Weekly recap of my ritual of existence in this liminal space called life. (See here for more info.)
- Weather
This week was warmish then coldish … highest high of 43.5°F on Wed., lowest low of 7.5°F on Sunday. The average high temperature was 32.1°F; the average low temperature was 18.6°F. We had 4 inches of snow from Monday into Tuesday, then over 2 inches of rain and freezing rain on Wed. There’s still snow on the ground, though.
- Beginnings/Firsts
Started holiday baking on Thursday, racking up about 13 hours between then and Saturday afternoon, including small loaves of orange poppyseed bread, a double batch of chocolate sambuca cookies, a double batch of butterscotch-cashew cookies, thumbprint cookies, ginger drop cookies, plus a double batch of spiced pecans and some sweet orange walnuts. I’ll finish up with two other kinds of cookies on Monday. These will be given to neighbours and friends and brought to the permaculture party cookie exchange next week.
- Wild Things (Flora, Fauna, Fungi)
All seen in the yard this week.
- Wandering
Not much wandering this week — I felt trapped in the house quite a bit, what with constant baking from Thursday through Saturday and speed wrapping for mailing on Monday and Tuesday — but we did take two trips, one on Tuesday to Gardener’s Supply in Lebanon, to bring home an evergreen that could be used as a Christmas tree and then planted in the ground in Spring — a ‘Gnom’ juniper communis— and the other on Sunday to visit friends’ new digs in Peterborough, have lunch with them, and walk around the cute downtown there, browsing Bowerbird & Friends antique store and buying coffee, tea, and macarons at Sweet Macaron before driving home.
- Curiosity & Discoveries
Enjoyed Doug Hitchcox’s presentation about his recent birding trip to Peru, offered through Maine Audubon on Zoom on Tuesday evening. Lots of bird pics, but also food, landscapes, alpacas, and some insects.
- Creating
I guess baking is creative in its own way, though cookies tend to feel rote because it’s tray after tray of the same thing.
- Repairing and Maintaining (everything but the house & yard)
Body/Mind: I didn’t manage even one walk this week, the first time I can remember that being the case. Life has been extremely busy to the point of overwhelming, mainly with Christmas shopping, ordering, wrapping, mailing, and baking. It’s been like this this week and I imagine it will be through next week as well:
Because of just being on the run a lot (errands, cleaning, cooking, etc), treadmilling one evening (40 mins, 2.75 miles), stacking a cord of wood another day, and spending many hours baking and wrapping, I have managed to get in some “steps” even absent walks, with five days over 8,000 steps, including two over 11,000 and one over 14,000. But I miss being outside. My mind is not in a happy or relaxed place. Stacking wood (or actually, loading the wheelbarrow from the woodpile and wheeling it to my husband to stack, over and over again for an hour) was some of the most fun I had all week.
Vehicles: My car (Jeep) told me to “service engine” on Monday; my husband put it on the charger for a bit and problem solved (I don’t drive it much and almost always for short trips, which drains the battery).
Cat: I refilled the cat’s second litter box with regular litter after removing the cup or so of non-clumping litter that the vet gave us in November to try to collect a urine sample in (Bumble glanced at the skimpy smattering of sand and then at me and we both knew that was never going to happen) and he’s happily using that box again along with his other litter box, which gives us more options in our domestic life.
- Gardening/Yard
Not much happening in the yard that I’ve noticed other than birds and squirrels at the feeders and deer, fox, squirrels, and neighbours’ dogs on the motion cameras (see Wild Things, above). My husband snowblowed our driveway on Tuesday after the 4 inches or so of snow.
- Nesting
Cleaning/Maintenance: I did clothes laundry on Thursday. I cleaned and cleaned most of the week, the same baking pans, bowls, mixer, scrapers, counters, etc., over and over, and vacuumed the kitchen at least once. My husband did the dump trip on Saturday. As mentioned, we stacked a cord of wood on Monday and for once had good weather for it.
Food: Besides all my holiday baking, my husband also baked two loaves of sourdough this week on Thursday; we kept one and gave one away. We had leftovers on Monday, I made Italian fish stew with swordfish on Tuesday, which we also ate on Thursday. On Wed., we were taken out to dinner by a friend. On Friday I made cacio e pepe with Old Bay-garlic shrimp, which we had with a green salad and bread, and the same on Sat. but with sautéed broccolini and garlic, and we finished the leftovers on Sunday with a green salad and bread.
Supplies: More Xmas ordering at the beginning of the week, and on Wed. I ordered more cat litter and more boxes of Taylor’s Christmas Spice teabags (which will arrive just after Christmas). Our 80 Snapfish Christmas cards arrived early, on Sat., and I will be addressing and mailing them on Monday.
