LIMINAL LIVING #5: 29 JAN TO 4 FEB 2024

February 4, 2024

Weekly recap of my ritual of existence in this liminal space called life. (See here for more info.)

Weather

The high temperatures this week ranged from 37.6°F to 26.6°F, which is a bit milder than usual here for this time of year. The lows ranged from 14.4°F to 24.8°F. We had about four inches of snow last Sunday night into Monday, and about 1/3 inch of rain on Friday. Given the atmospheric rivers and the flooding and winds on the west coast, I guess boring is good. Multiple groundhogs saw their shadows on 2 Feb, but I’m hoping for more snow before winter ends.

Beginnings

Two new birds this week, a Carolina wren or winter wren on Monday around 4:30p, close to the house but too quick to get a photo and I haven’t seen it since, but we’ve had Carolina wrens here in January & February the last few years; and a red-bellied woodpecker on Saturday morning. I heard the red-bellied first and ran out to strew woodpecker seed along a heavy apple tree branch; within a few minutes, it had flown to the seed and was eating.

I also began the Sharon Salzberg Real Happiness Meditation Challenge on Thursday, which continues each day for the month of February. I’ve done this in past years and find it well worth the small amount of time needed.

And I created a new Nature Photos Google album for February and sent out an email on Friday with the link to the people who want to see it.

Flora, Fauna, Fungi

Mostly birds!

Some birds heard in the yard this week:

Wandering

Around the lake on Saturday.

Curiosity & Discoveries

On Tuesday afternoon I watched a wonder-ful webinar, Wonders of the Western Pacific, a slideshow of a trip with a National Geographic expedition to Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Palau last Oct., mostly to national parks and animal refuges. The animals, landscapes, and seascapes were a feast for the eyes, and the stories about the trip enhanced it all. Suzanne Kahn of the Wells Reserve (in Maine) presented the programme.

Creating

Started my Write 28 Days challenge on Thursday, hoping to write a poem most days in February, somehow related to dreaming. We’ll see how it goes. It takes a lot of my energy and time most days.

Repairing and Maintaining (everything but the house)

Body/Mind: Either because conditions outside haven’t been as conducive to walking as usual or because my schedule hasn’t allowed it in daylight hours, I walked on the treadmill a few times this week, for a total of about 6 miles, and also walked outside in town on Wednesday and Friday and around the lake (3 miles) on Saturday. I worked out four times (4 hours). As mentioned above, I’m doing some guided meditation every day. My husband had a regular medical visit on Wednesday.

I attended the Botany in a Winter webinar on Wed. evening — we’re still learning monocots, including many of the familiar spring ephemerals.

Yard: Husband cleared snow from driveway on Monday morning.

Finances: I logged onto the bank account on Tues. after they migrated to the new system and checked it out. Added and changed a couple of autopayments. Downloaded the new phone app. Updated the checkbook.

Nesting

Maintenance: Watered the houseplants on Thursday after thinking about it every day for the past week and never getting to it. Husband cleaned the air purifier (a monthly chore) on Thursday, too. He also repaired an old humidifier this week by soldering a new fuse onto the circuit board, which had to be removed first.

Food: My husband made 3 baguettes on Tuesday and a loaf of sourdough on Wednesday. I made bean nachos (with red beans, salsa, black olives, red bell peppers, onions, Mexican cheese mix, corn chips) for dinner on Wednesday and ate them for lunch for several days following. On Thursday, I made asparagus risotto for dinner (that night + Thurs + Fri), a sort of spur of the moment decision when the local co-op had excellent-looking asparagus in stock; we had it with raw carrots on Thurs., steamed broccoli and cauliflower mix on Thurs., and breaded fish on Friday. We ate out on Sunday, unusually, and now have those leftovers for next week.

Supplies: We stocked up on birdseed from the local hardware store with coupons on Wed.

Sleeping & Dreaming

I slept an average of 7 hours 49 minutes, with a high of 8-1/2 hours and a low of 6 hours 48 mins. My average Fitbit sleep score was 86.3 (of 90), with a high of 91 on Saturday night and a low of 84 on Tues, Wed, and Thurs nights.

