My summer vacation, Part Three

So after my sister left, I had a number of days free with no particular plans: a "stay-cation," as they say. I did a few things around the place, but mostly I did a lot of reading and relaxing.

Oregon Shakespeare Festival

The final (pretty much) stage of my vacation is my trip to Ashland, Oregon, with my sister-in-law, to see Shakespeare plays. Tonight we'll see MacBeth, aka "the Scottish play." I've read that show people have a superstition that stagings of MacBeth are plagued with bad luck, and so they call it "the Scottish play" to avoid saying the name. I don't know if that's true.

I'm sure I studied MacBeth in high school, and again in college when I took a Shakespeare class (I was an English major), and then I taught it to high schoolers three times. So I'm pretty familiar with it. The other plays we'll see are As You Like It and All's Well That Ends Well. I don't really recall what those are about.

In addition to seeing plays, we'll do some wandering around Ashland, which is a charming town. We arrived yesterday and went to the Tudor Guild Gift Shop. I was in a mood where everything looked good to me. I bought an Ashland sweatshirt, several pairs of socks, and a fridge magnet with a Jane Austen quote.

I had been wanting a non-hoody sweatshirt. I have two hoodies, so I wanted a different option. I found a pale blue-gray sweatshirt on sale, that has "Ashland Oregon" on the front.

Oh, and we had wonderful news on our drive here. The last two years, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival has been plagued with smoke from wildfires, so that sometimes they've had to cancel outdoor performances at the Elizabethan Theater. This year, when I bought my tickets, the plays that earlier in the summer were outdoors were scheduled later in the summer to be indoors in the local high school auditorium, so that even if there were smoke they wouldn't have to be cancelled. I was kind of disappointed by that because going to the outdoor theater is a huge part of the enjoyable experience here. Well, the box office called me and I answered on the bluetooth in my car, and they said they were going to be in the Elizabethan theater after all. My sister-in-law and I both yelled, "Yay!"

It's not smoky here this year, which is great. Yesterday when we got here, it was very hot, well up into the 90s, but today will be a little cooler; a high of 81 is forecast, which is bearable. I'm so glad that tonight I'll be sitting in the theater under the sky as the night falls and the great play starts.

The Allen Elizabethan Theatre. I found this photo online; it originates with the OSF.

My summer vacation, Part Two

The Fair, Continued

From the poffertje stand, my sister and I wandered into the new Expo Building, where we looked at some 4-H displays and at the quilt exhibit. My sister-in-law, who was not with us, is the quilting expert in our family (I refer to my local sister-in-law, but, as it happens, my out-of-state sister-in-law is also an accomplished quilter), and we knew she had a hand in the display.

My sister took this picture.

Next, we set out to look at some of the animal barns. On our way, we were attracted by a raptor exhibit. It was a relatively small shelter, open to the front, where there were seven birds of prey that we could look at. It was put on by the Sardis Raptor Center, and one of the minders told my sister that the birds there were all ones that had some injury or condition that prevented them from being released back into the wild. They were beautiful birds, and we enjoyed looking at them.



Barred Owl



Bald Eagle



Eurasian Eagle Owl



Harris Hawk



Peregrine Falcon



Red Tail Hawk



Turkey Vulture

We went through the dairy cow barn and a few other animal barns.

My sister took this picture, too.

Then we went to look at the draft horses. That barn was closed off because they were harnessing the horses to their vehicles. Those are huge animals, and you wouldn't want to get stomped on or kicked by one of them if things got dicey. We could watch the harnessing from the other side of a chain. We were hoping to see a cousin of ours who married into a family that keeps Belgian horses. We didn't see her, but we did see her husband and one or more of her sons although we did not talk to them. They were busy handling huge horses. So we made our way to the arena, where we knew the teams would be driving. This is a picture of my cousin's family's team:

Shagren's Belgians

After that, we went to our one ride, the Ferris Wheel.



I love to look out over Lynden from the top of the Ferris Wheel. I did not take any pictures while I was on the ride, partly because I wanted to be in the moment, and, more so, because I was afraid I'd drop my phone from a great height.

