High tech, low tech, past and future

After lengthy struggles with this laptop, which is old enough not to support modern browsers without crying and fussing and crashing, I finally got brave today and am the proud new owner of a netbook, an ASUS something or other, I did a lot of research, checked with friends not much more computer literate than I, and with HS who knows a lot more than I do on this subject, and played my role in improving the consumer economy by springing for it.

Currently it's in the shop having various security features installed and firewalls and new boots and mittens and whatever else a new little netbook needs before it comes home, which will be tomorrow. This one will have a lot more memory, and a lot less weight and will be much more portable than the current laptop, which will certainly remain in a place of honor as the word processor of choice, and for various other non internet tasks.

So, with any luck, this is the farewell post on this system, and hello to ASUS tomorrow.....

So, on the way back from buying the latest high tech thing, I got lost, of course, getting out of the confusing parking lot, where the arrows sending me to the highway actually sent me in a circle. The second time I passed the same store, I just plunged off at an angle, to escape!

and found myself on Province Line Road, ancient historical road originally dividing the state into two, and leading to an early Quaker Meeting House, still, after centuries, in regular use, and Princeton Battlefield, where Washington repelled the Hessians during the revolution, a true turning point in the emerging of this country.

So, history having met accidentally with high tech, I stopped and took pictures of the Mercer Oak (around here everything has Mercer somewhere in its name),where General Mercer is said to have been fatally wounded in the battle, and taken to a nearby farmhouse, still in existence, to die.

The current Mercer Oak is a baby sapling, an offspring taken from the original one, which was finally blasted by lightning a few years ago, having been shored up, and lightning rodded and generally preserved as long as possible, it being a mature tree even at the time of the revolution. It was cared for in a local garden, until it was needed, and when the old Mercer Oak fell, the baby was planted in its place, with a protective fence around it, which you see in the pic.

The colonnade picture is of a memorial to the dead of the battle, complete with poem by Alfred Noyes before he became Poet Laureate of England.

So, without planning it, I seem to have created my own remembrance in honor of Memorial Day. I'm not big on honoring battles, since I have a nasty suspicion that honoring them and dramatizing them just encourages people to have more of them, but this kind of happened to me, so I'm sharing it.

The woods in the background of the Mercer Oak are the Institute for Advanced Study woods, attached to Einstein's stomping ground, and wonderful historical places in themselves, home of all kinds of birds and plants and stands of virgin pines, incredible that they should exist in the middle of this busy state, and a testament to a good use of wealth, that the owners over the centuries have preserved, not exploited them.

So, after all this high minded history and observation and plunging into cutting edge technology, we plan to have Bad Food.

We do this about three times a year, Memorial Day, Fourth of July and Labor Day. Bad Food is hot dogs and rolls and pickles and potato chips and beans and mustard and all the things we don't normally eat, not wishing to get our full quota of additives all year round! but what fun it is to do it happily now and then.

I wish you a happy holiday weekend, if it's your holiday, and if it isn't a holiday in your country, a good weekend anyway! and I attach pix of spring flowers at the Preserve taken yesterday, too.

Updates and more updates

Jewelweed, an unexpected treasure at the roadside. Life has quite a few of these, one way and another.


Several people have asked how things are with HP, and I have to say, not very good.

He has started to develop the typical problems of paralyzed patients -- pressure sores, allowed to be sitting in the wheelchair only briefly now, not all day as he could before, need to be turned and rearranged in bed frequently. Lucidity fading as the day wears on.

A lot of physical needs, a lot of support from medical people, including the saintly TH, the occupational therapist who knows who she is, and kept my mind in one piece this afternoon, with intelligent and sympathetic listening and advice. Her advice to be careful about throwing money into service that may or may not be helpful was worth anything. As was her demo of how to reposition HP in the bed safely. And her encouragement to, despite all, have a life.

And wonderful HS who showed up last night, after we had a terrible day, with a trip to the wine store for a bottle of white wine, knowing I love one glass a day and had not been able to shop recently! sometimes that little glass of wine is huge, in importance, I mean. Not an outsize glass. And the willingness of an HS who is coming home late after a long day at work, finds a message on his voicemail, turns around and shops for his aged mom! what a prince.

Updates on other fronts: I have succeeded, on the spinning front, in totally chewing up a length of starter yarn, and breaking several pieces of fleece, having got all cocky about spinning about six inches of yarn, then the spindle suddenly took over, spun backwards and got me all confused! this is so fun, though, because IT DOESN'T MATTER! it's just a fun lovely thing to do, to connect with people back through centuries, long before the wheel was invented for spinning.

And I don't need to make a living at it, a blessing in itself, since the original spinsters were unmarried women who paid their room and board in the family with endless work at the wheel or drop spindle, as the case may be.

And sooner or later I will enter their hallowed numbers, of accomplished spinners, that is. Meanwhile the lovely brown fleece (haven't ventured on the snow white fleece yet, since I know it will be dark brown before I finish with it, poor thing), is so good to handle, just lively and friendly and soft. Exactly like a new pet!

