The Road Less Traveled

Today, just time for a couple of views of the park under snow, but with cheering skies, better light, nearer the end of winter.

And then I was off to the Honda dealership to get them to do the State inspection, a biannual affair, which you can get done for free at the official inspection stations, gah, they hate their jobs. And if the car fails inspection, you have to go to the garage, get it fixed, and then do the whole thing at the horrible inspection station over again. Simpler to pay a fee to a licensed dealer, have them inspect, fix up and be done with it.

And they have friendly people, and a waiting room with excellent choices of coffee and if you're there in the morning, good bagels with cream cheese. All in all, not bad. And now they have installed free wireless.

Red dress, snazzy hat (call me Michele, my dress designer is American) Dolliver came along, and realized that cars come from car shops! we were going to bring a new one home? maybe? what, just fix that old banger again? it's from the last century, that 99 Civic. It's not even in the blue books any more. It's got 118K miles on it! which to me, I explained, still ranks as a new car.

I have been organizing and tossing paperwork recently, and found the papers from when I traded in the previous car for the current one. Previous Dodge had 135K on it. And before that the lovely old Plymouth Horizon, which I still mourn, had 138K miles on it before I turned it in. That was in the days when they expected cars to conk out at about 90K.

Once the Horizon needed a quart of oil and a pint of tranny fluid at every gas fillup, its days were numbered. Also airbags were the new thing and people were driving as if they were immortal because of them, so I didn't fancy being crushed in my bagless Horizon, much as I loved it. I like my cars, and keep them to a fine old age. Anything less than 10 years old and it's a failure as a vehicle in this household.

Meanwhile, D was getting a bit impatient at these ruminations and dragged me over to the balcony above the sales floor, where the waiting area is.




Listen, let's look at these new ones. See those people down there, all buying new cars?



and then, look, let's take this one home



It smells lovely. The seats still have the wrappers on. What? you never buy new? what a downer you are...I pointed out that if she and the other Ds could come up with the 18K required for that nice red car, and the extra insurance, and the special assistant I would need to get out of it, it being low and sporty, which I am no longer, we could talk again. Meanwhile, we took her picture in pleading pose.

She pointed out on the way home, actually in a continuous accompaniment, that the new car had just little booklets inside and paper mats to cover up the lovely floor. Unlike the vehicle we were traveling in, which has firewood in the trunk, empty laundry baskets on the back seat to receive bags of groceries without letting them roll about, library books, a bag of waste paper, spare shoes and all the accoutrements of normal life around here.

For my part, being somewhat defensive on this score, I pointed out that in all its 118K miles, this car has never, in any weather, from zero to 100 F. failed to start and keep running in all conditions, and that sort of loyalty is to be prized.

Once home, she was heard to explain the whole thing to the other Ds, showing them her portrait, like a model on the hood of the car, that it wasn't cheapitude, it was loyalty that kept us all in this car. And I ignored all the snickers and muttered, yeah, right, heard from various Ds. But I did come back firmly with suggesting that they get an engine installed in their clubhouse, not just talk about it, and they could drive wherever they wanted...

So they all studiously turned to their library books and bridge columns and weekly Will Shortz puzzler entries, and I settled down with a knitting book, looking up darkly now and then and wondering if I could create some new, kinder, gentler Ds. But then I'm used to the grittier models we currently have. They have my cars to thank for that.

Easy knitting that looks hard, Dollivers claim it

I'm trying out a new knitting thing, having swiped the idea from a knitting book, which I will credit if I can possibly remember the title and author (!) and which I undertook to celebrate the abatement of pain in my hands.

Wonderful Emil, HP's physio, was very concerned because my hands are so necessary to the everyday life around here, and showed me some wrist exercises using handweights, which have proved very helpful, and yesterday showed me specific thumb ones using a rubber band as a resistance band.

So, all in all, much more cheerful around here! and celebrating with another knitting experiment. Yet another scarf, and this one I'm not sure yet of the destination, but it will end up around some friend's neck, at least that's the plan.

Anyway, here's the thing: the Dollivers claim to have invented this, they did not, and that it's very hard to do, it is not, but what you do is take a laceweight yarn, this happens to be lambswool, harvested from a beautiful thrift store sweater, of course, and do in this case plain knitting.

All garter stitch. But the trick about making the pattern look airy and interesting is that you use two different sized needles, so in this case one row size 15, one row size 7. This gives you an internal stripy effect, and it feels very good in your hand. I expect you can fancy this up even further with yarnovers and things, but I hesitate to make it too fussy and knitty.

So that's where we are on the knitting front! the days are getting longer and brighter, the houseplants are perking up, and it's starting to look like a new year, yay.

Urgent pharm runs and Dolliver winter sports

After the big snowfall, and the subsequent Digging of the Car, the helpful neighbors being away this time, and I was bloated with pride at being able to do this without being worn out, I found that we were dangerously low in HP's heart medicine.

There are quite a few meds going on in this house, largely his, and I don't know how I didn't realize we were close to the end of this dose. Anyway, since there may be ice tomorrow, and the roads were basically just wet after the plows did a much better job, they get better with each snowfall, getting into practice, I had to do a fast pharm run.




And a Nurse Dolliver insisted on coming along to supervise the procedure, which a good natured and incidentally model-beautiful pharmacist allowed for, after she'd protested she was not looking good today, her hair, oh dear. If I could look like her, I'd never whine again! but we all hate our own pix, I know.