When we got off the Ferris Wheel, I had reached precisely my point of satiety with the Fair, and my sister felt the same. So that was our outing to the Fair, and that's Part Two of my story.

My summer vacation, Part One

Ah, for the days when summer vacation was all summer. Except, not really, because that was either while I was in school, which I didn't really like from grade 5 through high school, or when I was teaching school, which triggered depression so severe that I needed a full summer to recover.

Anyway, this summer vacation is just a vacation that happens to take place during summer, specifically the last couple weeks of August. I guess I'm about halfway through it.

The first thing was that my sister came to visit. She stayed four days, and we went to the Fair, had coffee with a dear cousin and a dear sister-in-law, went to a family reunion (dear aunts, uncles, and cousins, and cousins once or twice removed), had coffee with a dear aunt who couldn't make the reunion, and had dinner with a dear niece and her dear children and, again, our dear sister-in-law.

The Fair

The Northwest Washington Fair takes place in my home town, Lynden, Washington. The first time I went to this Fair was probably in 1971, when my mom and my siblings and I were living in Lynden while my dad was serving in Viet Nam. At that age (about 10), I was mostly interested in going on rides. I am fortunate in that I don't believe I have ever had motion sickness under any circumstances. I loved rides that spun you around and made you dizzy. (I liked to be dizzy when I was a child. When I visited my dad's office, I would spin around in his desk chair until I worked up some serious vertigo.) I earned money for the Fair by doing household tasks to which my mom had attached prices such as a nickel, a dime, and a quarter. She had a list of them, and if I did one I could claim my reward.

Now I'm older. I earn money by working in an office. I no longer seek out dizziness as a pleasure. There is just one ride I want to go on at the Fair, and that is the Ferris Wheel. My sister and I did go on it, but that was the last thing we did at the Fair.

First, we ate poffertjes. These are a Dutch food, made from batter poured into the indentations of a specialized poffertje griddle. The person making them flips each one over with a fork, so both sides get done.



As their name implies, they are puffy. The Lynden Dutch Bakery serves their poffertjes with some buttery frosting (or some sweetened butter; I don't know which is the correct description) that is truly delicious.



These pictures of poffertjes come from the Dutch Bakery's Facebook page, although I cropped them.

Here is a selfie of our happy faces when we ate poffertjes:



That is Part One of my story. I have a long story with little content. I remind myself of my mom, who worked on her autobiography for years probably, and would comment on her progress: "I'm up to my baptism." FYI, we practice infant baptism in our denomination.

Knitting

It's been a couple years now, since I knitted a scarf for my niece for Christmas. I forgot to take a picture of it then because I was knitting right up to the moment I wrapped it on Christmas Eve. Recently I was at an event at her house, so I asked if she would model it so I could take a picture.



It was a beautiful spring day, which is why the scarf is the only winter-wardrobe item she's wearing.

Here's a closer picture, so you can see the pattern, plus the row of yarn daisies.



It's several rows of garter stitch (just knit, don't purl any rows) and 10 rows of seed stitch (alternate knit, purl stitches, so you make a pattern of bumps). The daisies, in addition to being cute, cover a row where I messed up. By the time I realized how bad it looked, I didn't want to rip out everything I'd done since. So I made these daisies on a little loom, using white and yellow yarn. My niece likes daisies.

I just wanted to record this completed project for posterity. I've started two other projects since then. I'll post pictures of those when they're done. It could be a while. I think it took me over a year to knit this scarf. That's because I don't stick with it all the time. For weeks, or even months, I won't touch my knitting.

Sometimes I listen to a book on tape (as I anachronistically think of it—it's really generally something on my Kindle) while I knit. I listened to all of "Evangeline" while knitting. A novel or novella-length poem is not something I would read with my eyes, but it was good to listen to. Poetry should be spoken, anyway, because it's a cross between writing and music. To read a poem silently is kind of like reading a musical score. Some people might get a lot out of that, if they're experts. But still, one would rather listen. And I like to listen to a trained professional reading, rather than my own first reads with mistakes, mis-pronunciations, and incorrect emphases.