My big ambition is to spin the current supply and make a knitted animal from it! talk about an endless circle....

So the mantra remains, a bit ragged and torn itself at the moment: what was good about each day, what can't be helped, what might be better tomorrow, and who are your real friends who come through.

Sayen Gardens, more hectic than expected

Yesterday I had a couple of hours' free time, owing to the generosity of HS who stayed with HP and helped him with various tasks including keeping track of the big golf tournament, the Sybase Classic, a NJ big event on tv, and I sallied out to various places to play.

First stop: the thrift store where I scored a wonderful Irish linen apricot colored jacket, perfect fit (amazing in view of my steep weight loss over the last weeks of crisis) dry cleaner's tags still on it, and found out it was half price, and a cotton hiking hat. All for the damage of about three dollars....

Then for the spring visit to Sayen Gardens, a well kept secret and wonderful location not far from here. It was a private home for most of the 20th century, the house being only a pretty modest kind of bungalow deal, but the garden, not very big but wonderfully gardened and sculpted and made to look like many many acres of winding paths, lovely shrubs, sitting places, a gazebo (about which more in a minute), a pond with water plants and fish and other wildlife.

It's amazingly beautiful. When the original gardening family members died, if I have the story right, the family simply opened the place to the general public, and the gardens and house continue to be tended.

You can book the house for weddings and other parties, and people wander about all the time on the grounds taking pictures and just sitting and enjoying an oasis in the middle of the Trenton action. Well, Hamilton Square to be technically accurate, but Trenton tells more people where it is.

So I thought I'd wander around on this cloudy warm day, watching birds, taking pix to show at home, and generally have a peaceful time. Not knowing that there were not one but TWO weddings taking place at the same time in this tiny place!

The gazebo where I planned to sit and watch the fish was draped in white tulle, many little white chairs in rows there, LOUD music very reminiscent of the Godfather blasting away, guests beginning to arrive, hobbling in their best shoes on the endless gravel paths. Then I though oh well, I'll take another walk instead, and ran right into the wedding party organizing ....the bride busily assembling candles and candlesticks on the tables.

Then I thought, hm, no place to walk, I'll just withdraw. and found my way to the parking lot, the only exit, a kind of covered bridge thing, very pictureskwee, totally mobbed with -- the other wedding party trying to pose for pix! they let me through then decided they'd better find another location.

I heard the bride say, oh, I know, there's a lovely gazebo near the water and she picked up her train and veil, and started in a brisk march, followed by bridesmaids, like a high speed wedding processional, in the direction of -- the other wedding! I just wondered what was going to happen when they encountered the other party. Holy Gridlock, Batman.

But I couldn't resist a picture of them hotfooting across the parking lot, among cars coming and going, bridesmaids in the seafoam green required dresses complete with butt bows, and they would never be able to wear them again, you'd never put these on except to please a bride..

So what was planned as a peaceful and renewing afternoon turned into a Laff Comic Relief Riot. For me, at any rate. History does not record what the two brides had to say about the day.

Golden Lads and Lasses

In between the endless parade of medical personnel through here, and HP is doing okay considering, we're redesigning our daily life around a whole new reality, I've been planting the spring garden and reading and studying spinning....

But one book I really recommend, and which incidentally marks HP's entry into the 21st century in that he listened to it on CDs (!) a major first for him, and which I had loved listening to while out walking, is Bill Bryson's Shakespeare, a terrific, very readable and listenable account of the history of Shakespeare's time and what we don't actually know about it.

Some of the most interesting parts, aside from a whole long passage about the folios and how they were messed around, changed, copied, shared out among a lot of printers, and a ton of fascinating stuff about the theater business of Shakespeare's time (and he wasn't considered a big deal then, unlike Marlow and Jonson and Kyd and various others), is the general indicator that he was a countryman, not a noble, judging from the homely details he comments on, about crops and country trades, such as leather tanning,that kind of thing.

My post title refers to the quotation from, I think, Hamlet, "Golden lads and lasses must, like chimney sweepers, come to dust." And to my surprise, Bryson found that it's a reference to the "golden lads and lasses" that was the country name for -- dandelions!! and in view of my recent paean in praise of same, I was tickled to discover that.

So that's my current big nonfiction pick.

And then there's a new discovery, for me anyway, Ayelet Waldman, who writes detective stories in the character of a stay at home mom with young children who has given up her law career for the moment while the kids are young, and finds herself being a crime investigator.

Good dialog, great reading for people who either 1. have been sahms and fervently rejoice that that period has ended (!) or 2. people who are currently sahms and need all the amusement they can get about it or 3. current sahms who really like the job and still want a detective story to enjoy and 4. people who have never been sahms and wonder what it's all about....also people who like a good detective story with humor and crime mixed in together with highly creative little kids hampering every move in their parents' careers! anyway, a lot of fun.

