Still good

 Ah, well. We finally got the hard freeze that did in my calla lily.

I tell myself it’s no worse now than it would have been earlier, but it is a bit sad to see the bloom ruined.

So it goes.

At least my dog is still adorable. Here she is nestled in a quilt.

And here she burrowed into my sweater but didn't realize that part of her was still exposed to the open air.

Today is a bright, sunny day, though cold. We are predicted to have freezing nights for a number of days now, and some chances of snow flurries. I can't think the snow will stick, though, because the daytime temperatures will be in the 40s (Fahrenheit, of course). That's cold (to me) but it's not cold enough to keep snow from melting.

It feels like a good day to drink coffee. But then, every day feels like that to me.

Good times

My calla lily is in bloom. This is unusual. Every year that I plant flowers, I plant a calla lily in a ½-barrel near the southwestern corner of my deck. It is a shady spot. I usually plant trailing flowers around it, to cascade down the sides of the barrel. Lately those have been red begonias and white bacopa. All of these are annuals where I live. They die in the frost.

In the spring, I buy a calla lily that is in bloom. They stay in bloom a good while. Even after the bloom is gone, the plant continues to grow big green leaves, and is tall—to contrast with the trailing flowers. Then winter comes, and in a hard freeze the calla lily dies. The next spring I throw it out and plant a new one. In the many years I’ve lived her, one year I thought the calla lily had died and I planted a new one, then the old one rose from its ashes (its bulb or rhizome or whatever) and grew right by the new one.

This winter, the calla lily has not died, and now it’s in bloom in January already. We could still get more freezes and snow before spring, but right now it’s like early spring.

My sweet box is also blooming. That’s a bush with green leaves all year round. It’s other name is sarcococca, but sweet box sounds nicer, doesn’t it? It gets tiny white blooms that are sweetly fragrant. Just walking by, you get the heady scent. When I first moved here from California, I thought it must be some kind of jasmine, but it’s not. But if you know jasmine, then you have some idea what it’s like.

My dog is adorable. Generally, I’m not one to put clothes on a dog, but being so very chihuahua, my puppy feels the cold. She likes to burrow into quilts and sweaters that I have lying around. In fact, yeah, that’s why they’re lying around. (Ahem.) Anyway, I did buy her some clothes to shield her from the cold, and my favorite is a pink cable-knit sweater. 

The first time I put it on her, she kept shaking and shaking herself. Not trembling in the chihuahua fashion, which she does do fairly often, but shaking herself like all dogs do. After I stopped paying attention to her for a while, and then looked at her again, she had managed to remove it by herself. But the next time she wore it, she was more accepting.

Today is the birthday of a beloved family member. I won’t call her out by name because she might not like that, but my family knows who she is. She is a dear and loving person.

And those are the important happenings in my world on this January 20th, 2021. 

Worst case scenarios

Last night, for a couple hours, I felt most unwell. I think I had eaten something that disagreed with me because I was completely better by morning, but while my discomfort lasted I ran through some dismal possible outcomes. 

I thought I might have cancer. Whenever anything's wrong with me, I think I might have cancer. So far, I've been wrong every time. (Thank you, Lord.)

I also thought I might die that very night, and I envisioned when, and how, and by whom my dead body would be found. I had read an article online about a woman in England who was dead for five years before her body was discovered on her living room couch, with the TV still running. How would my dog react? I had seen an article online about a dog that had to eat its dead owner to survive. Perhaps I need to stop falling for lurid clickbait.

Anyway, aside from not getting as much sleep as I would have liked, I'm none the worse. 

And tomorrow is Friday. Sometimes on a Friday I'll keep checking my calendar to see if it really is Friday because that seems too good to be true. After all, four out of five workdays it's not Friday, so why should this one be different? It's just so unlikely. But sometimes the good thing is true.

Hard to believe.

Wild nights

Tonight after supper I drank a cup of coffee. Someday when I retire I'm going to do that every night. For now, I do it on Friday nights because it doesn't matter if I stay awake until late because I can sleep in tomorrow! I was telling a friend about this and she thought it was funny that my idea of a wild Friday night was to drink coffee. What can I say? I'm just the adventurous type.

The puppy

Well, I have a puppy now, and she has consoled me a lot for the loss of my previous dog. I was feeling down about how at every interval of my day I missed my dog. He had followed me and sat by me (or on me) and basically always been there for so many years. Toward the end of August, I decided it was time. I looked at the shelter websites and filled out an application, I looked at ads on craigslist. I didn't feel I could take on a dog that was being rehomed because it had problems or special needs. I myself have problems and special needs enough. 

