What a Revolting Development This Is

Way back in the late Ordovician, before TV was even in color (!) there was a show on TV called “The Life of Riley” that starred William Bendix. It was a situation comedy, and just after they’d gotten into the situation, Bendix would break the fourth wall, look straight into the camera and say his catch phrase, “What a revolting development this is.”

Well, in this situation comedy that is my life at the moment, the situation is this: That slight numbness I’d gotten in the tips of a couple of fingers which I thought was from chemotherapy has continued to get worse. Now instead of just being on the tip of my middle fingers and along the left index finger, its on the tips of index, middle and ring fingers of both hands, and the pads of both thumbs. It’s not exactly numbness. It’s a little like pins and needles, and it amplifies sharp sensations way out of proportion. Stuff that should just register as slightly pointed is painfully sharp.

Here’s the deal: Mom has restless leg syndrome/peripheral neuropathy in her feet. Some of the causes of it are heritable. If I’ve inherited what she’s got, I’d rather have it in my feet than my hands (touch typing, knitting, and the zillion other things I do dexterously manually). But — oh, that “but” — there are other possible causes: Chemotherapy, carpal tunnel syndrome, and C2 radiculopathy. My second cervical vertebra (C1 has your head on top of it, C2 has C1 on top of it) is slightly cattywompus due to an old shoulder/neck injury from trying to lift a 40 lb bottle of water and upend it onto the water dispenser. I’m hoping that it’s mostly C2 radiculopathy and the chiropractor can improve it. I’m a side sleeper, too, which doesn’t help. Stay tuned.

When I went to my appointment at the VA, I did get three or four x-ray views of my tootsies. But then after I talked to my PCP, she sent me back for four or five views of my neck, including one with my mouth open, aimed straight into my mouth. (Yeah.) So bright and early this AM, the lady at the chiropractor calls me to schedule a chiropractic appointment for my neck. (My mom’s mom, a second generation Texan who spoke German better than she spoke English, called them “punch doctors”) I’ve never been to one, so I have that (and a passel of paperwork. Sigh!) to look forward to this Friday.

Today was my day for running errands hither and yon all over town. I yonned way the heck out to 122nd street and discovered I could have done what I needed to do there on line. (Well, zut, alors.) Then I hithered my way back by the bank to deposit a check, by Market Street on 50th and Indiana Avenue to make a donation to the Goodwill truck that they let park in their parking lot, by Red Lobster to treat myself to lunch and kill time until the framing studio opened at 1 pm, by the framers to get some pictures framed, and then made a Wal-Mart run.

The way out of Wal-Mart that puts this little piggy in the best field position to go north on Quaker Avenue and wee-wee-wee all the way home goes right by the Whataburger, so naturally I drove through the drive through and got a large Dr. Pepper, which I have been sucking down in large gulps ever since. Hithering and yonning is thirsty work, especially since somebody left the heat on outside today . . . .

In the parking lot at Wal-Mart, I got a shower scattered on me as I was loading up the trunk, and when I got back home and was unloading, I got another, longer shower scattered on me to the point that I waited it out under the carport where I park. (Is it technically still a CARport if it’s long enough to park eight cars under it?)

It’s sprinkling, flashing and grumbling as I type. The current humidity is 46%, so unless some serious rain happens, it’s pretty much evaporating as soon as it hits pavement.

But we had a nice little thunderstorm at about 4 o’clock this morning and got a good little rain out of it. This is how I like my thunderstorms, them outside and me inside. We’re having a jolly one now. Serious rain is happening. We’ll take the rain, but pass on the hail, please.

Yesterday was my birthday. (Let’s just say I’m old enough to know better but still young enough to seriously consider doing it again.) So today I took myself out to eat at Red Lobster and had crab legs and fried shrimp. I love me some crab legs. I brought home half my shrimp for later, and three of their rolls. I had a sneeze’s worth of French Fries. (I’m allergic to potatoes, but I eat them anyway because I love them. They’re worth a sneeze or two.)

This is what I took to the framer today. She’s “Spider Grandmother” revered by the Hopi as Kokyangwuti and by the Navajo as Na’ashjé’íí Asdzáá. The painting is by Susan Seddon Boulet. I used to get calendars featuring her work (this is one I kept for this picture). She was famous for her “Goddess” paintings, drawing from myths and legends of cultures all over the world to celebrate the feminine.

