Weekly recap of my ritual of existence in this liminal space called life. (See here for more info.)
- Weather
The average high temperature this week was 30.3°F, with a fairly narrow range from 38.1°F to 26.4°F; the average low was 15.8°F, with a wide range from 3.7°F to 28°F. We got an inch or two of snow overnight on Thursday into Friday and some light snow fell on Saturday. It was quite windy on Wednesday and Friday. The snow on the ground remains, since temps haven’t been above freezing this week, but highs are forecast to hit 40°F later this coming week.
- Beginnings
Merlin heard a golden-crowned kinglet on Monday for the first time in months. I haven’t seen or heard it myself yet.
Lent started on Wednesday, though I didn’t do anything special to mark it this year. I like to read TS Eliot’s long poem “Ash Wednesday” each year, so maybe I’ll do that soon.
I bought some digital design apps this week, including a lifetime of Deep Art Effects and a one-month free trial of Canva (that I might continue), as well as 800 energy units (weird way they measure cost of creating images) from Deep Dream Generator. I’ve used them every day so far. I’ve played around with the free versions of all of these over the years but now I want more functionality and options.
- Flora, Fauna, Fungi
It’s still mostly birds, plus the red fox and red squirrels (grey squirrels too but not shown here). And, just for a pop of excitement, a fungus seen on a fence.
Merlin heard these birds between Monday and Thursday in our yard.
- Wandering
I took in-town walks on Tues. and Friday (about 6 miles total), walked on the treadmill on Wed. and Thurs. (5.5 miles, 1 hr, 20 mins), and we walked three miles around the lake on Sunday. Heard our first red-winged blackbirds this year.
- Curiosity & Discoveries
I found this useful recipe for 5-ingredient Niçoise salad online this week, at Cup of Jo; it’s similar to something I already make but even simpler.
We discovered this (phoebe’s?) nest sitting in the backyard snow on Sunday! Looks like there is blue-green fungus-coated wood in it.
I learned a lot about the Gulf of Maine and the geology of the Maine coast during a Zoom webinar on Thursday afternoon via The Wells Reserve.
- Creating
Still writing poems every day for the Write 28 Days Dream Poems challenge I set myself. Still dreaming, too. And now I’m creating new and edited digital images almost every day.
- Repairing and Maintaining (everything but the house)
Body/Mind: I’m still taking Botany in a Winter, with a webinar every week; this week we studied rushes and sedges. I’m glad there’s no test, other than life itself of course. We spent much of the time looking at rushes and sedges using the dichotomous key, my nemesis. Here’s a little of what it looks like (he grabbed it from Go Botany):
Unrelated, I need more sleep. I’m still meditating every day with Sharon Salzberg’s Real Happiness Meditation Challenge.
Finance: I have a CD coming due next month, so on Tuesday I updated my instructions on its maturity online after looking over the options and current interest rates. We received an unexpected check.
- Nesting
Food: Husband made pancakes for Shrove Tuesday.
We mostly had premade Indian meals, take-out, and leftovers this week. I made two dinner meals this week: a tortellini “salad” (that we heated up) on Thursday, with cheese tortellini, black olives, red bell peppers, corn, peas, artichoke hearts, shrimp, fresh parsley, and an olive oil-lemon juice dressing; and a tuna and farfalle puttanesca on Sunday — the recipe is no longer online but here’s a copy plus a photo of the finished product. I’m going to add corn to it next time.
Maintenance & repair: Husband repaired a pizza cutter wheel on Wed. with some fasteners from the hardware store. He also did a little snowblowing of the driveway on Sunday (from Friday’s light snow). I cleaned half the shower’s tiled floor on Sunday.
Decor: My husband had flowers sent to me from a local florist on Tuesday for Valentine’s Day. They’re gorgeous and now that I have my upstairs office, with a door to close, I can enjoy them without worrying the cat will nibble, which he likes to do (and my husband requested a Designer’s Choice bouquet with flowers and plants that aren’t toxic to cats, but Bumble will go for anything spiky or berry-ish, which is verboten).
- Sleeping & Dreaming
My average sleep per night this week was 7 hours and 16 minutes, a bit less than usual, with a high of 8 hours 9 minutes on Tuesday night and a low of 5 hours 47 minutes on Sunday night, for an average sleep score this week of 84.7 (high of 91 on Tues. and low of 78 on Thursday).
I dreamt a lot and wrote down some:
I’ve written a several-paragraph play that requires four heavy maroon T-shirts, maybe with names printed on them … and the staging of the play involves an Instagram person I follow (Lauren M.);
There’s a Karmann Ghia car that we have to take to get to church in time (but I want to walk);
I’m with friends at a party in a house owned by an older married man (VS) who is making out with a young woman in his basement during the party, to the surprise of no one, and I’m carrying some coffee table books as I and friends prepare to leave, even though I am staying there another day;
A friend (Liz) is driving us to a bookgroup meeting but there’s an alert German shepherd dog sitting on the host’s front stoop, a dog we’ve never seen before, so we drive by and end up inside in the kitchen with the host, who doesn’t remember me and also doesn’t remember she’s hosting, and she has some smaller dogs and some cats in another room. After we go outside again, Liz is talking with my husband about some electrical problem.