Finally, one Saturday, I responded to several craigslist ads, even as far away as Seattle. Some had already sold their dog, some didn't answer. I made contact with a lady in Tacoma advertising chihuahua-pug mix puppies. She had one left, a female. She told me the cost, and I told her I was on my way. It was a pretty long drive. She texted me toward the end asking if I was still coming. We set up a meeting in front of some strip mall store. Naturally, I missed the freeway exit I needed, but Google Maps showed me the way, and I got there and called her on my cell. It was kind of like a drug deal. I handed her a wad of cash, and she handed me the little package.

The night she arrived

The puppy slept most of the drive home. It was a long drive, in the dark, and she was just a baby. I took her to the vet a few days after I got her, and they said she was about 8 weeks old. She weighed 1.9 pounds.

The day of her first vet visit

Now she's been with me a little over seven weeks—nearly half her life. I don't see it day-to-day, but looking at then and now pictures I see she's growing. I don't know how much she weighs at this point. I just tried to put her on the scale I use for weighing mail for my work, but she wasn't having it. Anyway, there she is.

This evening

She's still pretty cute. It's hard to get a non-blurry picture of her because she's either awake and wiggly and zooming around, or asleep and curled into a little ball and probably burrowed into a blanket.

She and I are getting accustomed to each other, learning each other's ways. Being a puppy, she's pretty bitey. I've looked that up, and it's due partly to her youth—she's exploring the world by taste-testing everything she encounters—and partly due to teething. Her adult teeth should be in by six months, and I hope and trust the biting will decline after that. 

I have bought her some chew sticks—"gullet sticks" is their appetizing name—and she loves those. I offer her those as an alternative to my fingers, especially at bed time, when she seems to think it would be a good way to prepare for sleep by gnawing on me. Sometimes she takes the chew stick and runs off with it and hides it. She remembers where. Today I saw her climb into the bottom shelf of a book case and get a chew stick she had left there. Gullet sticks are edible (for dogs) so sometimes she just chomps it to smithereens and eats the whole thing up. 

Like her predecessor, she follows me around and wants to be with me all the time. My favorite times with her are when she has burned off some of her energy and she comes and snuggles up to me, and we are comfortable together. She has a short, thin coat, and she radiates warmth. It's good to have a furry companion again.

Testing

Today I was tested for COVID. Not because I have any symptoms, but because on Monday I am scheduled for an outpatient procedure and the local hospital will only let you in for that if you have tested negative for COVID within the past 48-72 hours. Makes sense.

I was a little apprehensive about the testing. I’ve seen pictures of when they stick a long one-ended Q-tip through someone’s nasal passages way to the back of their sinuses. I tortured myself last night by googling “How unpleasant is it to get tested for COVID?” Results: It can be plenty  unpleasant, but there is a trend toward smaller swabs not being poked in quite so far. 

I’m thankful to say that I received the easier treatment. It was drive-through testing, although you had to have an appointment. One person came to my car and held up a sign saying, “Place your driver’s license against the window.” I did so, and she found my name on a list, checked it, and gave me a thumbs up. I was only one or two cars back in line. Each car drove under a canopy and two men in white coats, blue gloves, and plastic masks came out to the car window. They asked for my name and birth date, then one of them explained that he would twirl the swab around in each nostril for ten seconds. And he did. It wasn’t a lovely experience, but at least it didn’t hurt. Then he stuck the snotty swab into a tube and told me my doctor would have the results in 24–48 hours.

It goes without saying that on my way to the test I pulled into the wrong parking lot. There was a building labeled Northwest Pathology, whereas I should have been at Northwest Laboratory. The Pathology building was locked up (today is Saturday), and I was standing in front of the doors calling on my cell phone when a lady in pickup stopped, rolled down her window, and asked if I needed help. I told her I was scheduled for a COVID test and she told me the drive through testing was just over there—pointing across a parking lot and then a street and then another parking lot. Ah. I had been thinking it would be like a doctor’s office visit, checking in, giving them my insurance card, and all that. So I drove over and got in line.

When I was done and drove out of the testing spot, I was headed into a parking area for a lot of industrial buildings. I thought there should be an easy way out of there, but as I drove in further I only saw passages to other buildings, so I decided the safest bet was to do a U-turn and go out the way I came in. And that’s what I did. I wanted to avoid the kind of ludicrous driving around not knowing where I am that is all too common in my life. I have a gift for getting lost. It’s genetic. All my siblings are gifted in this way, too. 

My procedure on Monday is for kidney stones. It should be routine but there are always risks and all that jazz. If you are one who prays, say a prayer for me.

