: either this was just another flare day, similar to countless others, or it is what they so charmingly call the “Keto Flu.” My money is on option B. I’m on day four of this diet. I haven’t cheated, and I’m reasonably certain (99%) that I didn’t mess up unintentionally either. I’ve shed about 5 pounds of water weight (ask me how I’m sure it’s water...), and right about now my body is figuring out that carbs are not coming back for a while. It’s tantruming.

I hope by tomorrow I’m right as rain. The google says this can last anywhere from a couple of days to a whole month. I’m not suffering from giving up grains nearly as much as I am losing sugar, so maybe I’ll come down on the short side with half my battle already won. Here’s hoping.

The King Is Dead, Long Live the King

Inspirational song: Jessica (The Allman Brothers Band)

On Tuesday at Rotary, one of our members was giving us another lesson on the history of our club, and mentioned one of the “characters” who had been around when he joined the club. He said he had recently gone to his funeral, and he quipped that the older he gets, the more funerals he seems to attend. Most of us nodded wryly, knowing exactly what he meant.

That night, Mr S-P came in carrying his phone and informed me that one of our old friends had died unexpectedly. He had few details, but when a man in his forties dies invariably questions follow. Had he been in an accident? Was he sick? In whispered tones, did he do it himself? We knew so little at that point, but I felt like a medical defect seemed like the most likely culprit, and I offered my theories that it must have been a heart attack or aneurysm or something like that. Initial word from the coroner confirmed that I was right on both of those counts, after a fashion, in that there appears to have been a structural flaw in his aorta.

I had completely lost touch with this old friend. I hadn’t really spoken with him since shortly before or just after Mr S-P joined the Air Force. He was very young then, possibly still a minor. Over the years I heard a few stories that included him. Like most of us, he grew up into a flawed adult, but one who still garnered the loyalty and love of people who knew him well. He had a family, a life, one that just didn’t intersect with mine. We (Mr S-P, our college roommate, and I) have felt quiet and contemplative today. I think most of us choose to remember him as we knew him years ago, and we mourn for the loss of that friend. I shall try not to punish myself for not reconnecting with him when we moved back. No good can come of that.

Somewhere in this house is a picture of him. For some reason, it turned up repeatedly, everywhere I moved. It is either loose in a collection of things I would rifle through often, or it’s in a photo album, or maybe it got scanned to one of my old desktop computers and came up on screen savers a lot. I can’t put my finger on why I’ve seen it so much, but the image has been burned into my mind for twenty plus years. He was sixteen in the picture, strawberry blond hair cut into a 90s style, sort of long and sweeping on top, but no longer than his chin overall. It was summer, and we were at the Great Sand Dunes national monument, camping with about 60 of our friends. The photo was taken in late afternoon light, and his face was slightly sunburned. It was a closeup of him, smiling broadly as he cuddled his pet rat that he adored so much he brought her camping with us. That’s the guy I remember. That’s the one I have thought about all day. My condolences to his family, and to the people who knew him well, who are aching tonight.

Hash

Inspirational song: I Should Have Known Better (The Beatles)

For the fourth day in a row, I am not writing about the subject I thought I’d cover, every day since Saturday. It keeps getting delayed, and I fear each day it’s put off, the less adorable the result will be. Maybe tomorrow. (Maybe tomorrow it gets done, or maybe tomorrow I give up completely? I really don’t know which I meant.)

Following up on yesterday’s quest, I was successful beyond my wildest dreams. I went to the larger King Soopers in town, and checked in the supplements aisle for the ingredient that cookbook demands for each recipe. I thought after my research it would be in the weight loss aids, but it was one bay over, in the herbs, plain as day. I put three capsules in a bacon-leek-chicken stew, and the texture seemed just fine to me. Mr Smith-Park reported at bedtime that something in it gave him heartburn, and I really hope it wasn’t this glucommanan powder. It will be a recurring theme, and it will make it decidedly difficult if it upsets his stomach.

I don’t have much else. The drive between Rotary and the grocery store was lovely. Once again, the best views of the mountains are in the industrial areas, where there are fewer trees to block the long vistas. Down by the Left Hand brewery, I pulled over and tried to take pictures of lenticular clouds toward Boulder, and the sunlight on Long’s Peak. I probably should have gotten out of the car, or gone to a spot where the foreground was nicer, but sadly I did not.

It Calls for What?

Inspirational song: Disco Inferno (The Trammps)

Sharing is my very favorite thing to do. When I got started this morning, I imagined that I’d be sharing positive reflections on a new cookbook that I downloaded today. I had such high hopes. Instead, at bedtime, I’m frustrated, and experiencing a soupçon of dread. Let me explain.

