Anne Eve

Inspirational song: Anticipation (Carly Simon)

I'm trying to play a game, sitting in my favorite chair in the living room. I keep getting distracted, looking out the front window. The wind has been picking up for an hour or two, and the temps are dropping precipitously. We are sliding into my favorite day of the year, the first really cold, wet day of September, and I am totally here for it.

Now, obviously it is a little earlier and a little stronger than the typical "My Day." Usually it is just foggy and drizzly and makes a person think about snow. This time we are actually supposed to get it. I will still drink hot chocolate, wear long sleeves, and snuggle under a soft, fuzzy blanket. I won't have to revisit the regret that I bought a house with no fireplace (although that agony is never far away), because everything already smells like wood smoke from the Cameron Peak fire. I am sure enough neighbors will use their fireplaces to intensify the smell.

I tried to do some harvesting before the heavy, wet snow does its worst to our garden. I picked as many ripe tomatoes as I could find, plus a big handful of large green ones to fry this week. There were only a few golden zucchini left to bring in. Those are probably done for the year, and the peppers were almost played out. I mostly filled a bag with tomatillos, so I'm thinking it will be green chile to share for D&D night. When the Mr got back from his cabin, he pulled in what I missed, including a pie pumpkin and two acorn squash. I think we did okay this year. I need to go out in the rain/snow tomorrow before the hard freeze, and get the rhubarb, but since I was planning to freeze it anyway, I'm not too worried about it. I got a little time.

The Bowels of Hell

Inspirational song: Cruel Summer (Bananarama)

Yesterday evening I looked out into the backyard at what I thought was the weirdest, most orange sunset ever. I couldn't see the actual sun dipping behind the mountains. There are too many trees and close neighboring houses for that. But the light in the yard was just so strange. I went forward with what I was doing (cleaning the dog crate) and when I looked out next, it was full dark, and I thought no more about the light.

When I went to bed, with the whole house fan running, I could smell what I assumed was someone else's backyard fire pit, and I guessed that was how one of my neighbors was spending Labor Day weekend. This morning when I woke, I had a slight headache and the sky was hazy and the color of a fading bruise.

Turns out the Cameron Peak fire, the one burning in the mountains west of Fort Collins for three weeks, hit a growth spurt yesterday evening, possibly right around when I started noticing the light. It grew suddenly by about 10,000 acres when it found a pocket of abundant fuel. I've since heard that it might have been an area with a lot of beetle-killed pine trees, where it started invading Rocky Mountain National Park. I noticed the ash on the cars was partly composed of burned pine needles, for sure.

My girls and I went out to get the last of the supplies I wanted to have on hand before the puppy arrives. We went to two pet stores on the south side of town first, and then the Walmart on the north side later. The sky went from somewhat hazy when we started to Fires of Hell when we were done. It was raining ash so heavily it looked like it was snowing. (And yes, in 48 hours it will be snowing actual frozen precipitation, so we are getting all of the "Song of Ice and Fire" jokes thrown at us from social media.) When we left Walmart, we drove to one of the first rural roads past the edge of town, to see how bad it was. Even with the air conditioning on recirc in the car, the smell of smoke was strong, and the baby got very angry with us for not taking her straight home. It was only a five minute longer route home, but she had had enough!

When the fires were so bad a couple of weeks ago, everyone in town (read: the people on my Rotary Zoom meeting) talked about how it was making them feel bad, with headaches and breathing impairment. Back then, I literally felt no difference, and chalked it up to my chronic breathing issues making me used to not getting good oxygen. Today, even I notice a drop in my ability to breathe. This one is very close to home.

We're Not Green, We're Just Pleasant

Inspirational song: Living in FEAR (Marillion)

Consider this my annual invitation to listen to the above song and know me better, man. The song didn't change my life, per se, but it distinctly gave me a final nudge to go the direction I was facing at the point it was released. Every time I hear it, I feel calm, reassured, and triumphant. I know I'm ordering my mind the way I need to.

It was day two of the Couch Convention. There was a trivia quiz on Facebook live. Good thing I wasn't trying to enter for prizes. I just listened and got most of the answers wrong. The concert video for today was the show at the Royal Albert Hall that they recorded a couple of years ago, on the night they performed all or nearly all of their recent album F.E.A.R. The show was spectacular. There are very few bands who I enjoy to watch live even as much as I like their studio music. I have yet to be disappointed at a Marillion show. They are better live for me, and that is a significant thing. In my middle age, I can see that concerts are stressful for me because of chronic illness, from not being able to handle the loud noise and standing for hours or sitting in hard chairs. With this band, all discomfort fades in the euphoria of the experience.

I couldn't spend all day in front of the TV, for all that I tried to take lots of breaks. I rearranged and purged my utility room, to create a safe space to store area rugs while Saoirse is a puppy (and prone to chewing or peeing indiscriminately). Then I scrubbed the dog crate we have had for a dozen years. It is the giant size, so it will work for a Great Pyrenees mix, even though it was originally bought for dainty little Elsa (smallish lab mix). It has been in the garage for years, under debris and dirt. It was there through the annoying Field Mouse Invasion of 2017-2018. It took me most of the afternoon and evening to scrub every single inch of wire, coated with mud, dog hair, and who knows what else (probably mouse pee). I feel filthy and sore and I want to go crawl in bed and sleep for a year. I should have soaked in the hot tub, but by the time it was cool enough outside, I was too sore to get there. I can't believe all these years of deep cleaning experience, and I still haven't learned not to clench my teeth while scrubbing things. Pity I still am not drinking alcohol. A nightcap would have been helpful for that.