Then there was a terrific midwinter display of flowers, labeled REAL, which Nurse Dolliver, being as REAL as they come, decided to pose among and maybe get some to bring home.



Meanwhile, I was checking the meds just to be sure, putting away the camera and then hastening home with the goods.

Only to realize when I went to return D. to her clubhouse that, gah, there she wasn't! so another run to the supermarket pharm, and there she was, grumbling about being left AGAIN, was I trying to get rid of her, maybe she should find a new family...

Meanwhile back at home, the more frivolous Ds were strapping on skis and getting their poles organized because little Swiss, naturally a crack skier, had offered to show a D. how it's done. On the black diamond slopes.



Easy for her to do.



But a bit harder than D. had thought ahead of time.



So they swooped and swerved and D fell, and finally it was apres ski time with hot chocolate in front of a warm stove, uh, microwave.



And D was last heard bragging about her great runs and how she would be glad to teach the other Ds if they dare go on the Really Steep Slopes.

More different snowflakes..

Another big snowfall over night and I don't know about how snowflakes are all supposed to be different. They're starting to look exactly the same from here...



The Jack Russell and the Westie across the street are considering whether or not a small dog can get lost in this stuff.




And whether those are little dogs under there.

Meanwhile, back in the kitchen, as I put the kettle on for breakfast, carefully putting it on the back burner, it occurred to me how many habits have become as near as they can to hardwired, such as putting the kettle on the back burner. Moms will instantly recognize the sign of someone always being careful to keep boiling water and other hot stuff out of the reach of the baby.

In my case, Handsome Son is now in his forties, a great cook himself, scorns my kitchen equipment, brings his own when he cooks a special meal for my birthday, has not lived under our roof for decades, I mean, he's a grownup! but I still put the kettle on the back burner, just in case...

Likewise putting the sewing needle into a scrap of fabric and back in the sewing box between uses, even when I will need it again in three seconds. Or leaving appliances unplugged no matter how often I use them.

Admittedly, some of these habits work well for pets, too, since I have met cats who knew how to turn on appliances if they got tired of waiting for the humans to feed them. And love to play with dangerous needles. But they're unlikely to pull the kettle over as it boils.

I Ching and the Staff of Life

So I threw the I Ching for seven days, to see how it would go. The part about throwing the coins was fun. And the part about figuring out whether the throw meant one solid line or a broken line. And the part about looking through all 64 of them to identify the hexagram I'd thrown with my six throws. All nice visual exercises, like what is wrong with this picture stuff.

However, the leading I got was pretty minimal, being somewhat identical, as far as I could tell for every one I threw. Maybe it's so Chinese that it's inscrutable to me. At any rate, more often than not it resisted my scrutiny. So I have gently retired it and returned to yoga practice and breadbaking. I have actually been baking bread regularly since last August, haven't bought a bit of it since then. Different recipe every time, and not a one has failed to come out well.

All these deals are ways of focusing on the immediate, and in the case of the bread doing something good, very elemental. Like that lovely day last year when I went out to shop, and on the list was: wine, wood, boots! very medieval. All I needed was a pargeting tool or a new donkey or something, to complete the picture.

And until the labyrinth is weather free again, yoga practice and breadbaking are not the worst way to practice meditation. That and the weights, which are starting to yield some modest reduction in hand pain. It's like the US gov's budget cuts: not really cuts, just reduction in the rate of worsening...but for the moment I'll take it.

Good thing I never ran up an I Ching Throwing Gown, as Lucia no doubt would have, as Ari astutely pointed out. Of course if I had, it could have been an About To Do Yoga Practice after I Get Out of This Thing Gown...

Tat and Tattoos

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary to unearth stuff, you open the closet door and there comes a tide in the affairs of stuff that requires that you either move out or organize it.

What happened was a concatenation of events. Started with tendonitis in both thumbs, pain of Biblical proportions, but no way to rest said thumbs, since hundreds of times a day, nursing care requires pressure on them -- hooking up the lift, braking and unbraking the chair, moving, exercising, dressing, cleaning, etc. the patient. And that's just the patient care. There's also laundry and cooking, and even putting on a winter coat which has become quite acrobatic. No matter how you adapt your movements, some things can't change.

Sooooooo I was whining about this to HP's physio on his home visit the other day, after consulting with my doctor, who had given various bits of advice including continue with weight work, and physio asked me about my weight work. He observed that none of my weight training actually involves strengthening the wrists. Apparently this is vital to protect the thumb tendons, to spread the load as it were. Like getting your legs in trim to protect your knee joints.

Sooooooo he had me show him my weights to demo some wrist actions for me. And nearly fainted dead away when he found I routinely use 8 pounds per hand. I think he'd pegged me as a two pound tops person. Anyway, he said that is too heavy for wrist exercises, though fine for arms and shoulders.

So I sighed and after he showed me on a one pound weight what to do, that weight being far too small in circumference for my big mitts, and usually used as a doorstop around here, I realized I would have to excavate the closet where I thought the smaller weights, like two and three pounds, were.

Which was true, but they were under a ton of supplies and walkers and transport wheelchairs and clothes HP can't use now and various miscellaneous bags of stuff. All had to come out on the floor, and this was not fun for the thumbs but it was in a good cause.

And I ended up with two giant bags of men's small clothes to Freecycle, including some great stuff, which already have takers.



And a molecular model kit, which was immediately requested by a Chinese mom for her bright child! And best of all some nice stuff of mine that I don't know how it got in there.