A week ago, the other Anne at Rotary and I got into a conversation about the Keto diet. She said she was really enjoying a cookbook by a woman named Carrie Brown. She pulled it up on her Kindle app and showed me a couple of recipes. They looked good to me, but I did make a point of asking what exactly this ingredient “konjac” was. She told me it was a powder I could get at Vitamin Cottage (years later hardly anybody has adjusted to the name change to Natural Grocers) and the conversation moved on.

Flash forward to Friday or Saturday, and I finally remembered to look up the author. I found that she co-hosts a podcast called the Ketovangelist Kitchen, and I spent all weekend listening to episodes of it. Originally I thought I’d get lucky and get enough tips and recipes to eliminate the need to buy a book. To my surprise, I have discovered I absolutely love her. She’s charming, and her co-host Brian is amusing as well. By yesterday, I decided that the cookbook to start with was her crock pot version. I didn’t download it until this morning, although I started eating purely Keto as of dawn Sunday. (Disclaimer: I have no intention as of now of putting a diet to the forefront of this blog. My current goal is to do this for the four weeks between now and Christmas. If it lasts longer, maybe I’ll talk about it.)

Most of the crockpot recipes call for a half teaspoon of this konjac stuff (also called glucomannan, from the root of a Japanese lily) to thicken the sauces. Carrie Brown says that it's a miracle thickener, because it withstands the extended heat in a crock pot without separating or getting gummy. In fact, she insists never, ever substitute guar gum or xanthan gum for this stuff. It would ruin the effect. So I spent a couple of hours this morning and early afternoon reading through dozens of recipes, making a shopping list, with konjac powder at the top. I started out at Natural Grocers (sigh... or "Vitamin Cottage"), and I studied the baking aisle, near the gluten free flours and such (and I grabbed a bag of erythritol... this will be interesting). Never found it, and the guy who I grabbed to help had to Google it before he looked in the inventory list and told me they didn't have it. He said a little something about a supplement, but I breezed past that. I then went to King Soopers, got most of the other things on the list, and sort of looked for the powder in the baking aisle. I gave up quickly there, feeling like I was pressing my luck for having figured out where to buy nutritional yeast. I ended my quest at Whole Foods, dancing the same dance as Natural Grocers. "You want what?" (Google) "Let me check the inventory list." Again, something about a supplement. I left. It wasn't until I got home that I went to the Google machine for myself. Yeah. Supplement. Apparently this stuff was big on the weight loss scene maybe a decade ago. It's entirely possible that I would find the powder in the supplement section of any one of those shops, even the King Soopers, and it would indeed be the stuff I'm supposed to sprinkle over all of these sauces in the crock pot. I'll be going back tomorrow.

I never actually got to make a single crock pot recipe. I got home too late to start. So I made something else that fit the guidelines, and I'll try to do better next time.

If you're wondering about the dread... While at the first store, I found one thing made from konjac. It's my first experience with shiritaki noodles. I found a pack of Miracle Noodles, a watery bag of pale noodles that are made shelf-stable with lime (not the fruit). I knew nothing about them until tonight. I looked them up and found videos and reviews. Wow. I'm not sure I want to open the bag now. Apparently they stink, are somewhat fishy, are very rubbery, and take unusual prep time. You drain the water (when the stinky fish smell is worst), rinse them for several minutes, parboil them for a minute in salted water, and then dry saute them until they squeak. Yes, I said squeak. That's in the directions. They have no real flavor of their own, and benefit from heavy sauces poured over them. Also they have a "weird" aftertaste, whatever that implies. I was going to use them in pho, until I saw the videos. Now I'm not sure. Are nearly calorie-less noodles worth all of this? I'm not looking forward to finding out.

Team Players

Inspirational song: Ice Ice Baby (Vanilla Ice)

The most problematic aspect of board games, the part that irritates me the most, is the competitive side of them. When games turn into a ruthless, "screw your buddy" battle to the death, that's when I have to walk away from them. I don't want to play something that hurts someone else's feelings, and it takes me far longer than I care to admit to get over hurt feelings when I'm the one the other players gang up on. This is why I stopped playing Monopoly when the kids were still in grade school. It's why I used to need to leave the room when Mr S-P and our college roommate (the one who is now in our D&D group) used to play gin rummy, and go for each other's jugular in game-play, every single round. It stresses me out. I'm often grumpy after Mario game nights, too, and I doubt I hide it well.

So tonight, after the main afternoon football game was over (yay, a Broncos win!), neighbor T pulled out a couple of games that he ordered on Black Friday, that we had never heard of, at first I was nervous. One, there was the fear of the unknown, two, there was the reluctance to apply my scattered brain power to learning the rules (harder than I expected, because I was more unfocused than I realized), and three, there was the chance that this could turn into an "everyone gang up on Player X" situation. Imagine my surprise when the first description of the game was "we have to team up, not play against each other." This new game, one I'd never encountered before tonight called Pandemic, required us to collaborate to beat the game.