The spider is associated with weaving/fiber arts in many cultures. (See: Arachne, the Greek version, a weaver who was turned into a spider as a punishment for hubris. The Greek gods were always coming down hard on people who got too uppity, especially women.) Native Americans see Spider Grandmother as a wise and benign leader who helps and protects the people. She taught the people how to spin wool and weave blankets to help them get through the cold winters. Of course, the role of women in a society differs from culture to culture. The Greeks were a heavily patriarchal society and there’s a good deal of misogyny inherent in their mythos. The Navajo, on the other hand, are inherently matriarchal and matrilineal, but with strong respect for the elders of both sexes.

This pair of beautiful unicorns are two others of Boulet’s works that I had framed year before last by the same framer I’m having frame this one. This new picture will be my birthday gift from my mom.

I got a DVD of “Gate of Hell” which is the first Japanese film made in color (Technicolor). It’s a tale of unignited love and obsession set in 12th century Japan. The costumes are GORGEOUS. I think I’ll watch it tonight. Either that one or “3000 Years of Longing” with Tilda Swinton. Maybe both.

Because Prednisone

I periodically like to point out odd quirks in the evolution of our native tongue, Ameriglish. Back when people studied English grammar instead of “Language Arts” in school, they were taught that there is this grammar thing called “a state of being.” It is an either/or concept. You are either in that state of being or not; when a thing changes from being to not being (or vice versa), you “become.” “Extinction” is a case in point. A new example of this I have run across is “pregnancy.”

Gratuitous picture of a faun on a unicorn from The Day of the Unicorn ©2022 by Manuel Arenas

I mention this because sometime between when I attended school during the previous century (The 1960’s. Yeah. That was last century.) and the current time, “extinction” mysteriously transmogrified from a state of being to a destination. Nowadays things go extinct. T. rex has left the building. And lately, I’ve noticed that pregnancy has undergone a similar and mystifying change to I’m not sure what. Nowadays women don’t become pregnant, they fall pregnant — Is that like if a woman doesn’t fall off the bed while having sex, she won’t become pregnant!? (Or, what is much worse, is pregnancy now like falling from a higher state to a lower state, like a fall from grace?!?!)

And prepositions. Prepositions are being quietly murdered and replaced by imposters! Things used to happen “by” accident. But “by” was disappeared and quietly replaced by “on” and now we are supposed to just accept that now things happen “on” accident. No. Just, no.

These few examples are just the tip of the iceberg, folks (another of those pesky non-gendered collective nouns!) A great iceberg of a conspiracy between the American public education system and those Millennials to corrupt our mother tongue.

I mean, Millennials are always being problematic. They even chose a problematic name. First off, it’s a booger to spell. (Aren’t two “L’s” and two “N’s” a bit too, Snowflake?) (And even when you spell it right, it looks wrong.)

Gratuitous picture of a faun on a unicorn from The Day of the Unicorn ©2022 by Manuel Arenas

To be fair, though, one notable contribution to the language the Twitter-pated have made is the “because (noun)” construction. It’s a kind of linguistic shorthand for condensing a long convoluted explanation or long list of reasons or justifications into a very brief synopsis (a Tweet is limited to 140 characters), to save space, time, and/or character count, and not occasionally to level up the irony or sarcasm. Whence the title of this post. This is my brain on a whacking great dose (100 mg) of prednisone. Going 90 mph(145 kph) in second gear. For, literally, days.

(Left turn into a brick wall at race-track speeds segue) So today my 5 tabs of prednisone was the chaser to a bag of rrrrRuffles Cheese and Sour Cream potato chips (rrrrRuffles have rrrrridges!). Cushioning my tum with food first seemed like a good idea at the time — right up until it got to the part about available food choices. (Knocking back a handful of prednisone on an empty stomach is like that first part of the roller coaster ride where the chain is ratcheting you up that really high, really steep hill, and you know you’re not getting off until the ride’s over.)