Such as books of temp tattoos, which I love, and a gold neck chain, and a pair of silver cufflinks from some exotic place, and a lovely Cuban cigar box, and a couple of pix of me from long ago, all dark haired and not wrinkly, and a bunch of Canadian dollar and two dollar bills. And a complete watercolor set in a metal box. And a manicure set HP gave me fifty years ago (!), made in Australia, lovely fine leather. I have the scissors elsewhere, use them all the time, but had lost track of the rest of the set, which is quite posh. No, nothing in this picture is going to be Freecycled. It's mine, all mine.

Oh, and under all this I found the smaller hand weights and have faithfully started doing the exercises in the fervent hope that working with HP will evoke fewer screams of pain and bad temper. From me, that is. But I'm all cheered up by finding the tattoos.

New Year, new books

Current reading, the I Ching not counting as reading, though it is going on daily, interesting stuff to think about, is light and heavy.

Light is the MacNeil book, a really inspired Christmas gift, which is chicklit at its best, very funny, very technically knowledgeable, fantasy, wishes coming true, all at once. Like Bridget Jones, expert knitter, meets Evanovich's heroine with the funny relatives! perfect reading for a snowed-in day, which was when I enjoyed it.

And I instantly looked for another novel by the same writer, which I'm about to embark on. Great fun, totally nonserious, but respectful of the world of knitting and knowledgeable about the world of commercial tv, too, all in all, good reading.

The other is a biography of his family by Alan Bennett, serious this time, with a different touch from his marvelous Uncommon Reader and The Clothes They Stood Up In, which I hugely recommend anyway, just read them! more like long short stories than novels, but very sturdy even though short, great stuff.

This one is more introspective, about the family he came from and stuck with through all kinds of tragedy. From the north of England, west Yorkshire, to be exact, it rings a lot of familiar tones to people from the north, even if a different part of the north. Things like settling down to a good book with a quarter of Quality Street! i.e. a quarter pound of lovely mixed candies all wrapped in cellophane, very luxurious, came in a cardboard container with a cello window, if I remember correctly. And the fashions his aunts were so proud of, not unlike my older sisters at that era. And their affectations, which he understands so well that it illuminated a lot that was not clear to me before I read this, about my own relatives.

But he admits when he's clueless, as when he could not understand why the family kept secrets. He only realized much later that revealing them (I won't spoil your reading by saying what here) would very much affect the lives of the other family members, for the worse, maybe get them shunned or feared. In middle age he didn't grasp this, but as of the writing of this book at the age of sixty, he grasped what it was about, when he found himself doing the same thing.

But in some ways he goes on being clueless! as when he notices that his father, coping with his mother's severe recurring mental illness, with many hospital visits, exhausting and worrying dealing with doctors and hospitals as a working class man out of his depth, when he notices, that is, that his father tended to set up the next meal dishes as soon as the last one was finished, or prepared food ahead of time to make the actual meal getting easier.

Bennett assumes, since he has seen this in other retired people's houses, too, that it's because they have nothing in their lives, no other distractions or obligations, lives, I quote "emptied of occupation and proper activity" -- breathtakingly insulting and obtuse at the same time!

But this was written when he was only sixty, and maybe at this point, in his late seventies, he will see that the advance preparation is not only a way of doing tasks when you have the energy for them, but is also a kind of faith that you will still be needing that next meal, that you will still be living this life, that you are managing. It fends off the feeling of helplessness and depression that can fall on older people when they start to lose the ability to keep up with the daily round.

And perhaps he will come to see that the daily round itself has dignity and importance, and that domestic concerns, keeping other people fed and clean and comfortable is in fact an occupation and a proper activity. He speaks harshly of men who disparage women and their lives, yet he seems to be doing something very similar here, where, in that society, the tasks he refers to are mostly those assigned to women.

His own life partner is half his age, though, and maybe that relieves him of ever having to turn to and organize the dishes!

This is in fact a wonderful book, full of amazing insights and references to the life of the WW2 and later era in northern England, and astute observations of social rules, the ones that exist and the ones people insert into their own lives.

Not being an aficionado of theater, I can't help wishing he'd written more novels and bios, and fewer plays!

I Ching and the New Year

Happy New Year to all of us! and I hope this year will be full of whatever good stuff we're hoping for. HP and I are happy to have survived the last one, and looking forward to more time together. Quiet New Year's Eve, since HP fell asleep even before I'd got the fire stoked up and burning merrily, so I sat by it, reading E.F.Benson, and eating cheese and crackers with a nice little glass of wine. Both of us safe and well, what more could you ask?

The thing that's missing for me at the moment is a spiritual practice, since the labyrinth, which I get to occasionally, is under several feet of snow and will be for some time. So I've reverted to throwing the I Ching.



I found a nice unused notebook, one of my libe booksale acquisitions, and I'm throwing each day, recording the throw, and studying the results in my I Ching book. I did a practice throw yesterday, and came out with the very first hexagram of the lot, what are the odds.

But today's throw yielded number 52, kan



and the text from the guide tells me:

When one's resting is like that of the back, and he loses all consciousness of self, when he walks in his courtyard, and does not see any of the persons in it, there will be no error.

It goes on to analyze each line of the hexagram which I won't bother you with, but it's amazingly good to think about, the hexagram meaning being very much like yoga in the sense of relaxation of parts of the body while the mind is very alert.

Next I'll think on this a while and see what application and advice it might contain, because it changes as you think about it. The I Ching is the Book of Changes, and is endlessly interesting to think about. It certainly rings true to me to fail to notice people when I'm walking and thinking.

