A Visit to Winter

 

The Chicago Bean as glimpsed through bus window condensation, and through the falling snow. I like the yellow streetlight shining in the corner. We went to the big city to have Thanksgiving with K. Her housemates were on various coasts so we could all three stay in her apartment. It was a rare opportunity and I'm so glad we did it. We had sun the first two days and then a couple days of vigorous snow which was the first significant snowfall of the season in the city. We had good public transport experiences and got to see blackfri shoppers skittering through the wind and snow on Michigan Avenue while on our way to the Art Institute. 

While getting coffee one morning (I loved Fancy Plants' soy flat white, Nod had a life changing mocha at Intelligentsia) we saw someone carrying their xmas tree home on their shoulder. The city was showing us its winter beauty, not just freezing our faces off. Shoutout to the ski coat I received as a hand me down from my sis-in-law in Colorado and my waterproof boots. And our flight out was only a couple hours delayed so we got home in daylight. Abq welcomed us with sun and a temp in the 50s although it has dropped since then. 

At the museum I got to visit a set of beautiful Hiroshige prints: One Hundred Famous Views of Edo. The colors were amazing and the selected prints were so wonderful and intriguing. Here's some horse butts for ya.  

Straw horse shoes! I never imagined such a thing. 

The trend continued, we got pretty snow in Abq yesterday morning. My view from the office window:

It melted in a couple of hours and there are only traces left in shady spots - the perfect ABQ snow experience. But it got cold and we feel it via our uninsulated windows. K's apartment is very cosy and we're a little envious. Nod did some real estate shopping just for fun. It's weird to think of him, even hypothetically, living in that much winter.  

Cool and slow

September is doing its thing and I am grateful. I saw a rainbow and purple asters on a walking/jogging trip this week. I love being under the New Mexican skies. 

Purple asters! They are so cheerful by the highways and all over. It may be the same plant (or similar) to Michaelmas daisies in Europe.

 

Grocery store pharmacy gave me $20 credit for getting covid and flu shots together. I will take it! Got recommended the RSV and pneumonia shots as well. Those age ranges now start at 50. Maybe next month. I'm not sure about adding those since I work at home. On the other hand, the Danish had pneumonia a couple years ago and it sent her to the hospital and was scary. 

I can feel a little feverish and off during fall and spring. I just started using my full spectrum light in the morning and maybe that'll help. I'm back on the exercise horse this month and glad to be moving again. I am jogging now and looking forward to when it will feel a bit easier. A couple more weeks ought to help. 

I've been playing my electric keyboard every day now that I've got a stand. It feels fun even though it's slow to make progress on the Joplin rags I'm trying. I have a truly random set of sheet music and am also playing from an Ernest Tubb songbook. I have a pile of classical music books waiting. I have a copy of sheet music for Railroad Blues 1920 that I'm probably going to frame for the image. I looked up the composer, C. Luckeyth Roberts. He taught himself to play piano only on the black keys as a kid. Original. "Got ev'rything I had except my shoes; He left me flat just where I'm at an' blew, that bird has flew." 

Specifics

Last night I woke up near 3am. I also heard a mosquito near my ear. After peeing and putting in an eyedrop, I felt too hot. I turned on the house fan without the pump for the white noise as well as the air movement. I was able to go back to sleep in maybe thirty minutes. In the morning the thermostat said 70F which is the first time I've seen that temp since spring. August wasn't our cool-down this year but September seems to be coming up with the goods.

Mosquitoes in the house is a scourge. We were okay through July but have been seeing them regularly inside since August started. The Instrument is a great help. 

It's a stupid design with heavy D batteries in the handle but it gives me a fighting chance. I can kill one by hand occasionally, but this way I can just swing wildly wherever I've seen a bug. The crackledy-crack! tells me when I've had success. So satisfying. 

I keep coughing and my tonsils are still swollen. I told Nod I would go to the doctor last Friday if the cough was still happening. I lied, because I don't want to go! But I guess I will. And now I have an urgent care appointment for tomorrow morning. There's still time, immune system! You could shut this shit down so I wouldn't have to go. 

I have a tender spot where the gum has receded and need to call the dentist's office. This physical maintenance stuff is work. I'm waiting to feel over my viral whatever it was (Covid) until I try walking/jogging again. My taking the month of July off extended through August. I was reminded that chair squats are helpful for stabilization and all. I managed to do those and planks once already this week. The muscles on the sides of my ribs have noticed! It makes me want to do more even though that is in conflict with a general reluctance to plank.

Ursula's latest Hemlock & Silver is delivering the pleasant distraction. Her characters are just fun to spend time with. Sounds like she has a bunch of new books coming out in the near future. I recently finished The West Passage by Jared Pechaček, which I heard about through bluesky recommendations. A weird and a wonderful combination of down-to-earth characters and wildly alien gods in a vast history. It even reminded me of Wonderland in a couple of corners - that doesn't happen often! I loved Planetfall by Emma Newman with its layered secrets that drive the plot. The sequel After Atlas is set back on earth in a near-dystopia that I found uncomfortably easy to imagine. The third one must be back in space and I will hope to enjoy that one more.  