The first time around, there were four of us, none of whom knew how to strategize to beat the game. We made several key errors, and the outbreaks quickly got out of hand. We lost badly. During our dinner break, my foster daughter's husband arrived after work, and he had played before. He helped us figure out how to work together, and we won on the very last turn the next time, and handily the time after that. How novel!

If we play this again, we can start on a higher difficulty level to challenge us, now that we know the methods. I hope we do play it again eventually. It was nice having a game that wasn't a competition, but rather a group effort to pull everyone across the finish line together.

A Month of Sundays

Inspirational song: Living in Oblivion (Anything Box)

Time has ceased to have meaning. Maybe it's just the holiday week. All my friends have some days off this week (some more than others). The TV schedule is all special presentations and best-of shows. We all got together with our families in the middle of the week, on Thursday. How does one keep track of regular time on a week like this? I'm not doing myself any favors by staying up late and taking naps when I can. Well, I mean, I am feeling more rested on those nap days, but that just makes the staying up late worse. Every day just feels like a Saturday. I had to stop and remind myself fifteen times at least that today actually was Saturday. Not that it changed how I have been behaving all week one iota.

I'm still working on crafting the same things as yesterday, although I didn't finish the second set of curtains as I'd intended. I've added several inches on the crochet piece that I expanded the wrong direction (I'm going to have a super long wrap, instead of a generously wide one). I had to buy three more skeins of yarn yesterday to make it fit, thus necessitating my trip to the craft store. I bent over it, glasses pulled off so I could see the details in black yarn, for so long that when I got up to get dinner, I immediately hit the floor. I didn't lose consciousness, but the whole world went sideways. It's what I get for compressing and contorting my spine for hours and then jumping up and imagining I could walk.

The cats have had a hard time leaving me alone when my attention is obviously directed elsewhere. No one appreciates it when a lap is unavailable due to wood carving or crocheting. They especially don't like it when they try to kill those dancing snakes of black yarn and rather than being praised, they are yelled at and chased away. That doesn't stop all attempts to get my attention, from walking across the crochet piece or chewing on the bag that the wood crafts were stored in. Cats hate crafts.

Crafty

Inspirational song: Looks Like We Made It (Barry Manilow)

This was not how I expected to spend the day. For one, I was absolutely sure I wouldn't set foot in a retail store on Black Friday. Yet there I was, overwhelmed by the sights and sounds of a Michael's, seriously re-evaluating my life goals. I put more things back on the shelf than I walked out with, and thanks to a coupon I found on my phone, I spent less than I feared I would. However, I also left with a fire in my belly. I spent the whole rest of the day making stuff. I kept creating, and then moving on to the next project. I went digging through my craft room looking for something to use for a new dog bed for Murray and Elsa, and instead found myself using cool mid-20th century styled fabric I'd bought years ago to make curtains for my laundry room. Every time I took a sit-down break all day, I kept picking up my crochet project that I've been carrying with me everywhere for two weeks. And then after dinner, I tried a whole new thing I've never done before.

While I was at Michael's, I wandered down the wood crafts aisle. I had been half-considering buying an unfinished wood piece to replace something that the cats damaged last week, but I put it back and started to leave the store. The wood crafting tools caught my eye, and I had been sort of wanting to try wood burning for a little while now. The irons were right there, easy-peasy to get one. I got a cheap one, just to practice with (even cheaper when I found that 40% black Friday coupon in my email while waiting in a line that snaked through the front of the store).

I don't know what I expected wood burning to feel like, but I certainly put no thought into what it would smell like. I had natural wood from the mountain, not glued-together prefab blanks from the craft store. I wouldn't have imagined it would stink, but it did. I can still smell it, more than two hours since I put it all away. It was easy to pick up, at least. I used two of the burning tips, the standard chisel tip and the flat shader. After playing for a little while, I think I sort of liked it. Not sure what I want to do with it going forward, but I bet I can find something good.

Food Coma

Inspirational song: Where Everybody Knows Your Name (Gary Portnoy)

Ah, what a day. I don’t know about you, but I spent all day with cool people and way too much food. I’m currently sitting in my jammies on neighbor T’s couch, wondering how in the hell I'm going to fit a single bite of pecan pie in my face. We had two celebrations, one with the family (plus some new associated friends), and the second a friendsgiving next door. It ended with us bloated and sleepy, laughing at the best baby character in any movie (Jack-Jack in Incredibles 2). I’m hoping that by the time I stumble back to my home, I will find a space for a sliver of pie.