I took one piece of advice already: it's about simplicity and directness of action, so I tore apart the book, which I've had, and struggled with, for years and years, originally published in the mid 1880s and very verbose, badly organized, and really hard to find what you need to study.

So I got brave and I just took out the bits that reminded me how to actually do it and how to translate the three coins into the hexagrams, and then where to find the interpretation. The rest of it is no doubt of interest to people deep into the Chinese language and the history of philosophy, but not exactly to my immediate needs.

And in any case, shoving all the extra thoughts, and random walks, and footnotes in before actually getting to the hexagrams is somewhat like the practice of computer system writers who compose a two hundred page manual on their system, how to adapt and fit it to your needs, and get to page 57 before telling you where the on switch is.

First time I ever broke up a book, which is some sort of first, I guess. But this one was getting between me and my practice, so I guess I had a special leading to tear it out of the way. Slashing through the briars with my trusty metaphorical Chinese fighting sword.

Anyway, I plan on doing this daily for a month, not unlike the year I cut out my newspaper horoscope every day for a month, and made notes the next day on how much of it, if any, corresponded to my life that day! that was great fun, and constituted a short term journal. But the I Ching is a bit more serious.

Except that when I do the throwing and setting up of my page for the day, I'm cracking up laughing because I feel exactly like a character in E.F.Benson. I can just see Lucia instantly starting to lecture everyone, cribbing from the section of the book I discarded, and Georgie getting all excited and waving his bibelots about in search of a nice little notebook, with an embroidered cover, and Diva wondering if it's about gambling and if so can she afford to throw, and Miss Mapp saying, oh, I've been doing that for YEARS....and the Wyses instructing Figgis not to admit anyone to the house while the Daily Throwing is happening..

Comic relief insists on breaking in. There's an order of religious in the Catholic church one of whose first requirements of the initiated is: First be Joyful! that would suit me just fine.

Blizzard pix 2010

I vowed I would not take pictures of snow again, even though it was a pretty big storm -- approximately twenty inches fell on us, with high winds and drifting, very dramatic overnight -- but oh well, I'm weak, and I couldn't resist a picture of the roof across the street, sculpted by snow into shapes like waves on a beach




and of the patio, where you see a large cake of snow sitting on the table, and that dark line in the background is the top of the fence.




The patio is pretty much filled to the brim with snow, since we seem to be in the path of all the wind eddies, which is why my plants blow over in the summer.

However, three neighbors came to my rescue yesterday and did most of the digging to get my car out in case we needed a quick exit (or an entrance for emergency ambulance help, actually) and today another one showed up to take my keys and move the car for me to let the snowplows finish up cleaning the parking places. I was in the middle of giving HP breakfast when the snowguys showed up, so neighbor rescued me kindly and drove the car out of harm's way and brought it back once things were cleared.

I ventured out to the bank and the nearest food store this morning, and after skidding helplessly several times on unplowed side roads between us and the main road, decided that once this thaws a bit in the day then freezes again this evening, it's more than my neck is worth to venture out again to the gallery opening party scheduled for this evening.

I feel bad about it, being one of the begetters of the original library gallery concept in the town, and this being a significant event, but sometimes discretion wins. And there are plenty of important people going to be there.

I feel terrible when I make decisions like this. Hm. Maybe I could work on that in the New Year.

One vow I will keep though: I won't talk about the year that's nearly finished, unlike all the broadcast media and newspapers and everyone! several reasons: half the time I can't actually remember much of it, at least not interesting bits, and it's too dull to write, let alone to read.

So you are spared, at least in this space. Some people can write amusingly and movingly and grippingly about the Year That Was, so I will read them and enjoy, and refrain from doing it here, heh.

Snowmania giveaway and new furniture

Take a look at the group pix of wooden handpainted pinback pins. I have a dozen ready to give as a little New Year's gifts to thank faithful blogistas and commenters here and in Art, the Beautiful Metaphor.



They can be worn on lapels or hatbands, a couple of have a hole or two drilled in them, design feature in fact, but I wouldn't object to the new owner's using that to adapt to a pendant or other clever idea.

Here's a closer view



Anyway, if I don't already know your snailmail address, please email me with it at lxxadams@yahoo.com and let me know you'd like one. A pin, that is. Please let me choose which one, in case the one you chose was gone already and all the recriminations that entails. Oh, no, I'm thinking of Dollivers now..

Speaking of whom, they have a New Year present: a little red enameled chair, rescued from the dumpster area right before the snow started, which two of them are modeling here, as they sit watching the snow fall





and wondering if Boud has remembered to get the snow shovel out and her gloves and boots ready..a lot of snow is forecast over the next day, high winds, drifts, you name it. It did hold off politely until I got back to the house with new firewood and lighters, a kind touch, I thought.






And the Ds. also wanted to be seen in their conservatory, under the Boston fern, pinkie fingers raised, in search of their afternoon tea.

Merry Christmas from us all

The Dollivers, with the pillows of Joy, Peace and No (in fact Noel, but a Dolliver likes it better this way), and the creche, with wise men in the multitude, and all the attendant pets and Ds own dolls, wish you all a Merry Christmas, Good New Year and all you wish for.

If that includes peace and quiet, we definitely second that, too. And we remember Kwanzaa, and we even remember Festivus, the Festival for the Rest of Us, with the recital of the grievances....