Mopping up

Recently I mopped a portion of my kitchen floor.

The end.

That's a big story already, of the "rarely happens" variety.

But wait, there's more!

So I have this mop (a gift from my sister-in-law) that has a little tank on the handle for cleaner and water—whatever you use (I use white vinegar and water)—and there's lever up by the hand-hold that you press and a bit of your cleaning fluid sprays on the floor and you mop it up.

The little tank was low on fluid, so I took it off, rinsed it out, and put it in the sink. I reached for a plastic bottle of vinegar that happened to be nearby and poured some in. As I was setting the bottle aside, the words "No Red Dye" caught my eye. Weird. Since when does vinegar have red dye in it? Was this another case like when I bought gluten-free dryer sheets (really). So I looked again.

Surprise! It was a bottle of hummingbird food. No red dye and therefore clear.

Thank goodness I didn't mop my floor with that! Could have been pretty gross, and I don't doubt that an ant problem would have ensued. So I rinsed out the tank again, filled it with vinegar and water, sloshed it around, poured it out, rinsed it again, and then refilled it with vinegar and water. And I mopped the bit of floor that needed it most.

The end.

Cheers

Last week, my old laptop died.

Boo!

So I ordered a new one from Dell.

Yay!

I chose expedited shipping so I could receive it on June 23.

Yay!

When I would check the tracking number, it would tell me my expected date to receive it was June 26.

Boo!

But today, June 23, it was delivered.

Yay!

I've got it more or less set up, and I'm using it now.

Yay!

Saturday

Yesterday would have been the perfect day to mow my lawn, in terms of weather. But it was a weekday, and, in spite of the coronavirus, I work 9:00-5:00, Monday-Friday—in my home. This is a blessing because I have no diminution in income, unlike so many who are either laid off or having to close their businesses. But sometimes when I see all the memes about Netflix binging and extra time to do projects around home, I think, I wish.

This morning I woke up early, made some coffee, took it back to my bedroom, read a novel and drank the coffee, and then went back to sleep. This is a lovely Saturday morning thing to do. I woke up much later, in time to have breakfast near lunch time. Then I went and stood out on my patio and looked at the long grass and the dandelions that have gone to seed. I should have mowed last week Saturday, but I didn’t. I forget why. The weather may have been unsuitable, or, likely, I was probably just lazy. Anyway, I said to myself today that I must mow, that I would go inside, have one more cup of coffee while perusing Facebook, and then come out and mow the lawn.

So I had a cup of coffee and perused Facebook, then looked out to see wet paving stones. It’s raining, not hard, but the invisible misting of Western Washington. One does not mow wet grass. The grass would stick to the mower blades and clog them up. I’ve experienced that with a walking mower; I don’t want to experience it with the driving mower I have now. It’s a John Deere. Only the best for my dad, whose lawn equipment I have inherited.

Rain is forecast for today and tomorrow. Monday, when I’m back at work, it will be overcast but not rainy, then rain some more Tuesday and Wednesday. Later next week, it’s predicted to dry up a lot and get very warm—in the 70s (Fahrenheit) Thursday through Sunday. So I’ll probably have to mow three weeks’ worth of growth next Saturday. I hope it doesn’t become disgracefully shaggy by then. In the front, at least. The back yard will become disgraceful; it already is. But the front yard is not quite as wild, not quite as infested with dandelions.

My beloved town, Lynden, Washington, is known for its beautiful, manicured lawns. My yard does not fit in with that stereotype. Fortunately, I live in an obscure cul-de-sac, where the pressure to have a beautiful lawn is less. Our yard has never been the smooth, clipped ideal, but it has not always been as weedy and ragged as it is now.

During the final years of my parents’ lives and for several years after their deaths, I simply did not have the heart for lawn care. The best I could do was keep the yard mowed, and often I had to pay others to do that. I also stopped doing container gardening on my deck. I used to have many pots of beautiful, fragrant flowers, but for a number of years I’ve had pots of dirt, empty pots, and an unkempt deck. Sometimes I would buy some plants to put in the pots, but then I never would, and they would either die of thirst or survive until winter froze them. It was hard for me even to get around to throwing away the little pots of dirt in which they died.

This year, I’m trying again to climb out of that. Last fall, my great-nieces and the boyfriend of one of them cleaned my deck for me. They emptied out pots of dirt, threw away any junk, piled the pots neatly. Now, a couple weeks ago I went to a nursery (maintaining safe social distance, blah, blah, blah) and bought a lot of plants and a lot of potting soil. I have planted some, and I am confident I will also plant the rest, and then I’ll get some more and plant those, too.