(No segue at all) In previous posts, I have mentioned the eclectic assortment of gratuitous sound effects my apartment is subjected to at inopportune moments, like the morning jog of the garbage cans to the dumpsters and back. Since I live near the Marsha Sharp raceway, on weekends, we typically have scattered motorcycle attempts at land speed records, particularly in the early morning hours, with a chance of low-flying helicopters. (I live within four miles of three tertiary care hospitals and a level I trauma center, three of which have helipads.) But this Saturday, at about 7:00 a.m., we had a rude awakening. The cover spontaneously fell off the (not so) mini-split in the front room beside my desk.

It made a noise like a giant hubcap being tossed like a Frisbee onto concrete. I was sound asleep at the time, but I am proud to say I calmly peeled myself off the ceiling, rolled over and went back to sleep.

Unflappableness. I haz it.

Somewhat later, at a more seemly hour (11:00 o’clock), I got on the phone to the front desk and called in a maintenance strike, and today while I was having fun with needles and plastic tubing at JACC, Care Bud the Maintenance Man put humpty-bumpty back together again. I am curious to know what the lady in the apartment below thought had caused that noise. It was so loud that I’m a little surprised that Security didn’t shortly thereafter come knocking on my door to politely inquire if my mobility issues were experiencing technical difficulties. (Or if I’d lost the stone out of my diamond ring or something . . .)

Was texting with my BFF Sunday, and humorously remarked about my problems with knitting with a long circular needle while watching YouTube videos on my tablet while in bed, and having video interrupted because the needle cable hit the tablet and started some random video playing. She texted back that the transmission on her car had self-destructed in the middle of the drive home from work, she had to have it towed, and now she is damned if she does have to spend big buck$ to get the tran$mi$$ion replaced and damned if she doesn’t have a ride to work. She only just recently found out (a) she’d had a heart attack at some point, probably last January when she blacked out and did a standing face plant in a parking lot, and (b) that she has foot drop because of nerve damage from the ankle she broke years ago, and has tripped and fallen badly several times since then because of it (She is a self-deprecator because issues, so she just assumed she was clumsy and was tripping over her own feet.) (Speaking of heroes preemptively beating the crap out of themselves . . .) Giving emotional support over the phone is about as easy as giving technical support over the phone and, unfortunately, just about as effective. Remote hugs are rubbish. She lives northwest of Houston, and there’s like 600 miles of TX between us. My arms aren’t that long. Sigh.

Oh. And because I am bouncing off the walls at the moment, this non sequitur is for the orthographically challenged: If the spell check/auto-correct function highlights as misspelled a word that is a simple plural or has a suffix or prefix, the root word may not actually be misspelled. Insert a space between the word and the simple plural (simple plurals add -s or -es to form the plural) or between the suffix (-ly, -ment, -ness, -able, etc.) or prefix (un-, dis-, re-, in-, non-, etc.) and the root word. If the word is still highlighted as misspelled, then it probably is. Spell checker/auto-correct glossaries take up RAM. Therefore many such glossaries only include the most commonly used prefixed and/or suffixed forms of the most commonly used words, and the variant prefix/suffix/plural forms (the exceptions to the basic spelling rules), and do not include the simple plurals. (duh!) E.g., In the paragraphs above, spell check recognized “millennial” as spelled correctly, but not “millennials” and recognized “flappable” and “unflappable” as spelled correctly, but not “unflappableness.”

Stopping now. Must correct misspelled name in the previous post.

Feetnotes: 
* Taking a "bolus dose" of medication is like chugging multiple shots of alcohol all at once.  Only with alcohol, the articulated lorry hits you head-on at 90 mph(145 kph); with prednisone, the eighteen-wheeler only grazes you close enough to snag your suspenders(braces**) on the wing mirror.  At 90 mph(145 kph). 
**this is a British English inclusive and metric-inclusive blog. Bite me. 

Milestones

We put mom’s house up for sale in August. Within three days, we had a contract on it. We expected to close on it by the middle of September, and I had to hustle to arrange for the estate sale and get the house in shape for people to move in, as well as have an estate sale for myself and get my house packed up and be ready to move in to Carillon on the first of September.

Then came the reality of dealing with (a) supply-chain issues related to the world-wide COVID epidemic, (b) governmental and institutional bureaucracy and (c) a lending institution in a place where English is not the language of business.