I didn’t record many dreams except on 2 Feb, when I remembered many, including one about a bus driver, my mother, a cardboard file box, a “ramas” jar (but I thought they said Rana, the frog genus), a crooked stick, and two crow’s eggs that the bus driver had stolen from the crows, to my dismay and my mother’s mirth; a dream where I think I’m holding a narrower seltzer can than I am and when I set it on a counter, it falls off, without spilling any of the liquid inside, and my sister retrieves it for me; and one where my neighbour is asking me the lyrics to a country song but I can’t find them on my phone.

Reading / Words & Ideas / Listening / Watching

New words: Neither word is actually new to me but I keep forgetting exactly what they mean because I see or hear them rarely. The first, solipsism, I came across reading Strangers to Ourselves by Rachel Aviv; she was describing the self-centeredness of children’s thought experience:

The second, stochastic, I came across twice in the same day (Thursday):

The second time it was used in the term stochastic terrorism:

The sense of stochastic terrorism derives from a prior term, stochastic harm, coined in 1978, which is what occurs “when the cause (hazard) and its effect (harm) are indirectly linked by a probabilistic relationship,” e.g. when radiation therapy used to treat one kind of cancer causes another kind of cancer.

I finished reading a novel developed from an Agatha Christie play (The Unexpected Guest) this week — it was OK, not surprisingly kind of stilted in the way a play can be, though also quite twisty — and I also finished Rachel Aviv’s Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us (2022), about experiences of mental illness and treatment. She discussed some terms and concepts I hadn’t heard of, or talked about them in a new light, such as “epistemic injustice” (wrong done to someone in their capacity as a knower, that is, when we’re not treated as credible witnesses of our own experience), “pharmacological Calvinism” (there is a widespread belief that if a drug makes you feel good, it’s either morally wrong or you will pay for it with dependence or disease), and “insight,” an assessment by doctors that in fact “measures the degree to which a patient agrees with his or her doctor’s interpretation” of the patient.

I’m in the middle of Jamel Brinkley’s book of short stories, Witness (2023) and am about to start Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere (2023) by Maria Bamford.

This article, How To Microdose Movement, by Allie Volpe at Vox offers some useful tips: When sitting for long periods, get up and move around at least once an hour, and if you can do some light walking for 5 mins every half-hour, that’s even better; don’t keep a big water bottle or coffee thermos (or other large drinking container) near you but rather incentivise yourself to get up and walk to the kitchen when you need another drink, and in an office walk to the farthest bathroom or water fountain; while in your seat, or while travelling, fidget, tap toes, roll shoulders, flex ankles, extend legs, move arms above head, and occasionally do mini-squats in and out of your seat.

I came across these handy health-related summaries online this week:

I loved this collaboration at the Grammys on Sunday between Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs of her song, Fast Car.

Connections & Community [relationships, local support, giving/donating, receiving, friends, neighbours]

I hosted the permaculture group on Thursday for five of us, continuing our discussion of Renkl’s The Comfort of Crows and lots of other things. My Salon group met in person on Friday with four of us — much to discuss and we celebrated an 84th birthday of one of the members. Gaia’s Garden bookgroup met on Zoom (6 of us) on Tues evening for an hour to hear a summary of a book the group might read (probably won’t) and talk about vegetable varieties.

We shopped at the local hardware store and at the local co-op on Wed. (ran into a friend in the co-op parking lot, hugs exchanged) and we had a meal on Sunday afternoon (inside, 3:30pm) at a local restaurant that has excellent ventilation, using a substantial gift certificate.

Talked with my sister by phone for about a half-hour on Thursday night. Wrote a friend a long email on Friday. Texted with several friends a few times this week. We gave a loaf of homemade bread to a friend this week.

A friend’s husband had a serious medical event last week (ongoing) and a group of us are trying to provide moral support (and any other help that’s needed). Also keeping in mind my other sister, whose husband is experiencing some further health issues and undergoing testing; a friend having a biopsy next week; and a former boss of mine (who’s a little younger than me) who is still getting treatments for her lung cancer but is looking at entering hospice soon.

Endings [finishing/harvesting]

I think the pine siskins have left for the year.

We finished this bottle of sweet vermouth this week (in a Negroni), which we bought at least 15 year ago, when we lived in Maine! (I only know because of the bottle return sticker)