It’s been a number of years since I sat out on the deck in one of my Adirondack chairs, drinking coffee, but I have done it this spring. One good thing about the stay-at-home order is that, when I take a break from work (I am entitled to a 15-minute break morning and afternoon), I can go sit out there. I set a timer on my phone and just sit and look at the yard and trees. I’ve been taking pictures of how, as the trees leaf out, they hide the unlovely, graffitied, buildings across the creek (Vander Griend Lumber) and the milk-drying towers of Darigold. They can’t hide the Darigold noise, but I have to just live with that.

I am still mourning my dog. His beds are still around the house, his dishes are still in the kitchen, and his leash is still in my car. I have received back a box with his ashes, along with his paw print in clay and a clipping of his hair. I ordered a glass locket for his hair. It was hard to put in because it stuck out the edges. I ended up stuffing the hair in, closing the locket, and then trimming the hair away that stuck out. I wondered if I would ruin the hair in my attempts to preserve it, then told myself that, thanks to my lax housekeeping, I have lots of his hair still around the house, particularly in clumps under the furniture. I laughed at my own joke. I always appreciate my own wit. If I don’t, who will?

I said something similar about my dad once. Long ago, I worked at a place that published automotive information and textbooks. When the first book I edited came out (Automatic Transmissions and Transaxles), it had my name in the credits, and my dad wanted to buy one. I went to see the production manager and told him my dad wanted to buy this book. He laughed. I said, “Hey, if my dad didn’t think I was wonderful, who would?” The manager gave me a freebie to give to my dad.

Another thing I said about my dad was that he was interested in details of my life that even I found boring. When we talked on the phone, he often asked, “What did you have for lunch?” I would struggle to remember because I lead a boring culinary life. But my dad wasn’t just making conversation, he genuinely wanted to know. He cared about me more than I cared about me.

My parents’ deaths have not left me without anyone to care. I have so many people who care. When my dog died, so many people expressed their sympathy through social media, emails, even cards, and my brother called me from Iowa just to give me his condolences. Yesterday, May 1, a member of my church small group came to my house (wearing a mask and maintaining safe social distance, blah, blah, blah) and brought me a little jam jar with lilacs, tulips, and a little something else I didn’t recognize but it’s pretty. The flowers were for May Day. They were so fragrant.


Today’s rain has prevented lawn mowing, but there are many other ways I could use my time. I could clean house. I could plant flowers. I could sit around all day reading the Inspector Gamache mysteries by Louise Penny. Which will I choose? The suspense is killing me.

Crying gives me a headache

My head hurts. Yesterday, I took my dog to the vet and had him put to sleep.

He started to be quite ill mid-March. I took him to the vet and he was diagnosed with diabetes and some type of infection (high white blood cell count). I took him home with information about where to mail-order insulin and with a course of antibiotics to start immediately.

His appetite was variable. I would mix up the antibiotic pill and (in the morning) a pill he took for his liver with peanut butter and embed pieces of Pill Pockets into the mix. His liver pill was supposed to be consumed an hour before eating breakfast. Sometimes he ate the medicinal mix and sometimes not. When I put out his food, sometimes he at a little, sometimes most of it, sometimes not at all.

When the insulin and syringes arrived, I took him back to the vet for instruction on how to give him his injections and how much. While we were in the exam room, he was very intrigued by a canister containing liver treats. Although he was picking at his food at home, he snapped those up. The vet used them to distract him while giving the injection, and he never noticed a thing.

I bought a couple cans of prescription dog food at the vet’s office, and, when I got home, I also went to the same website and set up a recurring order of the food and some treats that looked similar to what he enjoyed at the vet’s. He liked the prescription dog food and ate it more heartily than what I had been feeding him; however, it ran out very quickly.

By this time, coronavirus madness was raging. I received notification that order delivery would be delayed because of high volume. It took two weeks to receive the first order, and the second one came a couple days after. But by that time, I knew I would not need to keep receiving it.

My dog kept getting weaker and weaker. Up until he started getting sick, he was able to jump up onto the couch or recliner whenever I sat there. No longer. He could just walk into dog beds on the floor, but eventually even that made him stumble. His legs often trembled. Sometimes his rear legs seemed to drag. His eyesight had been failing, but now it got worse. He would walk right into an object on the floor, or get tangled up in chair legs, or bump into the wall.

He was getting skinnier. When he didn’t eat his food, I was uncertain whether to give him the insulin he was supposed to have after eating. It was post-eating to reduce the risk of hypoglycaemia, which can be fatal. If he didn’t eat, I didn’t know what to do and ended up not giving it to him, or giving it to him, but hoping the food he liked better would arrive soon. I don’t know if my incompetent care aggravated his condition. I think, given his age, his prognosis was already poor. He had had chronic pancreatitis ever since I owned him and liver issues for a couple years. He was old.