The supply chain issues and the inability to get flooring delayed my move-in for a week. Mom’s rehab went slower than expected, and delayed her move-in until late September, and my planned trip to central Texas delayed it even longer, but her therapist says she will have all the skills she needs to move in with me next month. Now we are set to close on the house on the 5th of October (knock wood!). It will be another milestone behind us. Once we close on the house, I will call the electric company to have them read the meter and send us the final bill, and that will be another item checked off the To Do list.

I’m ditching AT&T. The TV guy FINALLY came yesterday afternoon to hook up mom’s TV. (My TV is too new (!) to have a cable connection, but he got it on the internet (I didn’t know it could receive WiFi on its own) and said I could get my own modem and use it, plus a dongle to have WiFi for everything, including my desktop, and not have to pay through the nose to AT&T for intermittent service that’s slower than molasses in January. The modem and dongle will be here tomorrow.

My fuzzy house slippers came today. (The duplex I lived in had carpet, and I just wore heavy socks in winter. Won’t work here.) Yesterday, I got my unicorn prints by the late Susan Seddon Boulet back from the framer. I am extremely pleased with how they turned out. I may hang them tonight, or wait until tomorrow. I’ve got a cord switch to put on the cord of the lamp I’m using on my bedside table as mother is now using the one I was using in the duplex. It’s a simple task. Slowly but surely things are sorting out and settling down, and my To Do list is getting shorter and shorter. Last night we had our first rainstorm since we moved — a right little thunderboomer. Another milestone. Mornings are starting to be downright nippy. We’ve passed the autumnal equinox and the days are beginning to draw in noticeably.

• 

• 

I’ve got another of Seddon Boulet’s prints, Spider Woman, that I think I’ll have framed also as my Xmas present from me to me. Na’ashjé’íí Asdzáá (Spider Grandmother) is an important personage in the mythology of the Navajo, a helper and protector of the people. She is said to have taught the arts of spinning and weaving to the Diné to help them survive the cold of winter. As a knitter, I can relate to Spider Grandmother.

Hotober

Here it is October and it was 90 F (932.2 C) yesterday.  I just wish it would get cool already.  Yet another 90+ day is predicted for the 7th, and the 10 day forecast contains only a couple of days with predicted highs below 80 F (26.6C), with lows in the 50’s F (10+ C).

If the weather will just get cool, I can pull the folding banquet table out from under my bed and block some shawls, which will involve using a steam iron since the shawls are made from acrylic yarn.  There’s no point in using a steam iron unless it’s going to help heat the house.

I’ve had a box of Barilla Rotini and the big covered pyrex bowl sittting out on my counter for about 10 days now nagging me to make pasta salad, which I finally did early yesterday morning before it got hot.  I cooked the whole box, but I only put about 1/3 of it in the pasta salad.  (I’ll eat the rest of it straight tossed with olive oil and zapped in the microwave.)  I chopped half a white onion, about five green onions, put in half a little can of chopped olives, a small can of Delmonte mixed vegetables (peas, corn, green beans, lima beans, diced carrots) and diced Carving Board turkey, with mayo to moisten.   Very tasty.  Some quartered cherry tomatoes or chopped celery would have been nice, if I had had any. . . .

After that, I’ll be having chili cheese dogs.   (Why do hot dogs STILL come in packages of 8 and buns come in packages of 6!?)  I’ve got half a pack of hot dogs (4) and a package of buns (6) in the on-deck circle of my fridge and a can of Wolf Brand chili in the pantry.  I’ll chop up the other half of the onion I used in the pasta salad, and I’ve got a package of sprinkle cheese.   They’re “artisanal” buns, so I guess I could have two hoagies with the extras.

There’s a series on YouTube called Cocktails with a Curator, where one of the curators of the Frick Art Collection discusses a painting or an objet d’art, while having an appropriate cocktail — recipes are given in the program notes on the website — evidently you’re supposed to mix yourself one of whatever they’re having so you can sip along with them.  The videos are pretty interesting, but I’m telling you, some of the cocktails they come up with, I don’t think I could even finish half of one before I’d be hooter than a drunk owl.  When you’ve already combined absinthe and vodka and the mixer is champagne, that’s a little hard core, guys!