The Ds demanded that HP be part of the picture, too, and helped get him together with them, then instructed him to say cheese or else, and here's a picture of HP looking cheerful, which is pretty amazing, since we had one of those bad mornings. Much better now and after listening to carols and cheery songs on the radio, both feeling much more Christmassy than we did a couple of hours ago.




Even the toughest day can yield something good, and the Ds ensured the comic relief that put us all back together again.

And this afternoon, we plan a Christmas Even afternoon tea complete with the authentic English scones and gourmet jam, courtesy of dear Carol Q, and excellent tea, Lapsang Souchong for HP courtesy of Rhonda, and PG Tips for me, courtesy of Carol, like Rhonda, from Ravelry. Such great friends, who couldn't be happy?

Cheers, blogistas!

Oops, technology overcame me...

For those readers who might have stopped in here a while back and noticed a post about jewelry and wondered what I was up to, I had omitted to remember that I had two blogs now, and thought I was in the right one, sigh.

That post is now where it b'longs, in the Art the Beautiful Metaphor blog, where anyone may seek it out.

But if you saw it here and then came back and thought, dang, I could have sworn there was a post in here, the mean answer is: oh, you're losing it! and the true answer is: Boud is losing it!

Anyway, I deleted it in here because tweren't intended for here. Sorry, folks.

I am in good company, though, since Yahoo is working behind the scenes updating the Freecycle groups, and they put their inner workings out on everyone's screen a while back, totally incomprehensible to most of us and totally beta, not working at all. I guess someone must have said, hey, you didn't mean to send that private work to the whole world, did you? because the next day it was back as usual....

So, tain't just me. Phew.

About Time, Too

All of Boud's clan, human, animal and fibrous, today give a shout out to a Congress that finally swept away one more barrier to civil rights, and passed the repeal of the infamous Don't Ask, Don't Tell. That was a compromise between not allowing gay people to serve at all in the military, and between allowing them to serve without compromising their own integrity by hiding their identity. An unhappy compromise, too.

So now, one more step in the right direction, toward a simple civil right, not to conceal your self while putting your life on the line for the rest of us.

Dear friends who are gay, and out, or gay and not out, or gay and I respect your privacy about the matter, we celebrate this step and look forward to more of them.

And we can all join in and say, well, about time, too!

Great Conjunctions

Last day of autumn yesterday, and my reading and the planets for once were in conjunction. Like this: I have been into three books at once, as usual, Joyce Maynard memoir, a John Bayles (was husband of Iris Murdoch) memoir and a Karen Armstrong examination of the Buddha's life, what we know of it.




Very different sounding, but amazingly coincidental in that they all take a careful view of a life and the life of the mind and the spirit, not what I had realized when I lighted on them, but I will take credit for this.

Maynard is a tortured soul, brilliant writer and literary scholar in many ways, but with amazingly little ability to analyze her own emotions, and even less ability to use emotional intelligence. She had a brief but life changing relationship with J.D.Salinger, when she was still only in her teens, and a lot of this book analyzes this in retrospect trying to make sense of her bewitchment by him, and some heartbreaking realizations she makes. Almost too painful to read at times, but engrossing nonetheless, though I did have to skim some parts that felt like voyeurism, she is now in mid life starting to get a thing or two.

Then there's John Bayles, an intellectual and a keenly introspective person, who has an enormous life of the imagination, which he has conjured up all his life, very self analytical in a way that does not flatter himself, and able to find adventures in his own mind even in the midst of caring for Murdoch throughout her Alzheimer's journey. He does not give his own emotions a lot of daylight, but the grit shows through anyway.

He has a way of finding sparks of joy and interest in the smallest event, in the course of a life that is one of the hardest of caregiving work, definitely should be required reading for any grownup. Or for anyone who wants to see a true learner at work.

And Karen Armstrong, whose struggles with her health have been documented elsewhere, and who has risen above them to the point of rarely giving them house room, is a rarity among theologians -- someone who can write for laypeople to read, and whose honesty shines through, never forgetting that there are principles to remember throughout her writing. She has a balance of emotional and intellectual intelligence that is instructive to observe.

Then if this weren't enough for a person to be learning from, I found out almost accidentally that there was an eclipse of the moon last night, as the season went from fall to winter.

I was up at 3 a.m. and decided a cup of tea would be good, also maybe the morning paper had arrived, and I looked out to the street, and there above the roof opposite was the moon in the last stage of the eclipse. Whereupon I hauled self and camera out to the front step, realizing a bit late that bitter weather and a wind was a really bad time to be out in pajamas, but oh well, and did my best to get a picture to share.



It's one of the few times I will ever be able to say I did better than Pasadena on this, since they had pouring rain, zero visibility, and their wonderful telescope was sitting with the lens cap on or whatever they do when you can see anything.

The Dollivers and Christmas plans

We decided that since Boud claims to be tired, why, why? she does nothing, we would have to take over and plan a big event for Christmas around here.




So a delegation of us hitched a ride to the libe and showed her how a Christmas tree should be



complete with a lot of presents for Dollivers all around and how Martha Stewart does Christmas food



none of this simple stuff for her, no, and fancy bells




and shells, and trees that she only needs a team to assemble.





We were only slightly nonplussed, what Boud would call a five dollar word, to find that the parcels at the libe are for little kids who have nothing much on their agenda for Christmas, so we decided, okay, Boud can send them a little something, and make a few hundred lollipops and baked goods and we hope she didn't actually notice that we swiped her new pearl bracelet which has become a great tiara for a D. And later it became a necklace for the same D, to make sure nobody took it back..the earrings are on another Dolliver, Blondie, naturally, she gets everything.