I sat and tried to figure out how old he was. When I bought him, I was told he was a year and a half old. But I could never remember when I bought him. By thinking of major family events, my best guess was that I bought him in early 2006, which would mean he had been born in mid-2004. So he was probably approaching 16, which is pretty old for a dog. And he had been my dear companion for more than 14 years.

He was sweet and affectionate. Whenever I got up and moved around the house, he would be literally at my heels. He kept following me around the house even in these final weeks when he could hardly walk. I would wait for him to catch up.

He loved being with me. It was all he wanted. In a way, it’s a strange blessing that for his final weeks I was home with him all the time because of the coronavirus. Saturday, which was yesterday, I had a vet appointment scheduled to follow up on his diabetes. But I decided it was time. It was so distressing to watch his struggles. His normal mode of walking was always lively and with his tail curled up over his back, but now he staggered and he never lifted his tail—it always hung down. Once I decided that, every time I looked at him the rest of the day, I felt like a traitor. There he was, trusting me, and I was planning his death.

He no longer wanted to be picked up and held. I guess it didn’t feel good anymore. So I sat for a while on the floor next to his bed and petted him. Eventually it was time to go to the vet’s. In the car, he lay on the passenger seat. Back in the day, he would have put his paws on the dashboard and watched through the windshield for other dogs to bark at. Now he lay quietly. When we got to the vet, I communicated with the staff via my cell phone. A staffer came out and carried my dog inside for an exam. If it were not the day of his death, I would not have gone inside because of coronavirus.

But once they checked him out, confirmed his worsening condition, and discussed the options with me by phone, another staffer came out and let me into a room. They brought my dog in to me. He still was not comfortable being held close, so I put him on the exam table and petted him there. He again discovered a canister of liver treats, so I opened it and gave him some and he ate them with enjoyment. The vet came in to give him a sedation injection, and we agreed the pup could have all treats he wanted. I kept putting them in front of him and he kept eating them until suddenly he stopped. I thought he could not see the treat so I held it to his nose, but he did not respond. I realized he had lost consciousness. Then I did take him up in my arms and cuddle him and say all the loving phrases I was accustomed to say to him, until I was crying too hard to talk.

Then the vet and an assistant came in to give the final shot, which he had explained as an overdose of anaesthetic which would stop my dog’s heart. So I laid my dog down on the table and petted his head and ears and whispered to him and also cried and sniffed. I tried not to breathe in the direction of the vet and his helper. They were kind and gentle. When I apologized for the snuffy noises I was making with my nose, they assured me it was fine. The vet listened to my dog’s heart with a stethoscope until he said, “He’s gone.”

We had arranged over the phone that I would leave my dog’s body there and they would send it out to be cremated and call me with the ashes were returned to their office. So I gave my dog one final kiss and loving word, and then the vet showed me out.

I had taken off his collar and I had that with me when I got in the car, and there was his leash lying on the passenger seat. I started the car and drove out of the parking lot. I did not want to go straight home, so I drove out to Birch Bay. I parked in front of the water and watched it for a while. The tide was in but starting to go out. After a while, I emailed my family and texted some friends from my phone to tell them what happened. I started to get responses almost immediately.

I pulled out and turned to drive home. On the way, my phone rang twice, but I didn’t answer it, partly because I was driving, and partly because I didn’t want to talk yet. One call was from a friend and one was from my sister.

I knew I would not feel like making a meal, so I bought some food at a fast-food drive-through when I entered town. I went home. I ate the food. Then I turned off all the lights in my house and sat in my room and cried off and on until I fell asleep. Crying gives me a headache.

Today I have cried a few times again. I sometimes am expecting something without even knowing what, and then I realized I’m expecting to see him under my desk or somewhere in the room. I have a dog bed in each room for him. His water dish and supper dish are there. I will never fill them again.

He was a good dog.

First work day of Daylight Saving Time

So this morning I set out on my morning commute. Out of my cul-de-sac onto South Park. Made a right turn onto southbound Depot Road. As I turned, a man in a northbound car honked and yelled at me.

What is your problem? I wondered. All I did was turn right.

Continued to Grover and turned left. As I drove on Grover a man in a truck behind me honked and gestured.

Maybe I have a flat tire?

I pulled over and rolled down my window. He pulled alongside and called out: "Your coffee cup is on your roof."

"Thank you!" I yelled back.