I keep having these stupid dreams where I can’t find my car, or I can’t find my luggage or my purse, or I can’t find a place I’m supposed to go to.  Like, every night.   Then I wake up mildly anxious and unsettled.   Of course, some of the medication I’m on (metoprolol and cetirizine (Zyrtec) list “nightmares” as a potential side effect.  I wouldn’t class these dreams as “nightmares” per se.  Nightmares are frightening.  These dreams are just disquieting and annoying.

I did have one the other day where I attacked this woman — I’m talking hitting and punching and strangling.  She was not somebody I knew.  I only knew she needed to be stopped.  I was shocked by the violence of my actions in that dream.  Very out of charracter.  I don’t remember ever having such a violent dream.  If I have any more like that, I may have to change to another allergy medication or cut back on my metoprolol a bit.   When I take a whole tablet, all I want to do is sit and stare at the wall.  I cut back to half a tablet, which was an improvement, but my cardiologist kept wanting me to take the full dosage, so I’ve been taking half in the morning and half in the evening, and that was OK.  I may have to see about cutting back again.

I got my mom a sound bar for her TV for her birthday and I got it installed the other day.  I thought at one point I was going to have to go get my Act of Congress to get the thing to work.  The sound bar comes with both a m/f plug in cable and a fiber optic cable.  There was only one place for the plug in cable to go, and it wouldn’t work.  Of course, my mom’s TV is 11 years old, so forget there being a product manual that might have told me where the fiber optic cable jack was located.  I finally found it, and got the thing connected, and voilá.  Worked like a champ.  I hope it helps her.  Age related hearing loss runs in her family and her hearing loss is pretty bad in the speech frequencies so about all she watches are game shows and sports — things you don’t have to understand dialog to follow.   Of course, if you have a sufficient drop-out in a particular frequency or frequency range, no amount of volume will help.

Unfortunately, she’s not interested in reading books.   All she wants to do is sit in the chair and watch TV.   I suspect she has a significant amount of situational depression.  She is a very social person and her inability to socialize due to COVID has hit her hard — that on top of the fact that she keeps outliving all her friends.

 

“Go to the Limits of Your Longing”

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

Poem by Rainer Maria Rilke from The Book of Hours, I 59

Wish I Was There

As long-time readers of this blog will know, I have a “double barreled” setup — a desktop PC with two 21-inch monitor screens.

Let me digress:  I was a medical transcriptionist (typing reports dictated by doctors for hospital medical records) for nearly 30 years before I hung up my foot pedal.  I worked “in-house” for the first six of those years — went to the hospital to a room in medical records that had a large computerized dictation machine that was hooked to word processors and a pair of printers.  I worked from 2 pm to 10 pm, put on makeup, dressed professionally, packed a lunch, drove to and from work, etc.  But then, entrepreneurs took advantage of these large computerized dictation machines to set up companies with server farms that could connect through the phone lines to serve hospitals all over the country.  It also meant that they could hire people all over the country to connect to the server farms over the phone lines and work from home to type up the dictation and send it back to whichever hospital they were working for at the time.  For most of my working life (until the advent of DSL), I had two home phone lines and my computer had its own phone.

This was back in the day when the internet still went SKWEE SQUAW tweedle-deedle-deedle.  For the vast majority of my working life, I worked from my back bedroom (tough commute!), with kitties sleeping either on or by me, from 9 pm at night to 5 am in the morning.  Because I  worked from home, I didn’t have to worry about walking alone through dark parking lots at night so I could work those hours that nobody else wanted to work (evenings, nights and weekends), the hours for which companies paid extra (shift differential) as an incentive.   I could forget about makeup, wear whatever I durn well pleased and didn’t have to worry about “looking professional.”  (This was why  when I traded in a  1987 Toyota Corolla in 2014, it only had 48,000-odd actual miles on it!).  I worked from home for years before working from home was even a thing.

Because of my work, I had to have a word processing program to do the actual typing on, plus a transcription company program that would send and receive sound files and text files within an encryption envelope, plus another transcription company program that would enable me to play their sound files, plus the proprietary software I needed that would enable my computer to use a foot pedal to manipulate those sound files, plus a web browser. (I was using Google before most folks even knew what a search engine was.  I found out about it from an article in Discover Magazine.)  I also had to play back the dictation over headphones (and later, earbuds) to protect the privacy of the patients because all this dictation I was typing was somebody’s person healthcare information and could have been overheard by somebody else if I played back the dictation over speakers.