Meanwhile, back in the garden, radishes are starting to come up, and I now have a slew of herbs set out -- mint grows whether I want it to or not, and I give it away apace, lemon balm same, then I plant on purpose oregano, rosemary, thyme and two kinds of sage, the purple kind and the green kind, both of which are flourishing shrubs, no need for any help from year to year.

And there's scented geranium, which I love to pinch and sniff, sometimes use in drinks. Other foods I planted this year: cherry bushes, blueberry bushes, Cumberland raspberries, upside down Roma tomatoes, bell peppers, strawberries. You'd never think all this mad activity takes place in an area smaller than most people's bathrooms....I also grow potatoes in a planter! just shove in a spud and let it alone, and a few weeks later dig up a nice dish of new potatoes, enough for a meal.

And then there's the ornamental garden, daylilies, impatiens, nierembergia, iris, petunias, hosta, sedum, all sorts of other annuals and perennials, all mixed in with the food stuff. We won't mention poison ivy, which also tries to get a foothold each year.

The micro gardener speaks! small is not only beautiful, around here it's inevitable..

Mother's Day 2009. Long may she sail!!

HS offered me the usual Mother's Day gifts: card, flowers and the blessed gift of his time that I can use as I like. Some years we have gone on a hike, or hung out at a nature center, or just at home depending on the weather.

But our lives are different now, and I asked HS to spend the afternoon keeping HP company, taking care of him, so that I could go out for the afternoon in joyful frivolity, no worries.

Bright day, very windy, but lovely to be out and about, so I headed directly, do not pass Go, for Mazur's the best garden center in the world, where they never put out plants too early for them to succeed at home, are cheerful and knowledgeable and the whole family works there, including a very old grandmother who still works on the plants.

So I lugged a cartload of flowers, herbs, the usual suspects, away, and took a couple of pictures before I left. No those are not my palatial gardens, they're the garden center!

It's a great place for hummingbirds a bit later in the season, when they have hanging baskets all over the place, but lovely at all seasons. Their herbs are great, and now I have a new bunch of rosemary, thyme, oregano and something else whose name escapes me. And impatiens -- always buy a whole flat of these to put in all over the place as white sparks in the flowerbeds, and petunias for hanging baskets. And tomatoes, of course, Roma plum tomatoes, the best for sauce and eating and just why bother with anything else, really.. and peppers, the bell kind.

I should explain that I have limited ground area, but I hang a lot of containers overhead from the tree on the patio and the hooks out front. This year I'm trying upside down tomatoes and peppers. I got an upside down kit thing, and, having studied it, have decided I can improvise more of them using giant coffee cans. Anyway, that's the plan. We;ll see if it's like the pictures on the kit, or if it's a rain of earth and plants on the unsuspecting passerby.

Then, having blown my plant budget wide open, I went off to hike the Preserve, in the beech wood and beside the lake. Both the garden center and the Preserve were full of families dragging elderly moms with them, feebly complaining that it's WINDY, it's messing my HAIR, I want to wait in the CAR, oh MOOOOOMMMMM, etc. I guess the idea is that you came to enjoy the outdoors, now get cracking and enjoy the outdoors..I wonder if grown kids who were always being shoved out to play as little kids are now reversing the procedure, shoving their mothers out to play.

Notes from field, fen and preserve: hearing then sighting of redwing blackbirds, sure sign of spring to hear that rusty shout, like a referee's whistle with a loose part, and first sighting of a black and yellow tiger swallowtail butterfly, and a comma butterfly.

It's official. Spring is here. I realize I've said this before but it keeps on surprising me anyway.


And then a wonderful surprise in the afternoon just a couple of minutes after I got home: a beloved friend showed up, despite feeling physically rotten, to deliver a great present, a spinning kit! complete with drop spindle, lovely fluff, wrong term, but I have to study the right term, wonderful colors, dark brown and pure white, I've been petting it like an animal, how-to book, what a total and wonderful surprise.

My new art skill for this year is to learn to spin, and dear C. is putting me squarely in the path of this new artform. The spindle is a work of art itself, wonderful to handle and puzzle over what to do next..

That's my low tech ambition. My high tech one is to install a flash drive and move my blog onto it to preserve it (heh).

So, one of the better Mother's Days I've had, oddly enough, you'd think this year would be hard to enjoy, but noooooooo.

So I wish the same wonderful day to all you readers, mothers, daughters, anyone who is or has a mom! that should take care of everyone.

Gosh, the stuff you learn from animals!

The picture is not just my feet encased in my furry slippers. It's a whole way of seeing things, taught me by our bad tempered Persian cat, Tiger Fluffy Sheba. Her names come from her propensity to bite at a moment's notice, or none, her very very very uncombable fluffy coat, and her exotic origin.

Persians are touchy at the best of times -- during our pet care years I handled hundreds of cats, and even the best kept and loved Persians, there from kittens, were highly offended at the least thing in their environment, with a couple of wonderful exceptions, two silver Persians who were loving and fun and playful. But even they bit their families, they told me, in amazement that I was playing with these little hellions on my visits!