Muse of Summer

I don't remember reading this short eerie poem The Portent by Herman Melville before. Here's the whole thing:

Hanging from the beam,

      Slowly swaying (such the law),

Gaunt the shadow on your green,

      Shenandoah!

The cut is on the crown

      (Lo, John Brown),

And the stabs shall heal no more.

Hidden in the cap

      Is the anguish none can draw;

So your future veils its face,

      Shenandoah!

But the streaming beard is shown

      (Weird John Brown),

The meteor of the war.

Green coming and going

Green Stuff

My volunteer hollyhock is being eaten by something and doesn't look very well. I'm going to transplant it to a pot and see if that helps it or kills it. But! around the same area, under the pot of prickly pear catus (which has never looked very happy) is:

Lots of baby cacti! I let the fruit stay on the ground last year and this is the result. I'm happy to have the corner get more cactus-y. I wonder what the survival rate will be. 

Paginated

I'm reading many books. Jen Beagin's Pretend I'm Dead was good after the disturbing childhood stuff in the middle. I enjoyed reading it but at the same time it felt like a less polished version of Big Swiss. Our reading group liked it okay, no one seemed elated or angry about it. I'm most of the way through the sequel Vacuum in the Dark. The title reminds me of Lady in the Dark, a musical by Kurt Weill / Ira Gershwin / Moss Hart about a woman's psychoanalysis from which we get the song Jenny's Saga (Jenny Made Her Mind Up). My mom liked to sing it to me when I was small. No idea if that was a purposeful reference.     

JB just gave me a copy of Sixpence House, Lost in a Town of Books by Paul Collins. I'm looking forward to that. I started a ratty library paperback copy of Dead in Dublin by Murphy. Yet to see if that will hold my interest. I'm probably not going to reread Tokarczuk's Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. I read it a couple years ago for the Flashback group. I should try something else of hers. The Books of Jacob were nom'd for the Booker recently. 

Cultured

Mom gave me a birthday gift certificate to my favorite book store. I do love that there are multiple stores I like here, not just the one we had in Lawrence. Nod told me that there is so much going on in ABQ that it stresses him out, trying to figure out what he's going to go participate in. He had remind himself that there is no failure, and one person can't do it all. We are well cultured round here. JB told me that he thinks there may be eight theater companies in town. And even if a few of them should combine for optimal health, that is amazing. 

Wax and Wane

 From The Tomb of Dragons by Katherine Addison:

I said the moon prayers over again. They were prayers that asked for courage and resilience, the strength to keep going as one's fortunes waxed and waned. 

I find the worship of Ulis in this universe appealing. What a good read. The author's thanks at the end of the book says it was a slog to finish. I loved spending more time with the characters and didn't feel the story suffering. Thara's relationships shake out in some unexpected ways. One of which I found a bit tacked on. But the series ending feels like a refreshing opening rather than closure. Happy sigh. 

My daughters will both be with us through the weekend. K arrives today. L leaves for Italy on Sunday. L's study program hasn't given us an invoice to pay and I'm not happy about sending her off without securing her spot. She also needs to communicate with her aunt and uncle and I am going to do more nagging about that today. Travel uncertainty aside, it's a great bday present to have them visit at the same time. 

My right foot has a painful spot on the top. It hurts when I push off from the ball of my foot. I noticed it maybe three weeks ago. Last week I was able to jog on the 13th and noticed it at first but not much when running. Then on the 15th I noticed it during the whole run but it got less as I went on. On Sunday we did a hike and I was limping a bit by the end. Not good. Maybe it could be a hairline fracture? I rolled that foot - not badly, I didn't fall - when jogging a few weeks ago. And I'm taking estrogen suppressant which is supposed to be bad for your bones. I really don't want to go to the doctor for it. But it may come to that. I'm worry I won't be able to hike with K during this visit. 

We had some surprise (to me) rain yesterday and chilly temps which is exciting. We'll be up to 90 by the end of the week so I try to enjoy it as it comes. My hollyhock continues to grow and I hope it will bloom this summer. May blessings to all beings. 

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Updated to add that my foot felt better after a week of rest, no more pain. We went hiking 3 or 4 times with K and had a particularly lovely evening on the Piedra Lisa trail, almost up to the top of the ridge. The clouds were putting on a show, cruising north over the Sandia Crest. We got back to Nod in the parking lot just before dark as the clouds were golden and starting to fade. 

Green stuff

We've had some rain this week. More than 15 drops at a time, even. There's something new coming up in the back flower bed. So exciting to see what will develop. 

My potential hollyhock is small but growing:

To my delight, one of the truckstop cactuses that my MIL gave our kids has been happy enough on the windowsill to send up a flower:

Its sibling has been propped at an angle in a thrift store pot for a while. After noticing the flower I finally potted it properly. We'll see if it feels like growing more now. In between them is a taller cactus that may have belonged to one of the kids. After we moved with the hell-cat Freddie, he bit the top of it. Since then it has put out a bunch of little growths. Kind of cool looking though I'm sorry about the cat assault.