- Reading / Words & Ideas / Listening / Watching
Reading/Ideas:
I read this, from Your Very Own Consciousness Can Interact With the Whole Universe, Scientists Believe: A recent experiment suggests the brain is not too warm or wet for consciousness to exist as a quantum wave that connects with the rest of the universe, by Susan Lahey in Popular Mechanics, 18 Oct 2023 (bolding mine):
“But when you have a heightened state of consciousness, it’s because you’re dealing with quantum-level consciousness that is capable of being in all places at the same time, he explains. That means your consciousness can connect or entangle with quantum particles outside of your brain—anywhere in the universe, theoretically.” …
“Photosynthesis, for example, allows a plant to store the energy from a photon, or a quantum particle of light. The light hitting the plant causes the formation of something called an exciton, which carries the energy to where it can be stored in the plant’s reaction center. But to get to the reaction center, it has to navigate structures in the plant—sort of like navigating an unfamiliar neighborhood en route to a dentist appointment. In the end, the exciton must arrive before it burns up all of the energy it’s carrying. In order to find the correct path before the particle’s energy is used up, scientists now say the exciton uses the quantum property of superposition to try all possible paths simultaneously. New evidence suggests microtubules in our brains may be even better at guarding this quantum coherence than chlorophyll.” …
“ When we imagine “what if …?” scenarios, we’re actually getting information about versions of ourselves in other universes who are also navigating the same strange attractor—others’ “cars” on the track, he explains. This also accounts for our sense of consciousness, of free will, and of being connected with a greater universe.”
Whoa. And yeah, that’s sometimes how it feels.
I also read this (published on 11 Feb but read by me later in the week), The soundscape of your happiness: What you hear affects how you are, by Kelton Wright in her newsletter Shangrilogs.
“Of all the things we looked for in a new home, we didn’t consider birds. … I’m not sure if asking the realtors to stand in silence outside one February morning would’ve revealed reality …. [but] we did not listen outside.” She cites some studies about birdsong and mental health, concluding after describing one that “For all the city slickers who say they love to fall asleep to the sound of sirens, the science says you’ll feel better elsewhere. The participants in the study who were exposed to traffic scapes reported a significant increase in depression, where the birdsong participants reported decreases in anxiety and paranoia. … My instinct based on how miserable everyone seems to be is that no one is getting enough nature or birdsong.”
I finished reading a novel this week, Mother-Daughter Murder Night (2024) by Nina Simon, about the evolving relationships among a 15-year-old girl, her nurse mother, and her high-powered grandmother who’s living with them while she undergoes chemo for cancer as they try to investigate a murder that the teen discovers while leading a kayaking tour in an estuary near their home in California. The pacing of this straightforward mystery is a bit slow (this is not a thriller and not especially suspenseful), but it felt right for this story. I’m still reading Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult (2023) by Maria Bamford.
New Words:
Collops: The practice of cutting meat into strips before its preservation (by salting and hanging up to dry), which led to the naming of Collop Monday, which falls before Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday. “Latterly, Collop Monday become associated with eating ham or bacon; it was the last day that flesh and fowl were eaten prior to Lent.” (Source: Shrovetide Jollity in the 13 Feb 2024 Seaside Forager newsletter)
Microtubules: These are “major components of the cytoskeleton. They are found in all eukaryotic cells [i.e., the cells of all animals, plants, fungi, and many unicellular organisms], and they are involved in mitosis, cell motility, intracellular transport, and maintenance of cell shape. Microtubules are composed of alpha- and beta-tubulin [globular proteins] subunits assembled into linear protofilaments.” (I read about them in that article about consciousness mentioned above, and the definition, along with a diagram, was found here.)
I also learned about rhyolite. It’s a fine-ground volcanic rock, the “extrusive equivalent of granite magma” and made up of quartz, K–feldspar, and biotite. It ranges in colour from grey to light pink, and it’s found at “Jasper Beach” on the coast of Maine (where jasper rock is not found). It was mentioned in the Gulf of Maine webinar I attended (online) this week.
Watching: We’ve started re-watching a favourite TV show, “Northern Exposure,” from the beginning on Prime video on Sat. night. We’re watching an episode per night at the moment. It’s my comfort TV.
Handy things:
- Connections & Community
We ordered take out pizza (black olive, spinach, artichoke heart) and salad (which I augmented) from a local pizza place on Wed. Husband ordered Valentine’s flowers from a local florist. He bought some fasteners at the local hardware store to fix a kitchen implement. I’m still not remembering to check the local farmstand and coffee shop on the few days they’re open. Come March I think the farmstand will be open more often.
Emailed a friend a requested crab bisque recipe on Monday and took her some homemade rye bread on Friday. On Wednesday, we found out a friend’s cancer has recurred. On Friday my sister and her husband got some encouraging scan results. My other sister and I talked by phone for about an hour altogether, on Tuesday and Friday. I hosted our online permaculture meeting on Thursday, with 8 of us. Salon met in person on Friday; there were five of us, including a new member. Exchanged quite a few longish emails and texts with several friends this week. A friend asked me to critique a local organisation’s online survey, which I did for an hour or so on Saturday and sent her my thoughts. Made plans to see art and eat with a friend this coming Wednesday.
- Endings
I learned today that a former pastor of my mother’s (and mine, briefly, when I was in college) died this week from a stroke he suffered on Tuesday. May he be at rest and may those who love him be comforted.
One of my favourite animal friends on Facebook died on Tuesday, Susan, a gorgeous hunk of Frenchie, who lived in Cumbria, UK, with the Middlemiss family, including her Frenchie brother Nelson (still alive) and some Pointers, including Pearl and Hesper, who also died fairly recently, Pearl only about 8 weeks ago. I’ve never met Susan or her people but it’s a heart-wrench all the same. RIP, Susan, 1 May 2012 – 14 Feb. 2024. She loved to hunt rocks in the stream.
- All This Useless Beauty
I mean, look at that dog ↑ She’s a dreamboat.
Also: shadows on drapes, shadows and snow, tree-sky-moon, chickadee in falling snow, junco.