Good morning

There is a thing I like to do on Saturday morning. When I first wake up, I get up and make a cup of coffee. I bring it to my recliner and cover myself up to my neck with a quilt, keeping just my right hand out to be able to pick up the coffee cup. I slowly enjoy the coffee. Then I sit, just relaxing, and I generally fall asleep for another hour or two.

This is a welcome change from work day morning when, after I wake up, I have to force myself not to relax and go back to sleep. Getting up is seriously the hardest thing I do all day.

I'm benefitting from the season these days because the sun rises early and the daylight helps me wake up. In winter, the early morning darkness makes it miserably hard to wake up.

Perchance to dream

Driving home the other day, I had on my oldies station and a song started:

I could stay awake just to hear you breathing,
Watch you smile while you are sleeping,
While you're far away and dreaming.
I could spend my life in this sweet surrender.
I could stay lost in this moment forever....

And so on.

I thought, I guess his girlfriend doesn't snore. And after another moment's thought: Or drool.

Yet, is a woman who snores and/or drools less worthy of a love song than one who sleeps quietly and prettily?

I'm awake just because you're snoring,
But still I look at you, adoring.
A damp spot on the pillowcase
Is underneath your pretty face.

I snore. I know this because I've asked for honest feedback from, say, my sister, when we share a hotel room. Occasionally I become aware of it on my own because I hear myself snore, just as I'm dropping off to sleep.

I don't drool much. I have drooled in my sleep upon occasion. It seems more likely when I fall asleep on a couch during the day, rather than during my long sleep at night.

Once my sister and I were watching the movie Key Largo, with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. In one scene, the characters have been confined to one room overnight and have fallen asleep in their chairs or, in the case of Lauren Bacall (if I recall correctly—it's been a long time) sitting on the floor, laying her head on an ottoman. She wakes up in the morning and lifts her head from where it rested. She looks beautiful because she's Lauren Bacall and that's what she does. I said to my sister, "If that were me, I'd be like this," and I pantomimed wiping my mouth and face.

In the song I heard in my car the other day, the singer goes on quite a bit about how great it is just to watch her sleeping, but towards the end of the song he ratchets up the drama and hoarsely screams some of the lyrics (because he's Steven Tyler and that's what he does). If she were sweetly sleeping, she'd surely wake up at that point, unless she had in earplugs.

Here's my preferred song for invoking loved ones going to sleep:



And may I wish you, Dear Reader, sweet dreams till sunbeams find you.

Mystery

Sometimes I like to read a mystery series. It spares me wondering what to read next; just get the next book. A year or so ago, I read all the Miss Marple books, in the order in which they were published. Now I'm doing the same with the Inspector Lynley books, by Elizabeth George. I'm on the second book, Payment in Blood.

In a mystery novel, they have to introduce a lot of characters early on, so that you have a good line-up of suspects. My trouble is, I'm bad with names. So, as I read, I often confuse one character with another. Now is this the victim's brother-in-law or the detective's ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend? So today during lunch I went back to the beginning and paged through (on my Kindle) writing down each character's name, key facts, their age if mentioned, and their relationship to other characters. I didn't quite get them all, but I've got a start, and when I'm done then I can quickly check who's who as each character shows up with their alibi or lack thereof.

Sidetracked

My out-of-doors goal for today was to sweep the steps that lead down from the driveway to my deck and to rake up all the wind-blown branches, twigs, and leaves from underneath the Noble Fir next to the steps.

These were going to be my "before" pictures:

"Before" sweeping the steps.

"Before" raking under the Noble Fir.

I did a rough sweep of the steps, and then I needed to get a rake and also a pair of clippers from one of my sheds. (Thanks to my dad, there are three sheds in our yard.) The shed door had blackberry vines growing over it. Blackberries are very, very prickery. The vines had also intertwined with a rose bush by the shed, and an unwanted pair of holly bushes were growing under the rose. Everything with prickers.