And Tiger Fluffy was not originally in a loving home, but rather in an unhappy one, from which we removed her via a third party, so she was pretty much a basket case. Five years before I could touch her without being attacked, but once she finally got it that she was here to stay, that I would never hit or scream at her, she acknowledged that maybe all humans are not rotten.

But she only extends this exception to me! I can pet and stroke her and remove the major knots from her coat, and she even returns the favor, grooming my face while I'm on the floor doing yoga, very helpful. I expect she thinks I oughta be doing Downward Facing Cat, come to think of it.

Anyway, one of her favorite sleeping places has become the slippers in the pic. Which are in fact solid black felty stuff from blessed Landsend, the only place that makes shoes I can actually wear without howling with my arthritic old tootsies. But she sheds a lot, and the fluff bonded irremovably with the fabric, so I decided to do the catly thing and pretend that's how I want them. They look exactly like fur slippers now, and I meant this all along..

Other domestic adventures continue apace, as they used to say in those wonderful futuristic things at World's Fair events -- Home of the Future, etc. Our Home of the Present leaves something to be desired now and then.

Such as this morning, when, after I'd shoveled bits of pasta and other leftovers off plates into the disposall, tiny bits that got rinsed off, said disposall just made a smug humming noise and refused to work.

Now I know that if it hums, the power is getting there, it just isn't in the mood to work. So, being Woman and Invincible, I attacked it with a wooden spoon, the idea being that if you can force the bottom plate in a complete revolution, you will revolutionize its attitude, and unblock whatever's upsetting it. this has worked numerous times for me over the years with various disposalls, and was shown me by a repairman who charged me $75 for the visit....

But this time the spoon approach did not work either, which revolutionized my attitude. We had to bring out the Big Guns. The Allen Wrench, to be exact. Now the directions just tell you how to proceed with it, but they fail to give a few bits of info:

1. What does it look like, again?

2. Who is Allen and why does she have have a wrench?

3. Where did you put it? well, naturally in the drawer that has all the other tools and stuff which you now have to sort through to figure out which is the AW in question.

4. Where do you insert the thing now that you have triumphantly found it?

then the rest is easy: just lie on the floor with your neck at a painful angle, bend your wrist the way it's not supposed to go, and insert the AW into the middle o the bottom of he disposall, six inches from the floor of the cabinet....and turn it angrily until it turns and then happily a few more times just to show it, and all is well.

Switch on the disposall, turn on the faucet and it's working! and I think yet again there should be some credit bureau in the sky that reaches down and hnds me the $75 I just saved on a service call.

In case anyone feels sorry for my having to be the Fixit Lady around here on account of HP's disability, I should mention that even when fully fit and well, he would have been totally unable to do this job without busting the wrench, the appliance or the welkin with curses....I'm just saying...knowing he doesn't read in here.

Long thoughts on a rainy day

Hectic day here, with nurse, physical therapist, home health care lady, all arriving on each others' heels all mixed up with my cooking breakfast and lunch and serving same, along with the medications scheduled, etc., to HP.

The physical therapist confirmed what I had suspected: that HP is functionally a quadriplegic and unlikely to get more physical ability than now. and the nurse confirmed that the total incontinence is unlikely to reverse, either. So though these convictions are not a surprise to me, it's still a sad realization that these people are quite often right, having a lot of experience with struggles like those of HP. On the good side, we are doing okay with our what people love to call challenges (!) but I fervently can't help wishing we had some different set of challenges!

My skills in home nursing now encompass operating a Hoyer lift on my own, safely, largely out of fear for my back if I didn't get over my intimidation about the Hoyer, using an external catheter and keeping it working just fine, excellent skin care and general purpose good stuff, including keeping both our spirits up. and remembering to enjoy what we can enjoy -- very good cooking, watching the Yankees, getting Sleuth out of the libe, since neither of us had seen this classic. And dealing with a procession of professionals coming and going as long as Medicare holds out for us. Which will only be weeks, so I'm already exploring the longer term and what might be available.

And the weather, sheets of rain along with high winds, just like a hot July day in north Yorkshire, is a bit annoying, too. But I still took my half hour walk, daringly leaving HP at the table doing the crossword puzzles, and finding him perfectly safe when I got back.

Lovely walk, wet underfoot, but listening to Samuel Barber's violin concerto on my walkman, gosh, that composer just takes you apart! such incisive and wonderful composition, even when it is hard to tolerate. But always good to listen and let it flow over you. So took a couple of reflective, pun intended pictures, to show HP on my return. And to show you, too.

Dandelion Clocks already?

The rain and wind have brought down a lot of the blossoms you saw in the last blog entry, so I had a nice walk yesterday kicking them around like autumn leaves, trudging through ankle deep petals on that path. The hot weather last week also blew all the dandelions, and now there are fields of clocks, which I love, a natural toy to play with.

I've never understood why people want to eradicate them -- lovely nutritious greens followed by perfect gold flowers followed by fuzzy clocks. And yes, I've had gardens, and no, I don't think lawns are a Good Thing, just fighting nature rather than working with her, in my not very humble opinion, so dandelions, and veronica and chickweed and rogue trees are all in the game.