I did far less cooking this year than I do most years, yet I'm way more wiped out from what I did. I didn't plan far enough ahead for my dinner roll recipe. I didn't let them rise enough, and they were a little dry and a little grainy (no surprise, since they were mostly rice flour). I started a new recipe for a pie crust, one that contained yogurt as well as butter and GF flour blend, and it stressed heavily that it needed a minimum of two hours in the fridge. So I went to the Smith family meal, and pulled the disk of refrigerated raw pie crust out to roll out and fill once we got home. I had the option of using two sheets of parchment paper to make this process successful. But no, I chose a silicone baking mat with a parchment top. By the time it was rolled out to the size of the pie pan, it was one with the mat. I had to get a scraper to remove it from the mat, and I still had to squish it into place with my hands.

I hope I can make sense of all the fragments of conversations I remember from throughout the day. I chatted with a dozen people or more, and discussed everything from heavy, serious topics to the utterly absurd. It was the latter that made it into my notes for tonight: my alarm went off at 10, displaying "Muppet casket funeral cadence." Yeah. Once my daughter arrived, several of us around the living room table (3rd out of 3) were talking about different types of musical genres, and we wished out loud for a punk band that was all drums. My nephew informed us that this already exists, in the form of a speed metal drum line comprised of about 50 members. I now have a new goal in my five year plan: to see them in concert. But this revelation dovetailed into a new twist on my "if I were in (X) situation, I'd have the CU drum line for my musical backup" dream. That would have to be the music played at my funeral. Naturally, throwing out a topic like that was like throwing a lit match into a pile of dynamite. We decided that if there is a recessional from my funeral service, there will be shenanigans just like the entire Golden Buffalo Marching Band indulges in for every parade from the music building to the stadium on game day. There will have to be tosses of the casket, so that my uninhabited body pops up and flails its arms like a Muppet, hence the series of words that appeared on my phone, Muppet casket funeral cadence.

White Bellies

Inspirational song: Bon Appetit (Katy Perry ft Migos)

Oh, come on, Mom. Tomorrow is going to be a big, busy day. Why do you do this to us? Why is the light on so late? How are lazy kitties supposed to get a solid night of sleep, so that we have fully charged batteries, and the ability to beg and get in the way of all of the Thanksgiving cooking tomorrow? Please put the crochet away, shut off the TV, and kill that bright overhead light. If you do it now, we might even let you have a full quarter of the mattress.

Love,

Rabbit and Harvey

Invertebrate

Inspirational song: Wide Open Spaces (Dixie Chicks)

November is a weird time to be thinking about pollinators, but the subject fell in my lap today at lunch, and it was the best part of a bad day. It's more fun to write about butterflies than pain and fatigue, and so that's where I'm turning.

I've known about the existence of the Butterfly Pavilion down off the highway between Boulder and Denver for many years. I've never gone to it. I only started thinking it would be cool to visit since we moved back in 2015. A few months ago, I saw something online that said admission could be free with a library card through my local library. Again, I failed to follow up on that. Then today, the CEO of the Butterfly Pavilion came to talk to our Rotary group, and now I know I must go. I think I was one of only half a dozen people at lunch today who hadn't visited it before.

It will be moving next year to a space twice as large, but I want to see it now, and then again when the new facility opens. I feel like that will help me appreciate the expansion more. The hook that really pulled me in was learning that it's not just going to a new bigger building. It's going in the middle of a purpose-built community that includes a dedication to preserving and promoting pollinators. This development, called Baseline, will have habitats for birds and bees and butterflies, and use them to pollinate food crops that will be used in local farm-to-table restaurants. It's a high concept community, emphasizing biking and pedestrian traffic, mixed use zoning, and a STEM school that will partner with the Butterfly Pavilion and give students a chance to learn directly with research scientists, and have hands-on science opportunities.

Our Rotarians asked a lot of questions today about monarch butterfly preservation efforts, and we learned that I-76 is becoming a "pollinator highway." One of our members said she was on a bike rally in Iowa or Nebraska (I forget which), where they gave the cyclists packets of milkweed seeds to broadcast as they rode, to encourage monarchs to feed and reproduce as they migrate north. The speaker suggested that would be a good idea to add to their plans for I-76 as well. And finally one of our group asked about the huge swarms of butterflies we had last year. Alas, they were not monarchs, but painted ladies, but that was pretty cool too. The conditions were just right, with temperature and precipitation timed perfectly according to when the painted ladies' favorite plants bloomed. Now if I can just dig through hundreds of photos to figure out when they were thick on the ground, to illustrate for tonight.