The Distraction

I did have one pruner with me that we used in December to take the lower branches off my Christmas tree. I used it to cut at the vines until I could open the door, then I pulled out a rake. I raked up the prickery vines and used the rake and pruner like tongs to pick them up and put them in a wheelbarrow.

Spring thoughts

March comes in like a lion and goes out like lamb, so the saying goes. It kind of did roar in. We've been having unseasonably wintry weather at a time when we should be seeing signs of spring, as February ended and March began. Days on end of northeastern winds from that darn Fraser Valley, and repeated snowfalls. Significant snowfalls, too, not just the "dusting" we might typically get in late winter.

Significant February snowfall

Today, there is still snow on parts of the yard. It's melting slowly because temperatures have stayed quite cold, freezing overnight.

But we've had a few sunny days now, and surely spring is on the way. I looked back a few years in my Facebook feed and saw that my forsythia has bloomed in mid- to late March before. Here's a picture I took on March 14, 2015:



I purposely planted that forsythia where I could see it from my living room window. It's one of the earliest plants to bloom in spring, and I am color-starved by the time winter ends and want to feast my eyes on the yellow flowers. The 14th may be particularly early; elsewhere, I have a photo from March 25, 2017, where it's just starting to bloom.

Bellingham, where I work, is oceanside and has a milder micro-climate than Lynden, where I live, which is about 15 miles inland. Every spring, as I drive to work, I see forsythia blooming in Bellingham and then along the road to Bellingham before my own finally blooms.

This year, I am resolved to return to container gardening on my deck. For the past few years, with my parents' decline and deaths and my post-water-damage remodel, I haven't had the energy. Last year, I bought some plants, planted a few, then left the rest in their little store pots, where they still are now. This year, I want to make the effort to once again make my deck a beautiful, fragrant place to spend time.

My own heart let me more have pity on

My own heart
Gerard Manley Hopkins

My own heart let me more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.
I cast for comfort I can no more get
By groping round my comfortless, than blind
Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
Thirst's all-in-all in all a world of wet.
Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise
You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile
Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size
At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile
's not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather — as skies
Betweenpie mountains — lights a lovely mile.

I came across this Gerard Manley Hopkins poem a week or so ago, and immediately the first line went straight into me. "My own heart let me more have pity on." It's a variation of what I try to tell myself and what I sometimes tell others, "Be kind to yourself." My sister tells me, "Be a friend to yourself." Would you treat a friend this way? If not, don't treat yourself that way either.

Love me, love my dog

I'm taking a little break from housework, which is unusual for me—not taking a break (that's usual), but housework. I've been washing by hand some pots and bowls that have been in my sink for an incredibly long time. If I told you how long they've sat there, you wouldn't even believe it, but it would be true.

In a little less than an hour, I will drive to the Fred Meyer store in Bellingham to pick up some groceries I ordered online. This has pretty much become my standard method of grocery shopping. I pick out everything I want online, pay for it with my debit card, and schedule a time (an hour window) to pick it up, usually the next day. The nice thing is that I can take my dog with me because I just sit in my car in the specified parking lot, call the store on my cell, and they bring it out, all bagged, and put in in my trunk. They charge me less than $5 for the service.

I have not left my dog in his crate at home alone since we vacated my house more than a year ago. When we lived in a hotel, at first I took him to work with me every day. I had permission to do that for the three months it was supposed to take. After that, I took him every day to doggy day care at the Hyline Hotel for Dogs. I could not leave him in the hotel room because he has separation anxiety and would certainly have barked and howled the whole time I was gone. At Hyline, he has company, which is all he needs. It has made him less neurotic.

When I moved back into my house, I did not have the heart to resume the crate routine we used to follow, where he was in his crate for nine hours while I was away at work. So I have continued bringing him to Hyline. He likes it there. I can tell because he happily jumps out of the car and willingly walks in with his tail up. (As opposed to at the vet, where he nervously jumps out of the car, and has to be coaxed or carried into the exam area, with a droopy tail, and in fear and trembling.)