Where I live, central NJ, fertile alluvial plain between clay ridges, you have to mow, though, or you'd have a dense forest of rogue trees before you can turn around. When I had a big yard, quite a few cherry trees and Norway maples and other uninvited guests found themselves in friends' yards, some of said trees now full size and impressive.

Now I have a teeny patio and a small area along a path, but still have plenty to pass on to fellow plant fiends. Today a freecycler dropped by to pick up a bunch of spearmint I'd promised her, massive root system, and I warned her firmly to put it in a pot, not let it loose in the yard, or she will have nothing but spearmint. She's very happy with it, and I was certainly happy to yank it out and give it away.

When she arrived, I was in the midst of fixing Easter, that is not a typo, dinner. HP was in the hospital on the real Easter Sunday, so we had a rough sketch of a celebration, and today we decided to have the real thing.

HS arrived with Easter eggs, Asiago and Gouda cheeses and great cracker mixture, and I organized ham and peas and pineapple and mash, and along with wine spritzers for the two of us who can do that, and fake beer for the one whose medication rules out alcohol, we had a merry time, despite pouring rain and unspringlike cool weather.

Table decorations included the big glass bowl of painted eggs from New York chickens, and unpainted shells from the Jersey shore, the tiny cockatiel eggs in the English Wedgwood miniature cup and saucer, French Limoges cat, Boehm, Trenton that is, rabbit, Peter Rabbit baby mug from HS' childhood, Limoges porcelain little easter eggs, all very festive. And we had a candle in a Flemington NJ cut glass candle holder, for our own Paschal candle. I was impressed that I'd been able to find all this stuff from the place I'd put it away last time we used them.
All in all, a good time was had by all, with the international decorations.

HS withdrew quietly later in the afternoon when both parents were snoozing peacefully....nice time.

Notes from Field and Fen, official arrival of Spring blossom

Time to report on the great outside world -- in the park where I walk, to be exact.

This is the first day that trees have leafed out officially, looking like actual trees rather than rough outlines of foliage. I love the winter shapes of trees, but when they bust out with leaves, that color is worth waiting for.

So Andy being all set up with his crosswords, safely ensconced in his big wheelchair at a table, radio on to a good program, afternoon snack over, etc., I nipped out for my mile to two mile walk, figuring that for a few minutes here or there he will be fine. And he was. I usually bring home digi pix to show him, so that he can have a bit of memory of where he used to walk. He likes to do this, which I probably wouldn't, but that's him and this is me! impossible to get him there nowadays, without a van chairlift dealie, so pictures have to do virtually what we can't in reality.

And on the paths, there are Bradford pear in full fling, flowering cherry everywhere, no need to go to the Tidal Basin to see them. Magnolias are over now, blown out by two hot days, but red azalea and white same which I don't like too much, but anyway they're doing their best, like people you don't like much but have to be fair about! and on the way home, right by the mailbox a nice group of iris planted by Japanese neighbors who have the most elegantly organized tiny front yard, with ordinary plants, sedum, iris, daylily, but arranged with a great eye.

Speaking of the great outside world,my current solo art exhibit, a retrospective covering about 25 years, has had a sale, yay. Oddly enough, one of the most recent works, and my first sale of yarn art, I'm so happy about this.

It's one of a series of masks, one created with various telephone wires and beads, one knotted and knitted from mason twine and copper wire, and this one, knitted with single length of yarn, designed as I went, using yarnovers and various other knitting ideas, in a kind of shield shape, ending in a massive Icord which curves back and around to show facial features, great fun to do. Hard to photograph with my current digi, but that hasn't stopped me up till now.

There is simply nothing more happy for a fine artist who never accepts commissions, never makes "art to sell" but out of her own inner drive exclusively, whether or not it finds kindred spirits, to have someone say, oh I want that piece enough to take it home and live with it! it's like drinking champagne, only better.

Despite all, it's Spring!

The few days since HP came home from the rehab have been um, exciting, with discoveries right and left, mostly about our steep learning curve at using a Hoyer lift for someone with no response in the lower body, and little ability to maintain himself sitting, and about life in a reclining wheelchair, which is great for letting him recline and take a nap or a change of position when he needs to. Hard on my back, since reclining is mechanical not electric! too heavy for me to get in and out of the house, so inventiveness will be called for. And the physical management of a person using a wheelchair goes far beyond the simple mobility, but I won't get into the personal stuff. Suffice it to say that this ain't for wimps! especially since HP is in early dementia now. I've suspected this for some time, but it's now official. No point in fretting, can't be fixed, can't be helped, just live for the good parts, and his sunniness is one of the good parts.

What I'm doing to maintain my own body is: eating real meals, which are pleasurable to cook for two -- today lunch, main meal, that is, was lovely rolled up white fish, which has a posh French name which I forget, Jacques Pepin makes these, with a sauce of sauteed ginger, shallots, scallions and turmeric, along with mixed steamed Chinese vegetables and mashed potato. Grapes and bananas for dessert.