I got out of my car and, sure enough, there was my coffee cup on the roof of my car. It had slid over to the door jamb. Some coffee had splashed out, and what was left was a little cold, but I drank it anyway. I needed it.

With a song in my heart (or head)

So, while I was ill, I had a couple of the world’s worst earworms. When I first got sick, the Christmas season was just ending, and I had a Christmas hymn stuck in my mind: “Break forth, O Beauteous Heavenly Light.” That’s the first line. The second line is, “And usher in the morning.” That’s as much as I know by heart.

But! Not only did my brain keep replaying just those first two phrases, it kept getting the second part wrong. So I would be lying around, thinking things like, “Ugh” and “Bleah,”and my brain would sing to me:

Break forth, O Beauteous Heavenly Light,
And take away…no, wait…and usher in the morning.

“Stop!” The sane part of my brain said. A few minutes later:

Break forth, O Beauteous Heavenly Light,
And take away…and usher in the morning.

No, nooooo.

Later, when I felt better, it was a different song. From time to time I would get chills, and even as I thought, “I’ve got chills,” my brain would belt out (inside my head):

I got chills!
They’re multiplying.
And I’m looooooosing control.
Cause the power
You’re supplying—
It’s electrifying!
(It’s electrifying!)

As my brain tried to move on to “Better shape up. Cause I need a man, and my heart is set on you,” the sane part of my brain would shout (inside my head), “Shut up, shut up, John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John! I don’t want you right now.”

Now that I’m well (or better), my brain has reverted to my current long-term song, “Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken.” At least with that one, I know all the words and even three verses, so if I become aware of the song drifting through my head (it usually happens in my car) I can sing the whole thing.

Obstacles along the way

Well, my New Year got off to a rough start. I was scheduled to go back to work on January 6th. On Sunday, January 5th, I woke up shivering and nauseated, with certain symptoms you don't even want to know. I was sick, sick, sick that whole week. My dear sister-in-law kept in touch with me by text and came by with soda crackers, ginger ale, and anything else I needed. Her daughter, my niece, drove me to the doctor's office, where I received antibiotics and ineffectual anti-nausea medicine. I called back for something stronger and my doctor phoned in a prescription for something that was both anti-nausea and sedating.

I went back to work the next week, but didn't last out the week. Slowly, very slowly, I started to recover. I saw my doctor at the end of January, and he said my illness had been a kidney infection, and my blood test results showed my kidneys were not functioning as well as they should. I have since had a scan that revealed a kidney stone in each kidney.

In the first week of February, I took a sick day, and went back to work the next day. At work, at various times in the day, I thought, I feel surprisingly well, given how lousy I felt yesterday. Then, in the last quarter hour of the day, I tripped over a box in my workstation and fell down on our hard floor. It's carpeted, but underneath I'm pretty sure is cement. Bruised my left knee, hurt my left arm, and even smacked my nose on the floor causing it to bleed. I was pretty shook up by the time I was able to get to my feet and then drive home.

Instead of going directly home, I went to the urgent care place in my town. X-rays revealed a fracture at the top of my humerus bone, which is the long bone in the arm between the elbow and the shoulder. They gave me a sling.

A large percentage of people who hear about my injury ask if I am left-handed. No. I am right-handed, so I am fortunate that my dominant hand is not impaired.

The next day at work, co-workers told me (what I hadn't thought of for myself) that, since this was a workplace injury, I needed to start an L&I (Labor and Industries) claim. So I did. I've never done that before, so I don't know whether it's going to be a big hassle or not.

Tomorrow I go back for more X-rays to see if the fracture is healing. It's been almost three weeks since I fell. I still have a certain amount of pain from the injury. I take a lot of ibuprofen. My kidney stones have been mostly quiescent. Once in a while they make their presence felt, but not to the extent that I have to seek immediate medical attention. I try to drink lots of water.

I have an appointment in early March with a urology clinic regarding my kidneys and their stones. I keep thinking if biology means the study of life, urology must mean the study of urine. It doesn't sound like a high calling, but it is. I've had kidney stones before, and when the urinary tract is blocked the body really suffers. Truly, we are fearfully and wonderfully made.

There is a Jewish prayer specifically for after elimination of waste from the body. This is an English translation:

Blessed are You, Lord, our God, King of the universe, Who formed man with wisdom and created within him many openings and many hollow spaces. It is obvious and known before Your Seat of Honor that if even one of them would be opened, or if even one of them would be sealed, it would be impossible to survive and to stand before You even for one hour. Blessed are You, Lord, Who heals all flesh and acts wondrously

Amen.

Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed; 
save me, and I shall be saved: 
for thou art my praise.
Jeremiah 17:14

Presidents' Day

Tomorrow I have a Monday holiday: Presidents' Day. It is always the third Monday of February. It is associated mainly with Presidents Washington and Lincoln. Lincoln's birthday is February 12th and Washington's birthday is February 22nd, so Presidents Day falls in between.



In my research online, I found out that Washington's birthday became a Federal holiday in 1880, and it was celebrated on whatever day it fell on. I remember in junior high (grades 7 & 8) making a little cherry pie in home economics class in honor of Washington's birthday. That is because of the story about Washington's honesty, that when he was a boy he cut down a cherry tree and, when his father asked who had done it, young George said, "Father, I cannot tell a lie. I did it with my little axe." Or words to that effect.

Lincoln is also known for his honesty, even bearing the nickname "Honest Abe." The story I heard about him was that when he was a young man he worked in a store, and one day he accidentally overcharged a woman by a tiny amount. I think it was three cents. Granted, in those days, three pennies could buy more than it could now. Anyway, according to the story, when he realized his mistake, he walked a long distance to the woman's home to give her back her pennies without delay.

In the late 1960s, Congress passed a bill changing four holidays (Washington’s Birthday, Memorial Day, Veterans Day, and Columbus Day) to always be Mondays, so that workers could have three-day weekends. (Labor Day was always a Monday. Veterans Day was changed back to November 11th in the mid-1970s. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Birthday was established as a Monday holiday in the early 1980s.)

I was surprised to learn that Congress has never officially changed the name of Washington's Birthday to Presidents' Day. But it has become general usage. Some say the honors all presidents. In today's polarized political environment, that could cause some uproar.

Anyway, as this lengthy explanation shows, Presidents' Day is a somewhat amorphous holiday and, it seems to me, does not bring out the patriotic feelings of some of our other Federal holidays. Other than cherry pie, I know of no traditions associated with it. Not that cherry pie isn't a fine tradition all by itself. But I do appreciate George Washington and Abraham Lincoln for being such exemplary Presidents of the United States that I can sleep in tomorrow. Thanks, guys.

End of year musing

Today, I am at the beginning of a week of stay-cation. I'll try to get a few things done around the house. We'll see how that goes.

I have New Year's Eve plans. I'm going to stay home and read, watch a movie, or knit, or some combination of those. I bought myself a little bottle of champagne to open at midnight, and I plan to buy some oliebollen, the traditional Dutch New Year treat. My kind of party. My dog will be there.

When my folks were living, I spent New Year's Eve with them. One year, they got out the Church Yearbook, which is an annually published book of statistics about churches in my denomination, the Christian Reformed Church in North America. My dad would think of the names of his seminary classmates (Calvin Theological Seminary), and my mom would look them up and read out what congregations they had served. I was like, "Whoa. Is this the wildest New Year's Eve party ever, or what?" After that, it became a family joke. As December 31st approached, my sister would warn me not to get too crazy with the Church Yearbook. I would reply that I couldn't restrain our parents if they wanted to get that rowdy.

One year, my pastor had mentioned that his family, like so many families, would read Psalm 90 at the new year, so I suggested that to my dad. He turned down the idea because he knew the Psalm had all kinds of things in it about the brevity of human life. My dad did not care for reminders of his own mortality. He didn't like it when my mom would say to one of us kids about some household item, "You can have this when I'm dead." It didn't bother my mom or me. We would kind of laugh about it and pantomime and mouth those kinds of remarks to each other so Dad didn't have to hear them.

Well, rest in peace, Dad and Mom. Some day we will celebrate together not just the New Year but the New Creation. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

Second Saturday

Today is like a second Saturday. Thursday, Thanksgiving, was like a Sunday: religious aspect (giving thanks) and big mid-day dinner. Yesterday, Friday, was like Saturday: nothing scheduled. And today is like another Saturday, plus it actually is Saturday.

I have have two kinds of Saturdays. One is the usual: sleep in, intend to do housework but then read and play on the computer all day (possibly with a nap included somewhere). I always justify this Saturday by the fact that I'm worn out by the work week. Yesterday was that type of (pseudo) Saturday. I'm hoping today is the rarer kind: actually carry out my intentions of housework.

The more I can get straightened up today, the better. Tomorrow, of course, is the real Sunday. I generally spend Sunday afternoon at my sister-in-law's house, having the big mid-day meal and then either doing needlework, or just chatting.

Then comes Monday, which would be going-back-to work day, but I scheduled a vacation day. My sister-in-law is coming over and we will do more on the really long, slow project of unpacking and organizing my belongings. I moved back into my house after water-damage repairs in March 2018, and I am still working at it. I don't get much done on my "usual" Saturdays, and forget about weekday evenings.