This close bond between us to some degree limits what I do. If I am going somewhere in the evening or on the weekend where dogs are not welcome, then I have to arrange extra time for him at Hyline. Their drop-off and pick-up hours are 7:00-10:00 a.m. and 3:00-6:00 p.m. So, for an evening outing I have to put him in Hyline's boarding service overnight, which means packing up his medicine and food for them to feed him.

If putting him at Hyline is not feasible, then I don't go wherever I might have otherwise. I know with my mind that putting him in his box for just an hour or two while I would go away really wouldn't do him any harm, but I can't do it. I guess I'm the one now with separation anxiety. Although I don't fear separation for myself, I just feel like I would be betraying his trust. I'm doubtless projecting something on him.

Asparagus fern

I brought a plant to my office. I've had it a long time. I can't even remember when I got it. It used to stand among a number of other plants near my kitchen window, just to the left of the sink. There's a small bit of counter there that's fairly difficult to reach and make useful, so I put my plants there, where they could receive light from the west-facing window over the sink.

My sister used to ask if I really wanted plants there and why. This was when she was helping me get more organized than I usually am. She suggested that, since I had so little counter space to begin with, I should not waste any of it on a bunch of potted plants. When she asked why they were there, I said it's because that's where the light is.

I have one western window (in the kitchen) that gets the afternoon and evening sun. I have one eastern window (in the guest room) that gets very little sun because of trees outside. I have two sunny southern windows (in my bedroom and library), but when I tried to keep a plant in the bedroom my dog knocked over the stand it was on and the pot broke. That was not the first time my dog had caused the destruction of a flower pot. And my library was still in transition from being my dad's office to becoming a library, so I didn't spend much time in there and didn't have a place to put plants. (I have no northern windows, because that wall is underground.)

Then there's my living room. My "front room" as we often call it in Lynden, except my "front room" happens to face the back yard. It also has south-facing windows, but they get no sun, because the upstairs deck overhangs the lower deck there. That's nice for my container gardening on my deck; I have both a sunny, hot south-facing area, and a shady, cool area, so I can grow both sun-loving and shade-loving flowers. But my living room does not get enough sunlight to grow anything. I tried keeping some plants that require very little sun, but even they could not hack it.

Anyway, when my house was torn apart for water damage, my indoor potted plants got shuffled around the place as work progressed. I used to come to my house every Sunday afternoon and walk through to see what was happening. At first, I watered the plants wherever they sat. When they got covered by tarp, I gave up on them. Eventually the pots ended up outside on my deck. Two hardy plants survived this treatment. One was my asparagus fern and the other was a spider plant.

The asparagus fern actually throve once it spent the summer out in the shady side of the deck. This past week, we did go down to a freezing temperature one night. The asparagus fern (let's just call it "Gus") was sheltered enough by the overhanging deck that it did not die in the frost. But the next morning I took it with me to work, cleaned the pot off, pulled and cut out any remaining dead twigs, and set it with my other work plants on the bookcase that serves as a partition for my workspace.



It's a pretty purple pot, as you might see. The glass globe for watering was already in the pot all the whole time since it had been in the kitchen, so I kept it with. I washed it off and filled it up for this fresh start in a new space.

In the smaller, dark-to-light purple pot is a somewhat struggling succulent. It's getting a little spindly, but it hangs in there. And then is my African violet, which does very well in this space and blooms a lot. I believe I bought the African violet to put on my brother's grave at one one time and then brought it into work. The light source here is a skylight in the ceiling above, so the African violet (let's just call it "Vi") leaves reach upward to the light more and don't lie as flat as they usually would. But the beautiful dark purple blooms keep happening.

So, to make a short story long, that's how "Gus" came to live in my office.

It happens that way sometimes

I took my dog out this morning to walk him around the back yard to take care of his needs. It was a lovely autumn morning. The lawn is covered with yellow and brown leaves, and some still hang in the trees, but the branches and twigs are becoming more visible. The sun shone and every dew-covered thing sparkled. I paused, as I often do, near the opening in the shrubs where I can watch the creek flowing by. It's getting fuller and swifter. As I stood enjoying the beauty, my dog suddenly chucked up his most recent meal. We moved on to complete his walk.