So that's us, and if Boud wants to rest her tootsies instead of undertaking all these tiny little tasks, well, we'll have to find another person to do it for us, that's all. Us do it? We don't THINK so...

Ho! Ho! yawwwwwnnnnn Ho!

This is the time of year when it's really cold, and dark early and I have a great sense of wishing I could just stay in bed till February, like a cat! so Christmas calls on energy I'm a bit short of. I do walk, be it ever so cold, because that's a Good Thing and stuns my neighbors, most of whom are from tropical climes whose walking stops dead in October.

We do celebrate Christmas, but in a muted sort of way! three festive pillows



and one ceramic creche and additions to the collage of cards on the door



where HP can see and enjoy them.



That's it for decorations. Occasional neighbor stopping in is IT for entertaining. Nice meal on Christmas Day made together with wonderful HS, is it for partying. I guess this really is muted, since HPs nurse visited today and asked us if we celebrate Christmas! so low key you can't even tell it's there..

I like Christmas done this way, though, not my fave time of year, too much enforced jollity, and it's nice to enjoy it quietly and without fanfare. And I'm fervently glad that they repealed the law that said you must attend Nutcracker or risk heavy fines.

HP gave us an inspired Christmas gift last year -- a box of cards to use this year! what a terrific idea. So I have been able to do that, with my rather short list, and enjoy doing it. And when a card arrives from someone who wasn't a sendee, I can retaliate, I mean reciprocate, right away. This is good.

I notice that I'm already thinking gardening, though, the indoor kind until I can get outside for the other kind. I did a couple of miniature transplants into my dish gardens, because I love the way a tiny shootling from a big begonia looks suddenly like a giant in the dish garden, tree-like. And a few shoots of chives are towering over the mosses. And a vanishingly tiny rootling of spearmint is establishing itself as a plant to be reckoned with among the pebbles in the mossy landscape.

I love the way the plants know instantly when the days lengthen and start to grow more, before humans can detect the difference. One of the advantages of time starting to rush ahead in older age, though, is that the winter goes just as fast. Spring's here before you know what happened.

Hippo Birdies, Sags!

Hippo Birdies TwoEwes, all the Sagittarians who follow this blog! Diane, MaryAnn, Ruth, are there others, too? and Moi. Today I enter the Terrible (Seventy) Twos, and I'm planning on celebrating the whole year, wheeeeee....

HS came over last night to leave a card to be sure I got it first thing, and he'll be over on Saturday to cook and serve us a special birthday dinner which I chose, involving chicken and cheese and crusty bread and I forget the name, but it's great, and I explained I plan to be very hungry, please make a lot!

Great electronic cards from friends how on earth do you remember the date, and...

All in all, life is good!

Bios and Christmas letters

It's the time of year when I'm thankful to have been dropped from most Christmas letter lists, probably because word got out that I really don't think much of them.

Maybe it's penmanship envy, maybe because to write a letter that is not full of oh this terrible thing happened to us in January, and we bravely soldiered on, then this terrible thing happened to us in February, and once again we soldiered on, etc. etc., is above my pay grade.

I mean, that's why God invented blogging! And then there's the other letter full of name dropping and exotic travel bragging and credential getting by offspring, save me. That's why God invented autobiography.

Anyway, I believe the Christmas letter is an artform beyond the capacity of most of the people who attempt it. And so is autobiography, but there are shining exceptions.

One is a wonderful book by Penelope Lively, one of my favorite novelists anyway, who uses a novel hook for her bio of her own family, in many generations, "A House Unlocked" the house they lived in for ages and the gardens her grandmother designed and tended. Homey items like umbrella stands and gongs and things (this was a gracious home) trigger wonderful essays on social issues and history, excellent reading. The name dropping and credential bragging is sewn neatly into the whole and works perfectly.

For gardeners among us, there's a great chapter on the history and development of the notion of gardening, with special reference to Gertrude Jekyll who created what a lot of people now think is an ancient English garden form. And Lively understands the impact of civilization on what we think of as the landscape, which is in fact a carefully engineered phenomenon, not an act of nature at all.

Big contrast with the other bio I read recently, that of Julia Child, who comes across less happily than she might have wished -- as a loud, extroverted person who has little insight into anyone else's feelings or perceptions, but who is driven by perfection in food prep and serving. Fun to read, but must have been truly awful to live with. Her nephew, the co-biographer, commented on how little introspection she showed.

The enormous amount of detail about the people, places and food are drawn from the massive correspondence between her husband and his twin brother, which both of them evidently saved, so there was a mass of raw material for J's nephew to draw on in discussion with her in order to create the book. Some great pictures taken by her gifted artist husband, mostly in France, and he was positively saintly in supporting her food adventures especially the early television days. Good for all of us, since The French Chef was one of the most entertaining and informative food show ever.

On seeing her first program she commented, well she seemed loud and talking too much and too fast and blundering about, and he sweetly responded, well, that's how you are, Julie! so I guess over the years he got his little digs in..

Anyway, both books very entertaining for different reasons, and I'd give the Lively four hatstands, and the Child book four crossed knives and forks.

My ex-friend Flickr

So it's official. I have severed my relations with Flickr, after a long tussle and so many lies on his part, and such deceit and cruelty. I only got involved in order to post pix of knitting on the Ravelry website, which needs an intermediary other than my thumb drive, to post pix, and people there were encouraging and interested in the work.