I was very amused, in view of HP's severe heart condition, when various food people and case managers (!) asked me about heart healthy food, did I know about them, and when I explained what our normal diet is, they said, oh, you know about it, I guess! But I think moderation in all things, including moderation! and if he wants a boiled egg for breakfast, dammit, he can have one. and I reserve to myself the right to a nice little glass of wine,white or rose, whatever I feel like, in the evening. Just one, a lovely civilized pleasure.

And self care involves seizing the chance to keep walking, really good for keeping your back in one piece when you're using it as much as I am. I'm still figuring out when and if I can leave HP for a few minutes. If he's sleeping reclined, he's perfectly safe, and I can be away for just a few minutes, I now think. And once we get the home health care people used to us all, and the physio, that can be a chance to get out for a short while.

Yesterday and today, hot weather, in the 90s, and plants arrived in the mail, yay, so I got HP near the patio door (can't get him out there without help until a second ramp arrives) so he could see me planting the strawberries in a hanging basket, moving a few houseplants out of doors for the season -- the scented geranium will probably be okay now, and I planted a gift of Italian parsley in a pot, and the bucket out front is the whips from bush cherries, which I'll put in tomorrow when it's in shade, no sense in killing myself this hot evening.

The HOA landscapers have already done their Spring burn and pillage, so my new stuff should be okay! please note near the bucket the little inland beach out there, from my shore trip the other week, clam and other shells. And, out back, scenes of more than one season at once -- our one and only tulip blowing out and the yellow allyssum in mid flow, with the brand new parsley and the newly outdoor scented geranium, and the sage putting out new leaves -- it will have great purple flowers before long -- and the butterfly bush, Davidii, juuuuuust starting to wake up, also wonderful purple flowers before too long.

All in all, what's not to be optimistic about? all this feverish garden activity in an area the size of one postage stamp out front and two postage stamps out back...and great neighbors, exchanging gardening plants and tips, and visiting with HP at the same time and helping get him out on the patio and back yesterday, and wonderful doctors who VISIT YOUR HOME, that is not a typo, and a great home nurse, and nice health aides, and a terrific physio who is also a bird lover -- tamed a cockatiel which is now a friendly little guy.

Our new life is very different, much more filled with people, that part is hard for me to get used to, but they are all skilled and friendly and with a lot to them aside from the work they come here to do.

Our new doctor's husband, a mathematician, fancies learning pastel painting, so I put them onto a wonderful artist, friend of mine, great in pastels, and a good teacher. And I am freecycling my case of Rembrandt pastels, wonderful stuff, wooden box, lovely old fashioned thing, to him. I don't work in pastel, they were given to me by the granddaughter of an artist who died, I took them out of art fellowship, really, and now they need a new home. This stuff is worth, if you buy it new, several hundred dollars, but it belongs with a new person, and since it came to me as a gift, it goes out as a gift.

So my new mantra: what were the good things that happened today? and it's surprising how many you can find, among the heartbreak and rage and fear and other not so good things that tend to creep in. It's okay to let them in, good and bad, and recognize them and gently ask them to stay a while, and then saunter away, leaving us ready for a new day.

HP home where he belongs!

HP made it home Wednesday afternoon, delighted to be here and see his cats and the house -- he's a ground floor resident now,complete with hospital bed, Hoyer lift, special wheelchair, etc., but he's so happy to be back eating at his own table, his home food, his view of the flowers on the patio.

I'm organizing various people to come to the house, and have found a wonderful home visit doctor who spent FOUR hours yesterday with us doing all the preliminaries, giving good management tips, ordering more equipment she thinks we need, setting up nursing care (again, they had lost her first orders, gah), and what with the phone going constantly with the nursing people and the heart people and the pacemaker people and the home care people and the physical therapy people and on and on, not to mention the learning curve for both of us,this has been hectic. I was thinking that things would be more peaceful at home, hah.

So to celebrate his return home, I'm showing you a few pix taken yesterday in the living room, complete with Marigold the cat who is thrilled to have him back to sit on. And I'm adding in a pic, a white ink drawing on black Arches paper, of Andy napping with Duncan the cat, currently in the exhibit I have in Plainsboro Library Gallery, my last solo there before the new Library complete with brand new dedicated gallery, opens in the next few months.

It's okay, it's only Santa reprised

Ages ago I was talking in here about how it's easy to get into crisis mode and see everything as yet another crisis, particularly if a lot of what's happening has in fact been a series of life threatening crises to a family member.

Like the Christmas I panicked when I heard all the firetrucks and police sirens flying around m street, looked out, and there was Santa on a firetruck waving at me! oh, right, it's Christmas, doh. And I said at that time to remember, oh, it's okay, it's only Santa!

What I'm trying to do now is to look ahead a bit, look for the sparks of joy and fun in every day -- even the worst of days has something good about it -- and try to look at that as well as coping with the crushing responsibilities that currently surround this family.