Then I found out about a switch (it’s called a KVM switch, BTW) that worked with Windows 7 that would enable me to hook two monitors to the switch and hook the switch to the computer’s monitor port and toggle back and forth between screens by tapping the ESC key twice.  Having two screens made juggling all those programs so much easier than having all of them open on the task bar and shifting between windows by clicking with my mouse.  I used that KVM setup for years.

Toward the end of my working life, I discovered a little cord gizmo that would let me hook up a second monitor directly to the computer without having to install a second monitor board/port (It’s called a VGA splitter, in case you’re interested).  I could then extend my display across both monitors and have access to both monitors all the time without having to click a switch.

My current setup is a legacy from my working life.  Because I have two monitors,  I can have a knitting pattern open (which I am either writing as I go, or following) on one monitor and a YouTube video open on the other.  I can have a word processing program open on one screen, and a dictionary program and a “character board” of pictures open on the other.  I have a set of speakers, but they’re put up in the closet somewhere, because for 30 years I sat down at my computer and put on headphones/earbuds.  I have an extension cord with an earbud jack taped to the underside of my desk that lets me plug in a set of earbuds just under the front edge of my computer desk.

Because I’m me, and because I can, I have a wallpaper program with a whole folder full of pretty pictures that changes the wallpaper on the two monitors every 10 minutes.  A while ago, this painting was the one being used as a wallpaper.  My monitors are 21.5-inch diagonal size, so I could get a good look.

What would it be like to live in houses like that?  How would you make your living if you lived there?  What would the rooms in those houses look like?

A while later, this painting appeared.

What would life in this picture be like? What would the building be?  Why would these boats be there? What kind of society would build a place like this?

See where I’m going?  This is how you play mind games with yourself.   You find some internet radio music you like, google yourself a painting or photograph you like, kick back and wish you were there . . .

 

Easing into a Saturday Evening

What with one thing and another, I decided to coddle myself today. We’re having roller-coaster weather (for months now) — it warms up to the 80’s F/26 C then cools down into the 60’s F/ 15 C, then warms up again, and cools down again.  We’re in a trough at the moment and it’s a little nippy (high of 70 F/21 C today, predicted low of 36 F/2.2 C tonight).  Later in the week, we’re heading for a predicted high of 90 F/32.2 C on Monday, then back down into the 70’s again. . .  It’s still bone dry with no precipitation and a humidity of 18%, and we’re under a wildfire watch because it’s windy (22 mph/35.4 kph).

I got a late start to the day because I had a good long lie-in, not stirring out of my snuggly warm bed until noon.  Didn’t have to get up, didn’t want to get up, so I didn’t.   I had cinnamon toast for breakfast, and made a big carafe of hot Stash Spiced Chai with almond milk, followed not long after by a can of Amy’s Kitchen vegetable soup for lunch which was major nummy-noms.  (Amy’s Kitchen has a line of Mexican frozen entrees which I love, and I saw they had soups, so I got some to try.  This is the first one I’ve tried and I really like it.) The bread I was using for toast is “artisan,” which is to say, it is fresh-baked in the store from frozen dough, and is sold as “English toasting bread.” It’s a white bread with a nice taste and some substance to it — it doesn’t dissolve into library paste like the crap the Big Bread companies pass off as white bread. (Wonder Bread! — if there’s any real food value in it, it’s a wonder!) This stuff toasts up nice and crisp, so I had two more pieces with just margarine on to go with my soup.

Blue Diamond packages their almond milk in little quart packages that don’t need refrigeration, and that have a nice long shelf life, which I really like.  I don’t use that much “milk,” just on cereal and in tea. (I do not like cow’s milk and it doesn’t like me either.  The only actual “dairy” I eat is yogurt, cheese and the odd bit of gelato or ice cream.)  I like being able to keep a couple of cartons of it in the cupboard without having to sweat the “use by” date.  I get the vanilla flavor because the vanilla makes it sweet enough I don’t need to add sugar to my cereal (Kashi Cinnamon Harvest), and I like it in tea — Spice Chai, Earl Grey, English Breakfast — both hot and cold.