Financial/Admin: I was summoned for federal court jury duty on Thursday, for two dates in February 2025, but as you may remember, I served two days of state petit court jury duty in April of this year, so I was able to be excused from this instance and can be excused through April 2026 from any jury duty in NH. I filled out the long questionnaire online (questions about my sister’s jobs? where I went to college and my husband’s highest level of education? I think what surprised me was that most of the questions required narrative answers, which must take a lot of time to read and assess) and then I completed the form requesting to be excused and why — having served within two years in NH was one of the acceptable (though, they went to great pains to say, by no means guaranteed) excuses, along with having planned a non-refundable trip, being 70 or older, being sole caretaker of a child or other adult, et al. Within about 18 hours, I received a non-form 3-paragraph email excusing me and telling me that if I receive another summons within the two-year period, I can be excused for that as well.
That quick and thoughtful (non-) bureaucratic response was a bright spot in my week. Otherwise, it was one of my worst tech/bureaucracy weeks ever, from the Facebook screw-up and removal of my account with no recourse even though it’s 100% their mistake; to some kind of intimate connection between my phone and computer that led to all my phone’s info being copied onto my computer, which I did not want; to an ongoing issue on WordPress where I suddenly and frequently can’t type in the visual editor and have to reload the page to be able to type again — and this happens every few minutes; and then I screwed things up and caused a lot of hassle for multiple parties when I mailed (or had mailed) three gifts to the wrong address — all to one UPS checkpoint, and none of them was being delivered by UPS. I’ll let you know how that turns out next week. I’m pretty sure there were a few other frustrating tech glitches this week but I’ll stop here. Nothing unsettles and jangles me more than tech and car troubles. Give me firewood stacking any day.
- Sleeping & Dreaming
Pretty average week of sleep, with sleep times ranging from 7 hours 57 mins to 6 hours 27 mins, averaging 7 hours 11 mins per night overall. Sleep scores were on the low side, from 77 to 89, averaging 84.4. I had 15 hours 7 mins of REM sleep and about 9 hours of deep sleep this week.
- Reading / Words & Ideas / Listening / Watching
Reading
BOOKS: I didn’t finish a book this week, that’s how busy I was. I’m reading John Banville’s The Drowned, set in 1950s Ireland, in and near Dublin.
OTHER
Watching
We (re)watched “Adam’s Rib” (1949), which I’d DVR’d a while ago, over a couple of nights and I watched “The Sound of Music” on Sunday night when I happened upon it on TV — it was a balm for my hectic week.
Listening
- Connections & Community
Local support: Bought items at local co-op on Thursday; shopped at the regional co-op on Tuesday, and bought the juniper Xmas tree, some pea seeds, and a gift card for a friend from Vermont-based Gardener’s Supply that day; bought drinks and macarons from local place in Peterborough on Sunday. I also ordered three Christmas gifts from local vendors (Woodstock Chimes and King Arthur Baking) this week.
Relationships: Neighbours (RD & WD) brought us a bottle of wine on Friday as a thank-you for clearing their driveway of snow while they were away last week — unexpected and very sweet! A friend/neighbour (LD) took us out to dinner on Wednesday night for a couple of hours, and my husband took him a loaf of sourdough on Thursday. Some dinner pics: grilled eggplant vegetarian steak with roasted asparagus and quinoa, scallops with crispy prosciutto, and lobster risotto with saffron, plus a lovely blood orange sorbet (which the server described as “blood of orange” sorbet).
We had lunch and visited with friends in Peterborough (MAB & RB) on Sunday for a couple of hours and texted some with another (college) friend (RLJ) who also lives there but who was busy with a concert rehearsal while we were there.
Texted with a good friend in Maine (LFR) for an hour or so on Friday and again on Saturday, and texted quite a bit of course with my friends (R&ChN) whose packages I sent wildly astray. I skipped Salon on Friday because I had too much else to do (and it was being hosted 1/2 hour away).
- Endings
End of an era: I’ve been on Facebook since I could (2009?) and on Monday evening my account was summarily suspended because Facebook thought I owned a bad Instagram account, which I don’t own and have never heard of. I tried to appeal but to no avail. So, find me on Instagram and Threads (yes, still there, though they’re Meta also), or on Bluesky or Snapchat. I miss the local (town) stuff on Facebook, one group I was part of (and the main thing I used FB for), and a few accounts of folks for whom I don’t have any other contact info, like our Maine neighbours in the 1990s.
- All This Useless Beauty
The highway was pretty.
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