Life.

Twenty years after

It's a very rainy Thursday in Lynden, my home town. I've lived in this town, and this house, longer than I ever lived in one place continuously before. Actually, now that I think of it, it's kind of my 20-year anniversary in Lynden. I vacated my apartment in San Jose, California, on October 31st, a Saturday, and I preached a farewell message at my dearly loved church, Friendship Agape, on Sunday, November 1st, and, on Monday, I started the drive up to Lynden, Washington. It was a two-day trip, so I guess November 3rd is really my 20th anniversary of living in Lynden. I moved into this same apartment I'm living in now, in the downstairs of my parents' home.

I had been a part of Friendship Agape Church for seven years, helping out a small, young congregation by teaching and assisting in any way I could. It was thrilling work to see people come to Christ and witness their transformation and growth. The work led me to seminary. I went two years to Fuller Seminary's Northern California Extension Campus. I went to school half time while working full time, which was exhausting. Also, as much as I loved Friendship Agape Church, I felt drained. One day I was sitting in traffic in San Jose. It was the morning commute, and I was in a line of cars waiting for the metering light that would let us on the freeway at 30-second intervals, where we could crawl along at half the speed limit. I thought, Why do I live here? I had moved there a couple years after college because my sister and her family lived there. But I was spending half my wages on rent and putting in almost an extra work day per week in commute time. Meanwhile,  my parents were in Lynden, I had a brother and his family in Lynden, I had extended family in Lynden, and I had always loved Lynden. When I was a girl and moving from place to place every few years, I dreamed of living in Lynden forever.

I considered that I would only go to seminary one time in my life and that to be too worn out to learn well and study deeply was a waste. I remembered that my dad had always told me that if I ever needed a place to live I could live in their downstairs. It has its own kitchen and bathroom, a living room, two bedrooms (one of which was my dad's office), and its own door in and out. So I called my folks and told them I wanted to move to Lynden, live in their house, and go to seminary full time at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia. Lynden is just a few miles from the Canadian border, and Vancouver is closer to us than Seattle. Because they were wonderful parents, my dad and mom were actually thrilled by the idea. My dad immediately went out and bought a gas stove to keep the basement warmer and had gravel laid along the side of the house so I could park there. I told them I thought I would probably move the next spring, around March or April 1999.

But, looking back, I think the Lord saw how tired I was. At the end of September I was laid off from my job. I didn't think it practical to look for a new job when I was planning to move in six months anyway, so I brought my plans forward early. I gave my landlord a month's notice that I would vacate at the end of October. My parents came down from Lynden to help me move.

On October 31st, my sister and her husband, my dad, and kind members of my church packed my worldly possessions into a U-Haul moving van. I had two cats at the time, who both hated riding in the car. Whenever I drove them to the vet, their desperate claws would cling to the lattice of their carriers, and they would yowl the whole way. So I consulted the vet and got some tranquilizers to give them, so they could sleep through the drive.

My church, which was still small and relatively young, was sorry to see me go. When I spoke to them that Sunday, it was the one time when I preached when I really felt the Holy Spirit gave me the message. I spoke more fluently than I can now remember to encourage them to rely on God, the true builder of the church.

The next morning, we started out in two vehicles. My dad and my kind, generous brother-in-law drove the U-Haul. Or, more accurately, my brother-in-law drove and my dad kept him company. I drove my car with my mom as a passenger and my two doped-up cats in their carriers in the back seat. We drove all day Monday, and stopped somewhere to stay in a hotel Monday night. I don't remember where. Then drove all day Tuesday and got to Lynden. I remember bits and pieces of the unpacking.

I put my cats into an unfinished little room that housed the furnace and hot water heater. I didn't want them to be scared by all the coming and going of people with furniture and boxes. My cats were frightened of most people except me. They had been feral kittens when I took them in. Even in the furnace room, they apparently were terrified and disappeared into the walls behind the drywall that didn't quite meet the ceiling. After everyone had left and I was calling them, I could hear them meowing inside the walls. I wanted to keep talking so they would hear my voice and come to it, but I ran out of things to say, so I sat on the floor in the hallway and sang the verses of Amazing Grace until they came creeping out to me, their whiskers full of cobwebs.