But it went downhill from there. From distorting the shape of pix to fit its own template, to claiming that it would feed my blogs if I did all the stuff, and what with blogspot also claiming to have a special relationship that would allow me to send pix from Flickr to my blog, I was so deceived, how could you use a poor maiden so?

What with firing off pix at random all over my post, not where I'd designed them to go, and then failing to yield them at all, though I knew they were there, to Flickr test posts arriving just fine, but blogspot unable to grab them from Flickr, evidently a one way friendship there, yesterday was one long pain.

So I finally managed to get ONE picture successfully over into Art the Beautiful Metaphor, and then I went back and angrily pressed all the buttons to take AWAY my carefully fixed settings on Flickr, whereupon my blogs got well again, and all is fine.

I must admit that in the course of these adventures in high tech., I learned several new things about my thumb drive and now have much better titles on a whole bunch of my pix which had got themselves all labeled with the same name, dating back to when I was learning how to install pix on my computer and inadvertently lost all the titles....oh well, now I know how to fix them and I've been reunited with a whole lot of images that were hiding under the wrong place..tedious work renaming dozens of pictures but it's done. As long as I don't let Flickr back in the picture.

But on the principle that nothing is ever wasted, I thought I'd post a tiny pic, sorry Flickr won't help me there, of a group of comfort dolls, about six inches tall, little pocket toys, from dozens I made last year and send to ICROSS Canada for Willi to take to Africa with him next time he went with medications and equipment for AIDS clinics there. He uses the little dolls to pack fragile items instead of packing material, and gives them to happy little kids when he unpacks. The children are AIDS orphans, many of them have AIDS themselves, and the dolls are welcomed by kids as old as teenagers, as well as little guys.

Get in touch with ICROSS Canada if you're interested in helping out. Endless needs there. Then my high tech day will not have been in vain!

Conversations in yarn and in print

I just finished up this triangular scarf thingie which is really fun to make, and which will be delivered to a lucky recipient tomorrow when I get respite time to get out of the house and do it. This is a conversation in that I'm thinking about the recipient almost all the time I'm working on it, psychic communication...little in- joke there for A!

My respite student had another request for her time yesterday, the end of an intership she's been doing, and consulted with me on what to do, what to do, and I said, well, do it! we'll live, and we will see her tomorrow anyway. After she finishes her exam. She's a crackerjack student -- does the exam, leaves as soon as she's done and rarely needs more than half the time to complete it. And gets good grades, too. We love her and we're already working on getting her to continue with our respite care next semester, too.

Meanwhile, other completed projects, aside from the scarf, which was all fun, are some indicators of the power of the written word. I swear even in this day and age, by writing a letter when you can't get anything done by phone. Very easy for people to brush off a phone call, and no record of who said what and when.

So, just as after five weeks of agonizing wait for a grand jury excuse, I finally wrote a dignified letter in bold type, 14 font, very readable, not big enough to be rude, but effective, I got the excuse by return mail one day before I would have had to report.

Likewise after waiting two solid months for someone, anyone, to process the paperwork to get the legal inspection done for the heating system that was installed back in early October, I finally wrote to the township department and cc'd the installer.

Once again, the next day, email from the Twp. saying they'd sent it last week, a likely story, more like they saw they'd better get on it and did! they have to send paperwork to the installer, who then sends something to me and after I have papers in hand, I can set up the inspection. Vital legal process.

And I ordered essential medical supplies for HP more than two weeks ago, no sign of them, despite the shipper claiming they'd been shipped. So I wrote a memo of complaint to Amazon, through which I'd ordered, and gosh what a surprise, the case arrived three days later. UPS from Ohio. Which means they had in fact not shipped it until they got the complaint, because that's the typical time from there to here via UPS.

So here's the formula: bold type, font size 14, no more than two terse paragraphs with the facts and dates cc to whoever else needs to know, including in more than one case, my lawyer. Firm but kind! No Bad Bureaucrats approach. It's worked quite a few times for me.

I guess it's the new version of just in time inventory: ship before the customer gets really nasty about it! but not till they write and tell you so.

Just coming in late to inform you, dear blogistas, that as of a couple of minutes ago, this blog has had 7,777 pageviews. Now, this has to be auspicious!

Art, the Beautiful Metaphor, new blog

I have started building my art blog, named Art, the Beautiful Metaphor (note the soccer reference!) and have put my usual emailers on it. But most of us come in to the site to read, so you need to look for it at http://beautifulmetaphor.blogspot.com

If I could grasp how to make hot links in here, I would do it, but when I studied the Blogspot for Dummies version on how to do it, I realized I needed a Blogspot For Dummies for Dummies! so please copy and paste, and let me know how you like the new blog. It's barely started, so I'm open to suggestions.

Oops, editing late to explain that I now have two blogs running concurrently, five dollar word, and that the new one does not replace Field and Fen. The Dollivers would never agree to that. And they are expecting a starring role in the Beautiful Metaphor, too, sigh.

The Dollivers on a Health Kick

The Dollivers heard that I was off to Black Forest Acres, my local herbalist hangout, where Trudy and other knowledgeable herbalists dispense wisdom and other good stuff, for some refills, and after a short but nonetheless sharp struggle to see which two got the coveted place in the carrying bag, we set off in search of rosewater and glycerin and B complex both of which I swear by.

The Ds. pointed out that if I was talking about fiber, they needed no additional fiber, being composed of it, but would be interested in a refill of candy or jewelry and in case anything like that was in the offing, they would come along.

So, amid jeers and cries of Blondie gets Everything! and Knitted Hat, yourself! we set off.