Bonne Anniversaire

Inspirational song: Superwoman (Alicia Keys)

I’ve done a few things right in my life. I’m proud of several things. Topping that list would be creating two spectacular humans, and doing everything I knew how to do to impress upon them that they were strong, smart, and independent. They took that inspiration from me and ran with it, surpassing all of my dreams and expectations. I gave them the start. They showed me how it’s done. That they were both beautiful young women was a happy accident of genetics. That they became tough and caring and ethical showed the work they put into living their best lives.

I shan’t give away exactly what year it was, but on this night more than two decades ago, I was marveling at the brand new baby girl sharing my hospital room for the very first time. I had never held an infant before I created one, and I had no idea what to do, despite reading everything I could lay my hands on to tell me how to handle this task. She challenged me at every turn. I had to be flexible and think up solutions quickly. It’s not easy raising a clever kid. I tell you this, though. It’s worth it. The return on investment is high with a child like that.

I’m not good with presents or parties or getting anything at all in the mail. Thankfully my older daughter is wise and understanding enough not to hold that against me (or at least she makes me believe it to be so). The best I can do this year is to let her know she has been on my mind all day, and I’m eternally grateful that she was the one who shared that hospital room with me all those years ago, and no one else. My life has never been the same since we met on that rainy afternoon in November, and I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Zero Tolerance

Inspirational song: White Rabbit (Jefferson Airplane)

When a day starts out with Tylenol and a muscle relaxer, it usually doesn't get any better from there. Could have been from sitting out in the snowstorm yesterday. Could have been from the brown liquor and dancing last night. Might have just been how contorted and poorly I sleep when there are a couple of needy felines pushing me around the bed, as they so often do. I woke with burning eyes and muscles that wouldn't loosen up.

I stopped taking pain pills a year ago. Lately I've been terrible about taking my regular medications, partly because I go through phases where swallowing pills is repulsive to me, and partly because refilling the daily pill minder is a loathsome chore. Pain levels have been way worse because of it. Still, I've stayed away from the heavy hitters. The medium ones too. So this morning's baclofen (mild muscle relaxer) dropped on me like a ton of bricks. I can't remember the last time one of those made me sleepy, if indeed that was what did it. I spent the entire morning nodding off in my chair, only waking when I felt my jaw starting to hang open (and closing it, hoping I wasn't already snoring). The same two cats who make my bed the least restful bed in the state pinned me to the chair, insuring that I went absolutely nowhere during my fleeting moments of consciousness.

It's a good thing no one expects much out of me on Sundays. I had been trying to make a regular thing about making crepes for breakfast on Sundays, but there was none of that today. It took me almost three hours to be able to form the words to ask for a cup of coffee to be delivered to me (so that I didn't disturb Rabbit, who had my left arm pinned).

The grogginess lasted all day. It carried over into football and video games next door. I couldn't keep up with the flashing lights and loud noises, and spent more time crocheting and listening to the smack talk between the others who were playing Mario without me. I nearly fell asleep on T's couch, in the middle of all the smack talk and dog shenanigans. And after all day feeling groggy and sleepy, now it's midnight and I'm still awake. This is intolerable.

Ticketed

Inspirational song: Uptown Funk (Mark Ronson ft. Bruno Mars)

Silly people had tickets to stuff they had no intention of attending on a cold, snowy day. Naturally I was there for my friends, and I filled in where they were unable to perform. It took a little effort, but it was worth it.

Yesterday evening a friend told us that her company had tickets to the CU football game that were unclaimed by anyone at the office. Between the upcoming holiday, the snow that was predicted, and the fact that the team was off to a 5-0 start and then lost every game since, no one else wanted to take advantage of the tickets, so we stepped in. It was an early game and we missed kickoff. I thought there would be a shuttle from the underground mall lot where I have traditionally parked, and there wasn't. It took several minutes to walk up the half mile or so in the snow, but we both were fairly sanguine about this game. We were okay with being late. We missed the band's pregame show and the running of Ralphie the buffalo. (For the second half it was so cold and slick they ran Chip instead.) We made it in time to see CU score their first touchdown. Unfortunately, it was also their last, at least until we left in the third quarter, and checked the score from the Starbucks at the Safeway down the hill. As always, the Band Team won, and that was good enough. They're enormous this year, fielding around 270 students. We stayed long enough to see them, and that was worth sitting in the bitter cold and wet snow.

My second free ticket of the day was to the Rotary holiday ball. I went with two of my friends from the club. It was different than last year: different location, different setup, different food (less), and a whole different vibe. It still had a band playing so loud that I couldn't carry on much of a conversation, but I tried my best. It ended up being a good night, and although the band was loud, they were really talented (they were called Wash Park, if you're curious). I even found myself on the dance floor. That doesn't happen very often. It's a once in a decade sort of event. Between the game and the dancing, I got my exercise in for the day, and I got a healthy dose of snowy weather. It's feeling like the holidays already, y'all.