On the Couch

Inspirational song: Marbles III (Marillion)

My friend Molly died six years ago this month. I think about her every so often, but I really missed her today. The last time we really talked, we were making plans to meet up again in Montreal, at the Marillion convention that was planned for two years out. We had attended three shows together by that point (counting the first Fish solo show where we met in 1997), and had gotten together for garden parties a few times over. I will never forget the joy on her face at that first concert after her transition, when our eyes met during the opening lines of the opening song Invisible Man. She sang along, "I haven't changed--I swear I haven't changed." It was true. She had just become herself, and I could feel her contentment.

When she died her girlfriend, who was never as into Marillion as Molly and I, packed up her decades of concert t-shirts and mailed them to me. Most of them have stayed in the box in my closet, as living in this house for five whole years doesn't mean I ever totally unpacked. Today, I reached into the box blindly, saying I would wear whatever shirt I grabbed first. It was the Marbles tour shirt, and I said fine, I was at that show in Boulder. I'm wearing it now.

Because of the pandemic, this year's Marillion convention is digital. They called it the "Couch Convention." They are streaming on YouTube this weekend, making all content free for all. Some of the band members filmed little segments, then they played songs by several opening acts. They let all of the regular crew say a few words, with a scroll giving a PayPal tip jar account to help support them (this has been really rough on tour crews, with no live shows all year). Then they played a recent concert video, "Marbles in the Park." It was that album straight through. I had no idea that was the schedule for opening day. It was just a happy coincidence that I chose to dress as if I were there.

When the show started, with Invisible Man, I touched the image on my shirt, and gave Molly a shout-out in my heart. Miss you, friend.

Busy Season

Inspirational song: Beautiful Day (U2)

The next month is going to be a relative flurry of activity. Wait, no "relative" about it. In anyone's experience, it will be like going over the big drop at the beginning of a roller coaster ride. Some things I've already discussed--the final stages of my first house sale since coming back after illness, getting a new puppy, watching my grandbaby a couple days a week. For embellishment, now I get to throw in a race to pick all the end of season vegetables, anything that is mostly ripe or close enough, as the heavenly first cool, wet day of fall (the day I have often written of here as "MY day") is actually going to be cold. They first said it would be rainy and in the 60s. Then 50s. Now they say the high will be in the 40s, with a hard freeze overnight and a chance of snow at some point. Oh, I am conflicted. I will absolutely love the weather, and will gush rapturously about it Tuesday night. But I am sad that it will mean an end to tomatoes, and that my tomatillos and okra may never really have a chance.

And then the real crazy stuff comes next week too. I have been told that the final repairs are complete at the condo, from the last straw bit of water leak from upstairs. We lost our renter because she couldn't stick around during repairs, and we are just done. It has been a series of stresses, trying to keep that condo rented, and the Mr has finally convinced me to sell it. I need to make it shiny and spotless, and then it is going on the market. For all the buyers I have had in my short and interrupted real estate career, I have yet to have a listing. How fortunate, I suppose that my first will be one of my own. Although I can be pretty hard on myself, so we shall have to see whether I'm the toughest client I could have.

Mixed Up

Inspirational song: Word Crimes (Weird Al Yankovic)

Go ahead, mom. Laugh at my expense. Say I told you so. I feel like a total doofus, and I earned the ridicule. 

I made a new Gmail account. I used that to start a Twitter account for the new puppy. We had to go in and change the handle when it tried to give me something based on my name, and we made it what my daughter had suggested. Then I was in the middle of changing the account name, when I noticed my computer underlining a key word in red. I looked at what I had typed. I looked at the name on the handle. And then down at what I had written by hand. I spelled it wrong on the Gmail, and then my daughter spelled it wrong, copying me exactly, on the Twitter. Well, crap.

This is what I get for naming my new dog something with three vowels in a row.

S-A-O-I-R-S-E. Not S-A-I-O-R-S-E. 

Crap.

We will try to fix it tomorrow on Twitter. Gmail is a lost cause.

Special Helper

Inspirational song: You Make My Dreams Come True (Hall & Oates)

The countdown is ticking now. We have decided on a day to drive down south to the ranch and pick up my puppy. My daughter and granddaughter will be traveling with me, on my daughter's day off of work, two weeks from now. I just need to give the date to the owner of the ranch. I could have gone down the weekend before, but Tuesday in two weeks is the closing of the house I have under contract, and we have to sign paperwork in Denver. I couldn't leave a puppy in a kennel for so many hours and still consider myself a decent human. 

For the remaining time until I pick her up, I'm going to be thinking about her as often as a teenager thinks about sex. Before I could bring myself to get out of bed this morning, I turned on the tv and started watching puppy training videos on YouTube. I feel as prepared as I can be for the first week, except for the logistics of carrying her outside to pee until we get that behavior learned, and still avoiding introducing her to Elsa and Murray before Saoirse and I have bonded.

I have moved from 50% to 95% sure that I am going to make her own Twitter page. I needed to come up with a good handle, and in a blink, as soon as I asked, my daughter came up with a good one. I told her I would let it simmer for a while before I registered it. I would do it right now, but it's late and I'm too tired to do it. I need to figure out whether I can use the same email for two accounts, or do I have to make a fresh one. Pretty sure it is option B. So I need to be awake enough to create a secure password that I can remember. Once the account is live, I will advertise it here. Until then, enjoy the early photos that will be on it.