HP not doing so well, weak, valiantly trying, but things not going quite as hoped. Life will be quite different as of his return home, complete with special equipment, bed, mobility stuff, special wheelchair, and so on. I'm in the midst of massive organization of all the people and stuff needed to make this work, within the limits of his financial resources.

And one of my friends, a wonderful artist, commented recently that it seemed somehow disrespectful, in the midst of our current travails, and that of other friends, for her to talk about her everyday stuff, plans, hopes, work in the studio, and so on. But it really isn't.

It's wonderful to hear about ordinary working days being lived by our friends. It reminds us that all is not crisis, there are ordinary blessedly undramatic things going on right now for a lot of people, and I'm so happy to remember that. And to meet my friends and talk about other things than what's happening to me! and to read comments in this blog about people's reactions and doings!

So, in her honor, and she knows who she is! I dedicate this post, complete with pictures of the sunset at home on April 17, dear little bulbs in bloom outside the Acme supermarket, and the orchid in HP's room admiring her own reflection in the window.

Back from the shore with pix

A blessed friend offered me the use of her shore home on Long Beach Island, NJ, and I gladly took up the offer, went down for a couple of days before HP gets home next week from the rehab to quite a different life from the one we've had.

He will be a wheelchair user, hospital bed required at home, all kinds of assistance to be set up, home nursing, physio, all that. So before that happens to us, it seemed like a great idea to nip to the shore and goof off for a couple of days, which I did.

Monday was a wonderful clear day, sunshine wall to wall, birds everywhere, and I spotted my first Common Loon, in full mating regalia, wonderful bird, black and white, with checkerboard back, but impossible to pic, since they dive when you see them! also other diving birds, ducks, mergansers, etc., all of which were too coy to catch. But I did get a few gulls on the rocks, classic pic.

The house in question was not only lovely inside, as you will see, but is a few steps from the bay side of the island, great for birding, bench for sitting there and everything (this is where people with boats have their slips, but the birds don't care), and a couple of short blocks from the long, beautiful white beach. NJ is a coastal state, so practically the entire eastern side of it is beach, some municipal, some national park beach, some state park beach, all of it wonderful. And LBI is a barrier island, very narrow indeed, just a short walk from side to side.

I really can't do the shore in the summer, too hot and exposed, but in spring and fall it is the perfect destination for someone who likes to stroll endlessly on the sand, watch birds, take pictures of strange creatures, such as the fish you see here, which is about 15 inches long, maybe a skate, maybe not, some muscular item, NOT a shellfish. Small prize for whoever can identify this guy. Very small, since the prize will consist of my grateful thanks!

Tuesday the weather took a turn for the windy and rainy, gah, so it was perfect for reading cosily indoors (Nuala O'Faolain's Getting There, or maybe Almost There, I forget, the book belongs to the house, very good reading, about which more later) and then in the afternoon a trip to the LBI Foundation for the Arts, which had a wonderful exhibition of grade school kid crafts.

Very imaginative projects, ranging from the usual pottery (sea creatures and everyday items such as shoes, rendered in slab and in coil, with a few thrown pieces) to basketry, amazingly good for kids, to Japanese book binding and 3D interior design setups. The only down part was the paintings, which were clearly copies of pictures or photos or something. This is NOT painting, folks! but it's hard for craft teachers to grasp the nature of painting as not something that copies something else as a model....I will save that rant for another time, maybe.

O'Faolain, if I'm spelling her correctly, is a wonderful writer, piercingly honest and even when she's a jerk you have to acknowledge she knows she's a jerk! some of her casual cruelties about her younger siblings really went to my heart, and I doubt very much if she, totally stuck on the damage her mother did to her, has any clue about the damage she has done in her turn to the younger members of her family, and even continues to. But personal issues aside, she truly is a wonderful, very Irish writer, in the lyrical style we kind of expect of an Irish writer. Well worth reading, any of her work.

My car was grateful for a nice long drive at speed, having been chugging about with little local stop and starts for ages now, so the Garden State Parkway speed 65 but you are passed on both sides if you foolishly attempt to drive that slowly, was just up her alley, so to speak. The driver had to get used to it, having also been used to chugging about locally, but this is very good, to keep up that confidence about driving major highways, so as not to kind of shrink my radius!

Presents from the shore for HP: major size clamshells -- they are dredging sand for the beaches from deeper in the ocean, I believe, and they are finding much bigger animals out there than the little clamshells I've always collected for soap dishes. These are HUGE. And some beach glass, a big favorite with me, and a tshirt, just to be as cheesy as possible! his favorite sweatshirt is a canary yellow one with Cape May on it! I hate it, he loves it, wears it all the time he can...well, at least this tshirt is a nice sober blue...and I showed him the collection of beach pix I made, which he wants printed out on a single page, which I will gladly do.

Any little spark of joy is very much to be desired in our lives from next week onward, I think...

Easter springs eternal --- eggs and birds, too

Every Easter I blow eggs, one per family member, then decorate and paint and do various things with them. We keep them from year to year, so Handsome Son has a collection at his home, and we have ours here.