They got into a discussion with the nice lady at the counter



who is not Trudy, but is very good to discuss with, about my purchases and whether any jewelry had made its way into the bag, and on finding out it hadn't, said, oh well, may as well forget the closeup then and put her in the pic too.





And the guided tour of the place led us to the shelves of all kinds of grains and fibers and seeds and they said, let's rest here a minute among our homeys, we're exhausted with all this shopping and driving.




I pointed out that their mental health was very much improved by having a change of scenery, but they were more convinced when I reminded them it gave them bragging rights when they got home, so they were content.

My own mental health is often restored by the kind of interesting fast moving skies we had yesterday, too, great for a sense of proportion.








Speaking of mental health, I read recently in the AARP magazine, stunningly enough, since they rarely seem to say anything I care to think more about, being heavily into trying to look 40 when you're 90 and other such hopeless endeavors, where was I, oh yes, that when you are in a caregiver role, the hardest part of all is when there are no immediate tasks, just the concern that some crisis may erupt at any time. That's more exhausting than actual physical care for the person. And I fully endorse this view.

Much harder to be on the alert night and day, even when there's nothing more to do right now for the patient. Easier mentally, though not physically, to have work, which, Dolliver knows, I do! but it's worth a thought. Being a doer by nature, I always do better with requirements, even when they're endless!

So, with the mental health bit attended to by yoga and walking and meditation and the labyrinth and throwing my hands up now and then, and skin care using rosewater and glycerin, and the physical stuff attended to with great food, made from scratch and a little help from vitamins, that's us!

We are the Dollivers and we approve this post.

The Shape of Things to Come

I've been organizing my new blog, which will be different from this one, won't replace it, but will be more of an art gallery for my work of all kinds, ranging from paintings to sculpture, to mixed media, to artists books, to handmade jewelry, and handmade beads available separately. The establishing pic in this post is a collection of the necklaces.

And interestingly the one thing that's been holding it up opening the new blog all this time is the choice of a title! blogspot requires the name of the blog before it will let you proceed to create it. Which shows what happens when the left brained try to cater to the right brained...whoever heard of having a title before you've written or created the piece? you don't know what will work until you've dived in and tried it and got responses, from yourself and others.

Oh well. But, you say, why not just have a provisional title, like a knitting provisional cast-on, which you can then slide out and insert the better title later? ah, because despite its airy promises, blogspot will not forward your mail.

Your readers get an error message if they click on the old name saying it doesn't exist any more. More than one blogista has bewailed this problem to me, having found a much better title that works and had to start from scratch rebuilding the whole architecture of the blog accordingly, and their readership. Soooooooo, I've been faffing around, taking pix of art and jewelry and cogitating over the title. Which will come soon, honest.

Anyway, the pix today will appear in there with more explanation.



It's a group of my handmade necklaces, many with beads of my own making, from paper and vegetables and other substances



some with a wax finish, some with a varnish finish, some found beads, some shells, some amber, all nice to wear, none too heavy.



I like this about these necklaces, since I hate heavy weights around my neck, but these are light enough to wear more than one without having to hold onto the furniture to get around. And I do create beads separately, available in groups.

And, in case you wondered, in art everything is for sale, unless otherwise noted. Where a piece is already in a collection, I say so, and in the case of the jewelry, one price fits all, this is sheer laziness on my part. But otherwise the descriptions will indicate size and price and all that stuff. Two dimensional art is shipped without glass, but with frame if you want, but it's easier to just have it shipped without either then you get it framed to your liking. It's practically impossible to find a hardware store that cuts glass any more,so you need a framing shop.

Most of the knitting, other than wallhangings, is created as gifts for friends who need a little present, or family, and that will be clear, too.

So I hope soon to come up with a blog title that's not a hopeless cliche nor a totally misleading title that I like but nobody else gets!

Oh, this reminds me of a great tiny event the other day. You know how sometimes you go on for ages, years even, trying to remember a given word, with no way of researching it, nobody around you who would know, and it drives you nuts? well, perhaps it's only me.

Anyway, there has been a word traipsing around in the silt at the bottom of my mind for years and years since I worked in broadcasting, and it described the statutory meetings the law required that public broadcasters held at given intervals at locations near their transmitters. And then, blessedly, someone mentioned it on the radio the other day, and my mind is at rest: Ascertainment. That's what they called the process.

It was complicated for the state network I worked in, having very few people available, and four transmitters in widely separated parts of the state, and the timing being close to identical for all of them. So sometimes I was conscripted to act above my pay grade and attend an ascertainment hearing, ready with answers for the masses of the public confidently expected to come in with questions.

Aie, save me. What with people saying why had we fired our sports commentator, and after I'd explained we'd never had one, the asker realized he thought we were a totally different, commercial, station, and people demanding to know why we didn't have programs for the Hispanic community, and I explained that we had one of the first in the country, still going strong, Hispanic producers, writers, directors, award winning, etc, but they hadn't recognized the name of the show. Then people saying why were there NO programs for older people, and we explained there were, and these were their names, etc. etc. you could set it to music after a bit.

But it taught me that cute and clever titles will lose the majority of your audience, unless you plan on being rather exclusive and posh. Also, interestingly, that for every call, or comment, or person showing at a public meeting, statisticians estimate there are at least 25 other likeminded people you don't hear from.

Anyway, I'd like people to actually find the new blog, hence the naming angst. Ah well. I'll get it. And then I'll tell you about it and invite you to wander about and enjoy.