Influence

Inspirational song: Storybook Love (Mark Knopfler and Willy DeVille)

"True love is the best thing in the world, except for cough drops." -- William Goldman

I don't often devote my column inches to other writers, but today is a special occasion. A solemn one, as well. The author of one of my favorite books of all time (as well as several other stories that made for fantastic movies) has passed away. I'm not shocked by the news, as he was 87, but I do note his passing with a note of respect and gratitude for the gifts that he shared with us all.

I was between seventh and eighth grades when I came across The Princess Bride for the first time. I was spending part of the summer with my dad, and he had a paperback copy on his guest room bookshelf. I have always had a hard time falling asleep on time, so I stayed up late a couple nights to read it. I was instantly enchanted by the story. It was the first book book I ever laughed out loud reading, and it was so unusual at the time that I made note of it and never forgot. (It was at the part where Fezzik's father demands that six year old Fezzik learn to fight back against bullies, and makes him hit his father for practice. It goes something like: "'You're very strong Fezzik,' he said. Actually what he said was 'Zzz'zz zzzz zzzzz, Zzzzzz,' because his jaw had been broken and wired back together.") I reread it some years later, when I heard they were making it into a movie. I was working at one of my very first jobs, as a receptionist for the Classics department at CU, and the man in black was hanging by his fists on the Cliffs of Insanity, and had just begun to climb, when the phone rang, and I was startled to discover that I was actually sitting at a desk in a college office, and not actually suspended next to the cliffs, watching the pursuit of Buttercup and her kidnappers.

As much as I loved the movie, like 95% of the American population, I loved the book more. It heavily influenced how I approach my own writing. Throughout the book, he pulls back the curtain and speaks directly to the readers in parenthetical phrases. I do that all the time, compulsively. (I think one of my other favorite writers, Julia Quinn, must have been similarly influenced.) He took his comedy very seriously in that story, and I have always aspired to do the same. I owe it to myself to ready more of his novels. I've seen several of the movies, but his true brilliance was in his words.

Size Matters

Inspirational song: Most Toys (Marillion)

I’ve always had a weird relationship with television. It’s a love/hate thing and a guilty pleasure at once. I’ve had to defend how much I watch to someone who feels it’s excessive in one breath, and feel inadequate to someone who can’t believe I never watched big pop cultural classics in the next. Fifteen years ago we babysat a ten year old whose mother worked late nights, and we were a smidge judgemental when the girl insisted that she needed the television on for her to sleep soundly while she waited for her mom to get off work after midnight. (Regardless, she would sleep on my couch with the tv on, and her mom was glad she had a safe haven while she was on an extended night rotation.) It wasn’t until years later that I realized the kid was onto something. I started falling asleep with cable news on (back in the glory days of Headline News), and I learned that I was just aware enough to wake when the stories looped around, after a nap of perfect length and depth. On my worst pain nights, I still do it, on a different cable news channel, and the drone helps put me back to sleep each tine I wake, six or seven times before I give up on it pre-dawn and shut it off.

Television was limited when I was a kid in Germany. We had a small black and white set, with a screen barely bigger than a dinner plate, and we mostly just watched Armed Forces Network. When we got back to the states, I felt almost blinded by the “big” color tv in my grandparents’ den. It wasn’t until I was in middle school, when I got a tv for my bedroom at Christmas, that I developed a real relationship with it. For a while I was really jealous of my dad’s house, where he had a set in almost every room. I made myself get used to having just one for most of my adult life, especially when the Mr frowned upon having one in the bedroom. I regretted putting the primary one in the basement here, and had to remedy that by buying a second one last year. I’m feeling guilty over watching it so much, but also I feel like I’m getting my money’s worth from that satellite subscription.

I thought I’d always want bigger and brighter sets, with no attainable upper limit. If I had a room that would accommodate it, I’d keep moving up, to 55”, 60”, eventually 70 or 80 or who knows how big. For a year—or is it two?—my neighbor has talked about upgrading his tv. He wanted to wait until certain debts were paid, like car and furnace, and he wanted to be sure his job was in a solid position. This week he came to me and said he was ready to get a big one, and when was I free to go with him. (I was all excited, thinking we would use my Costco membership, and I’d get the 2% cash back bonus. Damned if he didn’t get his own account and just want me there to bounce ideas off of.) He settled on a 75” smart tv, and we needed Mr S-P to join us with his truck to get it home. It looked clear and bright in the store, but neither of us had any real sense of how enormous it really was until it dwarfed his living room. Watching the football game was all well and good while there was ambient light, but once we turned off lights and fired up Mario Kart, we got the full blast. It was painfully bright and crisp. He flippantly said, “no more falling asleep on the couch for me.” Sure, the giant screen made staying on the track easier for a non-gamer like me. But I think I have learned that there are limits to how big and bright of a screen I would ever want, and this may have just exceeded them. Playoffs are going to be excellent though.