And this year I did it again. Pix show eggs on skewers drying -- this is an easier way to decorate them, too, since you can turn them as you work. I made extras, since I'm taking these into the rehab for HS and HP and me for our celebration tomorrow, and will give away a couple, too, to anyone who fancies having one.

I use different media each year, depending on the configuration of the planets - one year handmade paper attached, another year spray painted, another year silk dyes, or total allover painting with acrylic metallics. This year it's lines and scribbles and squiggles with permanent markers and dots of acrylic in metallic blues and golds, with the brown of the shell showing through.

One picture shows how I like to display them from year to year, in a glass bowl with shells from the Jersey shore, exactly the way shore birds nest among shells and rocks. The juxtaposition of eggs and the other shore materials just seems a happy one.

Blowing eggs also results in breakfast omelettes or scrambled eggs, to use up the contents. But it's better to empty the eggs, since that way you can keep them for years. The exception to that was when I decorated the (sterile) eggs from my dear rescued cockatiel. They were so small that the contents just kind of vanished without a trace.

E. my cockatiel, was a beautiful lutino -- yellow and white -- whom I rescued from a garage sale. The previous "owners" said she was strange, had never made a sound in the three years they'd had her. Turned out she'd been alone in the spare bedroom, no view, fed only wild bird seed, no toys. As you probably know, cockatiels are highly intelligent, gentle birds, and here was one who had never been played with nor talked to, nor given a glimpse of the outside, nor free of her cage. I just told them, I'm taking this bird! gave them a token amount for the cage, and beat it.

On the way home, less than 15 minutes after leaving the garage sale, I heard those little contented howareyou sort of sounds that cockatiels make when they're feeling good. And within days, after bouncing her on my hand to make her flap her wings and develop strength, she took her first flight in my living room. I had to catch her in mid air, though, because she panicked, not knowing what this flying stuff was exactly, and folded her wings, and began to plummet.

But after that she got the hang of it, had the freedom of the place. Her favorite roosts were typically the tops of any new artworks I'd hung on the wall for storage. She added little tears and nibbles to several handmade paper pieces, which I thought improved them.

She ate every nice thing I offered her, no coaxing necessary, even though it was strange food. Salads, little bits of boiled egg (I know, birds are cannibals!) grains, shreds of a variety of foods, home made corn bread, she loved it all. When I lay down for a nap she would start at my feet, then walk all the way up my body and try to tug off an earring. And when I came home and called her name, I'd hear howareyou,howareyou from wherever she was.

I had three cats at that time,different ones from now, and Boud, from whom my screen name comes (short for Boudicca, feisty British warrior queen, small but deadly, just like little Boud) and E. became friends, with Boud letting E. nibble gently on her nose, purring all the while so I guess it didn't bother her. Interspecies friendship can really happen.

Because of her early hardships and lousy nutrition, E. only lived another year with me, far short of the lifetime she should have had, and died in my arms, murmuring peacefully to the end. She and I were true friends, and I took her out to the marsh to lay her body under leaves by the water and return her to the earth.

It's good to remember the fun in life as well as the hard stuff, and E. certainly gave me a lot of that. Her eggs still survive, pix here, with a regular hen's egg in the frame to show you the relative size. One pic shows the eggs in a miniature Wedgwood cup and saucer, another display idea.

On our Easter dinner table (which we will set up when HP comes home) I usually put out all these eggs plus Limoges porcelain eggs and various miniature rabbits, from Lenox and Boehm, famous Trenton potteries. It's all very whimsical and we like it!

Lesser Celandines and Buddha

This seemed like a good day to walk the labyrinth on the way in to visit HP. Cool but bright weather, spring flowers at peak, and the need for a calm refreshing little while, all propelled me to the labyrinth I've talked about before.

One of the joys of the digi camera when you have a disabled partner is that when you go places he can't get to, you can take instant pictures and he can relive it along with you. It helps that HP is such a generous soul that he loves me to enjoy activities even if he can't be along, and likes very much the instant replay.

So today it's the labyrinth, complete with the little Buddha guarding the entrance, and riots of celandines growing all around. The flags are Tibetan prayer flags, which the squirrels love and haul about, but today they were all neat so someone must have fixed them yet again.

There is simply nothing as calming and helpful as walking the labyrinth. The discipline for me is to keep my eyes only on my toes and what is immediately in view, never to look up, not to plan ahead, just shun all the things that are so anxiety producing in usual life. Just walk, slowly, square breathing, let the labyrinth walk you.

I have never left it without feeling I learned something new. And HP loved the views I'm showing you here. He has been there, one time when he could not walk it, but sat and waited for me, as I walked it for a friend who had died. So that time he walked it virtually in a way, and did again today when he saw the pix.

Neither of us is dwelling on death at this moment, rather we're organizing life.But it seems like a good time and season to say that neither of us ever wants a funeral when we go.

What we will want from our friends is: walk a labyrinth, and plant daffodils in our memory. And tell our survivors that you did it!