Boo

So, because of Halloween, I surmise, my Kindle store has been coughing up a lot of ghost stories and the like under "Recommended for You." I don't like creepy or gory things, but I did see a title I decided to buy: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. When I was a kid, there was a (probably regrettable) TV series of this name. I remember watching it, but I don't remember the show itself. In the 1940s a good movie version was made with Rex Harrison as the ghost. I bought the book and read it. It was quite short. I think I read it in the course of a day (breakfast, lunch, and evening). A likable book.

Changeable as the weather

The skies were busy today. When I got up (rather late) and took the dog out, the ground was wet from overnight rain. When I drove to my sister-in-law's house at about half past noon, the sun was out and all the leaves were gleaming from the rain. With the fall colors, it was gorgeous. After I ate dinner with my sister-in-law and her grandson, she and I got out our needlework. I looked out the window and commented on how it had clouded over during my visit. Pretty soon, we heard thunder. It started to rain, then it hailed. We went and stood in the doorway to watch it. We could see the lightning flash and heard more thunder. After a while the hail stopped, and the storm blew past. By the time I left for home, around 3:30 p.m., half the sky was blue again. As I drove through the countryside, I went through some patches of light fog. As evening fell, fog rolled in. If variety is the spice of life, this was a spicy day, weather-wise.

So very accomplished

I accomplished several things today.

1. I set up my wifi. When I first moved back into my house after the deluge and subsequent repairs, I could not get on the internet at all. Then my co-worker educated me as to using my phone to create a wifi hotspot. I used this for a while. My phone would ding every few minutes with a message from my provider that I had used up my data but they'd added more at my expense. Eventually I realized (I'm slow on the uptake) that I could at least connect my laptop directly to the cable, and I did. So my laptop had internet access but my Kindle did not. Whenever I wanted to download a new Kindle book (which happens frequently) I either had to be at a place of business that offered wifi or use my phone again.

Part of my slowness in setting up my home wifi was ignorance. I had never set it up myself in the first place. My sister visited a few years ago and, discovering I had no wifi, went to Radio Shack, bought whatever was needed and set it up for me. She even set up a network name and password that would be ridiculously easy for me to remember.

When I had to vacate my home, at first I left my wifi, phone, etc. in place, thinking they could sit around during the process, but the workers ended up having to put them aside, so two phones for my landline, an external hard drive, a surge protector power strip, my wifi thingy, and a number of cords and cables ended up just bundled into a small wastepaper basket, where they became coated with dust. Really coated. So when I did come across them, I was reluctant to touch them, thinking that first I'd have to clean them off and then perhaps just be frustrated by being stupidly unable to set them up correctly.

But today I finally did it. I was motivated by the fact that I heard a good speaker on Friday and I wanted to buy her book, but my phone was being wonky and I couldn't get a mobile hotspot set up with it. So I decided I had to take on the wifi job. With wet rags and disinfectant wipes (or as we call them in my workplace "wipies") I got everything cleaned up, although it made my hands feel gross.

Then I found (to my relief) that it was ludicrously simple to plug everything in correctly. Easy on the brain, that is. Somewhat hard on the body when it came to getting down on the floor, crawling under my desk to plug and connect things, and then getting back up again. Try not to picture it.

2. I went to the vet and bought a renewal of my dog's medicine. I had a pill for today and one for tomorrow, which is a Sunday, when the vet's office will be closed, but none for Monday morning. My vet's office is open just until noon on Saturdays, so there was a good chance I'd forget to go get his meds on time. But I remembered. I rock. This medicine is called Denamarin, and it addresses my dog's liver problems. Without it, he gets sick and shivers and curls up and is miserable. With it, he is just as goofy as he always has been. He has to take it in the mornings before he eats, so it was important I remembered.

I'll spare you the lengthy account of what it takes to get a pill inside my dog.