Mischief

Inspirational song: You're No Good (Linda Ronstadt)

Spontaneous mischief is surely the best mischief, but if one cannot manage the purest form, then planned mischief is an acceptable substitute. Yesterday, as I was driving on the main artery road a block from my daughter's house, I contacted her and asked her whether she was in the mood to get up to no good. She couldn't join me on the fly, but we conspired to meet today to accomplish it.

It wasn't evil, the activities we planned. Just a little frivolous shopping, for one thing I "needed" and the collateral damage of purchases that spill forth from a mom and daughter who can both sit on each other's left shoulder simultaneously, whispering like little impulsive devils encouraging the emptying of bank accounts. I needed to get a warm outfit to wear to the Rotary holiday ball this weekend, on a night where snow is predicted, for a party that will have an insufficient number of tables. It's anticipated that people will stand around, and have snacks at cocktail tables rather than sit down dinners. There is no way in hell I will wear heels to a party like that. So I needed something cute I could wear with flats. I expected to get a shiny top and black pants. I wanted some combination of the specific shades of bright pink, green, and blue that I love on blown glass Christmas ornaments. The closest I could get was to buy two sweaters in forest green and pinky mauve, and then promise myself to accessorize in the ornament colors. I have a pair of white jeans that will work in a pinch, so I didn't buy more pants. I can wear my comfy boots and warm socks, and I will last at least 30 minutes longer standing at the party than I would in a dress and kitten heels. For the accessories, I moved two stores down the strip mall, and tempted fate in Michael's, for shiny beads to decorate a plain scarf. I found them and much more.

Neither my daughter nor I truly needed most of the things we got. We knew at the outset that this was dangerous, going together, especially so close to the holidays. Overall, I'm actually happy with how many things we put back. She really wanted a pair of fuzzy socks with cats who look like the ones we lost recently on them. I thought long and hard about getting socks with raccoon faces on them. In the end, we came to realize we could live without them. Same with the whiskey glasses with cats all over them that she put back, and the guide to crochet stitches that I decided I could find for free on the internet. Still, I came home with a bag stuffed with yarn for a new crochet project that might keep my hands busy long enough to keep me calm and still while I wait for my next neurology appointment, and she got yet another rainbow sweater. (I'm pretty sure she has about five of them.) The one thing I found that I was absolutely not tempted to take home, that really sort of pissed me off, was a Christmas pillow at Marshall's. Really, people, if you are going to market something with words on it, can you please run it past a proofreader before you send it to production? Your bad grammar spoils my holiday cheer.

Filtered

Inspirational song: Cup of Wonder (Jethro Tull)

"May I make my fond excuses
  For the lateness of the hour..."

It's now the middle of the night. I can say that with authority. It's almost 1:30, and I've been struggling for hours to come up with both a topic and the will to write. I've been bouncing between grumpiness and melancholy and anxiety, with no idea where any of those moods are coming from. The anxiety is the worst, because it comes with a nervous stomach to punctuate its foulness. It's also the most persistent, having been my frequent companion for weeks now. The blame for it surely lies at the feet of the rebellion in my central nervous system, and the wait for the next appointment to have it properly diagnosed (if that is even possible). I'm nauseated and twitchy, and that doesn't lead to spectacular journaling.

I miss having the focus and memory that I once did. I used to be the person at work who held all the details of projects in her head, and kept it all straight. Now I'm barely even the person at work. Forget keeping things straight, even with a list (that I keep forgetting to make). I'm hoping that in December/January I am told that this is a simple imbalance, easily corrected with diet or run of the mill medications. Ideally, they'll tell me to start taking one of those brain-boosting supplements, and I'll start feeling clear-headed with calm nerves, lickety-split. I'd like to feel focused enough to read again, and to do the other quiet activities I once enjoyed, like sewing or driving. Failing that, I'd like to stop feeling like there's a shredded wire in my electrical system, periodically arcing and shorting out the circuits.

I thought maybe goofing around with chat photo filters would cheer me up. It didn't. I scrolled through all of the ones currently available on Messenger. I think I ended up just feeling old. I didn't crack a smile once.

Albedo

Inspirational song: Road to Nowhere (Talking Heads)

The sun was back out today. It was still quite cold, and the snow was in no danger of melting too quickly. The blanket of white reflected the sunshine right back off of it, proving its hardiness. How could I not wander around and take photos of such beauty?

I don't think I need to add many words, other than to say I went to the Rotary bridge that we re-dedicated this past summer, and then I walked along a county open space trail next to a dirt road. My boots were muddy and my body felt good for the chance to walk slowly in fresh air. I have decided to take more of these photo essay walks. Be on the lookout for the results of such exercises.