I noshed my soup while at the computer working jigsaw puzzles I created from pictures of Anne Bachelier‘s paintings which I’ve downloaded off her blog to make puzzles with.  I love her stuff.  I just took it easy, listening to SomaFM’s Drone Zone music channel, eating my soup and toast, drinking my chai and almond milk, and working this puzzle of one of Anne Bachelier’s paintings, with her wonderful palette and magical-surrealist imagery, and it was very, very nice.   Just a total chill out.  Nice way to spend a lazy Saturday.

I leave you with this little parting shot:  In searching out links, I ran across this clip from my man Sam Elliott.  What he has to say about almond milk struck me as LOL funny.  Be warned, though.  He drops a couple of F-Bombs, too, if that kind of language bothers you.

Otterly Delightful

Here is an otter, by Kenneth Steven

The otter is ninety percent water
Ten percent God.
This is a mastery
We have not fathomed in a million years.
I saw one once, off the teeth of western Scotland,
Playing games with the Atlantic –
Three feet of gymnastics
Taking on an ocean.

Here is an otter by Jackie Morris

Bright the Hawk’s Flight on the Empty Sky

One of our brightest stars winked out last Monday.  Ms. LeGuin gave the above speech in 2014.  It was true then, it is even more true now.  She writes like she speaks, pithily and to the point, choosing her words wisely, and making every one count.

The made-up books she wrote were powerful and True.  (All the best made-up books are True.  That is what makes them the best.)  If you read her books and think about what she wrote and why she wrote it and how it relates to the human condition,  — and if you will let her — she will crowbar open the windows of your mind, throw ope the shutters, and let in the fresh air and sunlight.

From all I read and hear from those who knew her, Ursula LeGuin was a light-bringer, an illuminator.  It is a trait well worth emulating.  No matter whatever else you might be or do, also be a light-bringer. Bring light to all those whose lives you touch; share your light, pass it along, let others light their candle from yours and shine forth, adding their own light to the world.

When one candle gutters and goes out, it behooves us other candles to burn that much brighter and to share our light with still others, so that the light is not diminished, but increased.

Ursula K. Le Guin, 1929-2018

Only in silence the word,
Only in dark the light,
Only in dying life:
Bright the hawk’s flight on the empty sky.

– The Creation of Ea

Crimmers Eve

My friend LB made a bunch of knitted snowmen, and she gave me this one when I went to see her Thursday.  She used yarn that has a thread of iridescence in it that gives it just the perfect little sparkle like snow (like the iridescent glitter I used on my snowflakes) — which doesn’t photograph at all well . . . .

The little snowman got me to thinking again about how a simple object of little intrinsic worth becomes an object of great value because of its history and how one came to acquire it.  Its worth lies in its ability to evoke memories, of the time, the place and the giver.  .  .  .  It becomes a “souvenir” in the literal sense of the word, which is French for “remember.”

Sans segue,  I remembered I had this little bamboo silverware tray  (it’s too narrow for the silverware drawer in this house), and I had a brainwave — I put it on the little table I have by my computer to organize my knitting needles.  It works a treat.  I had a hard time getting to my double pointed needles before, but not now.  They all go in that front bit quite nicely, as does my needle gauge.  Win.

Here I make all these hats for other people, but I hadn’t made any for myself.  Last year, I had made a ribbed cowl to fit up around my neck, which I fold in half and which fits like a turtle neck sweater without the sweater.   I used it when I had to go out Friday, and it is tall enough that it will cover my mouth and ears no problem.  I made it so long because you can also unfold it and bring one end of it up over your head.  It fits my needs very well.  I thought a toboggan to go with it out of the same Caron Simply Soft yarn would be just the thing, so on this chilly (41 F/ 5C) Crimmers Eve, I’m making one.

Late in my salad days (1986), when I first started doing medical transcription, we worked at the hospital in a little room off the medical records department.  The lady I worked for, and who taught me transcription, used to get tickled at me for refering to “Christmas” as “Crimmers.”  I was more draw-y and cartoon-y then than I am now, and I drew her this little thing below one Crimmers.  (I didn’t know until about 20 years later that she had not only kept it all these years, but had had it very nicely framed.)  The sentiment still holds up well, I think, even now in these dark days. . .