The only real progress takes place when I schedule a vacation day for this specific purpose. Even then, progress only happens because my sister-in-law comes over and works with me. She keeps me upbeat and focused. She takes away the empty boxes and paper (at least 50% of the area of each box is occupied by crumpled up butcher paper)—otherwise, the clutter issue becomes worse as I unpack, instead of better.

If I can get some cleaning done today, then when she comes we can do more of the actual unpacking without first having to do cleaning.

Also, Amazon had a Black Friday special yesterday and I ordered a Roomba. It's scheduled to be delivered Monday. So, if I have most of the floor space cleared, I can start using that and hopefully have better cleaning maintenance than I have up till now.

Anyway, here's a picture of the wonderful lady who keeps me from getting buried under clutter, mess, and boxes. I don't mention her name, because she is a very private person.



Oh, one more motive for cleaning up is that tomorrow is the first Sunday of Advent, and I want to set up my Advent wreath. It would not look pretty in the middle of a mess, so I'll be trying to make my living room worthy of its presence.

Give thanks

Today is Thanksgiving. I had dinner with my sister-in-law, my niece and her husband, and their four children. Two of the "children" are adults now. The other two are teenagers. It was a nice time together. Good food, good company, as they say.

It was a chilly day. We're having some gusty winds and cold temperatures. It was sunny, though. A pretty day.

Thanksgiving marks the beginning of Christmas season in the popular culture here in the U.S. Several of my neighbors have Christmas lights up. I imagine more will put them up tomorrow. For several weeks, my nighttime drives will be brightened by the display.

I had two firsts of my own for the holiday season. I drank my first glass of eggnog (with a dollop of whiskey), and I listened to Handel's Messiah for the first time. Eggnog starts showing up in stores around Halloween already. I love eggnog immoderately, so I make myself wait until Thanksgiving to start having any. As to the Messiah, perhaps I misspoke to say I listened to it, because I slept through much of it. That tryptophan coma, you know. I dozed off in "Comfort ye my people" and woke up at "All they that see him laugh him to scorn." So I was able to hear the trumpet solo, and the Hallelujah Chorus, and the rest.

So, a quiet, pleasant day. Now I still have days off ahead of me. I love a loooong weekend.

That time of year thou mayst in me behold

When I link a blog entry to Facebook, I don't like how the first sentence or first few words show up there. So I'm putting in these two sentences as space filler.

Well, I guess I had a recrudescence of anxiety, or depression, or whatever. I like the word "recrudescence." It's like I had crud, then it cleared up, but now it's cruddy again. Kind of gross, actually. I don't feel cruddy at this moment. It was more that, as autumn moved in, I started having trouble waking up in the morning and getting out of bed when I did wake up, and throughout the day I would feel sad, almost tearful, from time to time for no reason. And when I thought about blogging, I would feel anxious. It came and went.

I am (or at least I think I am) a high-functioning depressive. I don't think people I meet and interact with would leave the encounter thinking, Now, there's an unhappy person. Actually a lot of the time I don't feel depressed because I don't feel it. I put a lid on it, and the top layer of my consciousness goes along as though what's under the lid doesn't exist.

And this autumn's downer is not a pervasive as some depressions I've had. It's a mild attack.

I guess I'm just trying to explain why I disappeared from this blog, and perhaps some other parts of my life, for a little while, but not wanting to make my friends and loved ones worry about me.

Almost all the time, there's some level of depression down in me somewhere. It ebbs and flows, like the tide, or it rises and falls, like the creek behind my house. Yes, I like that one. And sometimes it overflows its banks, like the creek does every few years, and covers its flood plain. My house sits higher and has never had the flood waters touch it, and maybe part of my mind is above the flood, too. It doesn't overwhelm me, it just flows along, sometimes low and slow, sometimes high and fast, and only occasionally out of bounds. So the water has risen, but there's no imminent danger of flooding.

I'm safe and dry. Don't worry.

The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It's for you I created the universe. I love you. — Frederick Buechner

It is important to tell at least from time to time the secret of who we truly and fully are—even if we tell it only to ourselves—because otherwise we run the risk of losing track of who we truly and fully are and little by little come to accept instead the highly edited version which we put forth in hope that the world will find it more acceptable than the real thing. It is important to tell our secrets too because it makes it easier that way to see where we have been in our lives and where we are going. It also makes it easier for other people to tell us a secret or two of their own, and exchanges like that have a lot to do with what being a family is all about and what being human is all about. — Frederick Buechner

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.