A Night Outside of Time

Inspirational song: After Midnight (Eric Clapton)

Winters stand out in my memory far more vividly than summers do. If I were to ponder why, I'm sure the answer would relate to the abundant dark and indoor activities that make a girl like me feel like having fun, rather than feel the need to hide from the glowing hot ball of gas in the sky. Yesterday felt like autumn. Today feels like winter, and I like it. It's like one of those nights carved out of time that lives in my memory free-flowing, hard to pin down but cherished forever. It's coming home from a party with a college roommate during a blizzard, or playing Risk all night in a basement apartment with an inch of frost coming in all the windows, or better yet... it's spending a whole winter break with my high school friends, staying out way later than our parents ever let us do on school nights. That's what the whole day felt like.

We had part of the gang over yesterday evening, to catch up on the current season of Doctor Who, and then to play mah jongg once the sun went down. It felt way later than it really was, and before 9, everyone had gone home, and I was sitting in my bed, waiting for the snow to blow in. It showed up around 11. By 6 this morning, I woke while it was still full dark, and even if I hadn't know it was snowing, I would have been able to tell by the pink cast to the sky visible through the glass block window in my room. The streets never iced over, but there was ankle deep snow on the grass and it kept coming down all day, plus it was significantly colder than yesterday. We watched football next door, ate butternut squash soup, and played Nintendo games. It felt like a winter break from my teens or early twenties. That feeling intensified when my foster daughter and I ducked out to go through the McDonald's drive through for french fries, and it looked so dark and slick outside, that I could have sworn it was close to midnight, even though it was actually 7 or 8 o'clock. Technically today is a holiday, both Remembrance Day and Veterans Day, but at that moment it felt like it was also New Year's Eve and Thanksgiving Night and a citywide shutdown for an ice storm rolled in there for good luck.

I have been trying to remember ever since, which year it was that was intruding into my thoughts. Maybe sophomore, maybe junior year in high school. Snow didn't come through Oklahoma all that often, but we had a few inches of it coating the top of a thick layer of ice. School was out, and I had all the time in the world to hang out with the boys who were my best friends, the D&D group, the ones I went to the City (OKC) with, the ones I'd watch movies with. It was one of those nights, when we'd watched something like Mad Max, and still had time to kill before our teenage brains would let us power down and go to sleep. It was dark, and one of the guys had a big pickup truck and little regard for safety. I'm fairly certain I stayed in the cab of the truck while two or three of the boys stood behind it, hanging on to the tailgate, their feet firmly planted. The owner of the truck spun out the wheels on ice, pulling the others along, never lifting their shoes off the street. Decades later, I don't remember whether anyone actually fell, or did we just drag them at a speed they could handle? It probably wasn't the wisest activity, but on a timeless night where the snow and dark made the world magical, did we care?

Decked Out Early

Inspirational song: Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree (Brenda Lee)

Look, I know there are a lot of people who freak out about decorating for Christmas before it's even Thanksgiving. But sometimes you have to take advantage of time that you have, and volunteers who are willing to help. Our Rotary party won't be until December, but because things are about to get crazy busy for almost all of us, we had to turn out today to prepare for it. One of our members has volunteered his super cool log cabin on a large acreage for the party, on the condition that we got several people to help put up their giant tree (I didn't measure, but I am going with 12 feet, maybe 15) and hang some lights and ornaments on it. We had six adults, two teenagers, and a tween show up to help us. It was plenty of people, and it made the process go quickly.

I put myself on tree duty (as opposed to garlands on upper railings). I helped assemble it, fluff it, run lights around the base while a friend was up on the ladder setting lights in neat rows, and hang star shaped ornaments of all colors and materials. I think I put more energy into this one than I have the last three or four years for my own decorations. Surprisingly, it didn't use up all of my holiday cheer yet. It kind of made me want to get a jump on things for this year around Smith Park. One of my friends said he read a study that people who put up decorations before Thanksgiving tend to be happier people overall. Conversely, people who start listening to holiday music in the same time period tend to be more unhappy. I hypothesized that the decorators are extroverts who are into sharing and pleasing, while the ones turning to music are trying to soothe a damaged soul. That's my story and I'm sticking with it.

The party next month will be after dark. That's sort of a shame. The views from this country cabin were so beautiful I almost cried. You can see straight to Long's Peak from several rooms inside, and there are rolling hills and a duck-covered pond up close to admire. I would love to see what the view will be in about 36 hours, once the snowstorm that started two hours ago covers the landscape in several inches of snow and blows itself out, when the skies will again be clear all the way to the peak. That would put us all in a holiday mood, regardless of what the calendar says now.