3. I voted. My ballot came in the mail and I filled it all in this evening. I put it in its "security sleeve" and then in its mailing envelope. Tomorrow I can just drop it in the mail. I consider it my duty to vote my conscience.

Given my low spirits and general sense of exhaustion, lethargy, and acedia over the past year and more, accomplishing three things is a good sign that perhaps I am climbing out of an emotional hole. Does accomplishing things make me "accomplished"? Mr. Darcy might not think so.

The basic necessity of coffee

A couple days ago, I ran out of coffee K-cups at home. To backtrack, when I moved back into my home this spring, I bought myself a Keurig coffee maker as a housewarming gift, and I gave my drip coffee maker to charity. Thursday and Friday, I picked up a cup of coffee at a stand on my way to work. Saturday, I made a special trip in the morning just to buy a cup of coffee.

Today I didn’t feel up to leaving the house. I did have to take the dog into the back yard, and I will have to do that again. Also, I’m scheduled to pick up groceries from Fred Meyer in Bellingham in a little while, so I’ll have to go there. (A box of coffee pods will be among the items I bring back.) But mostly I’ve been either on the computer, or reading, or knitting (two rows), or contemplating. Thinking a lot about my parents. While I was trying to knit, I realized how uncomfortable, headachy, and crabby I was feeling. I finally made the brilliant leap of diagnosing my ill-ease as a lack of coffee.

When we had our family reunion in August, I bought a little container of ground coffee to use in the big coffee urns to provide coffee for my relatives.



I still had some, so I put a couple cups of water in a pan and spooned in some coffee and put it on the burner to boil. Eventually it did so, and I tried to pour it through a paper coffee filter into a mug. I made quite a mess, but I did get a cup of coffee out of the experiment. Also, when I mopped up the spilled liquid, my stove top was cleaner than it had been before.

Now that I’ve had coffee, I do indeed feel better, physically.

Old dog, old tricks

My dog comes up to me when I’m sitting at the computer, and he makes some noise so I notice him. I reach out my hand to pet him but he dances away and prances around as if I’m about to get up and take him for a walk. Which I’m not.

Hair care

I can think of at least two movies in which women radically changed their hairstyles as a mark of a new stage in their lives. One was Waiting to Exhale. Angela Bassett's character goes from long, flowing hair to a very short cut after her husband leaves her. The other was Sliding Doors, with the same change (long to short) along with a color change for Gwyneth Paltrow's character after she breaks up with her boyfriend.

I've been through a few. Just to go back to my early 40s, I was without regular employment, and therefore without regular income. I grew very long hair without much intention just by not having enough money to go to the hair salon.



After I became a legal assistant, I got my hair cut. I pretty much stuck with shoulder-length, more or less, first with bangs and then growing them out, and gradually I colored my hair. I would go more dark red in the winter and more strawberry blond in the summer. Going to the hair salon every six to eight weeks was a symbol to me of my prosperity.



In July, 2016, my mom went to the hospital. I had to cancel a hair appointment because I was taken up with my concern for her. I never rescheduled. My mom went from the hospital to a skilled nursing facility, my dad moved into the assisted living facility next door to hers, my mom went into hospice care, my dad became more ill and weak, my dad went to the hospital and then to the skilled nursing facility, my dad went into hospice care, my dad died, and my mom died. By that time, it was April, 2017, and I had not had my hair professionally done in nearly a year. It was getting long, with blond ends and darker root (but the "roots" were pretty long, too).



I went to Super-Cheap Clips & Cuts, or whatever it's called, and had it cut to shoulder length. That took away most of the blond, but there still was an inch or two. Finally yesterday I went back to Super-Cheap and had it cut again. There may still be a fraction of an inch of color, but mostly the artificial color is gone.



This current haircut symbolizes my desire to simplify my life. I'm ready to go gray, if it's time for that. (Hiding gray was never the reason for my coloring; I colored because I thought my own color was uninteresting.) I'm going to let it grow. I look forward to being able to put it in a simple french braid or some easy updo. No fuss.

Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes. Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight. (I Peter 3:3-4)