Weekly recap of my ritual of existence in this liminal space called life. (See here for more info.)
- Weather
The weather station went kerflooey on Saturday so I had to use data from a nearby town that’s usually a bit warmer than we are (less elevation) for that day. The week was fairly wild anyway, temperature-wise, with a high of 51.1°F on Monday and a low of 5.5°F on Sunday. Overall, highs averaged 34.8°F and lows 25.6°F. Next week will be much colder. We had about half an inch of rain on Monday, along with some dense fog, and about 4 inches of heavy wet snow on Tues-Wed., plus a dusting on Sunday. It was pretty windy the latter part of the week; in fact, the wind brought a tree down on the lines a block or two away from us on Thursday, causing a 3-hour power outage.
It was foggy/misty driving on Monday.
- Beginnings/Firsts
Happy New Year!
We set up the new Birdfy smart birdfeeder on Saturday and here’s our first visitor!
I set up the January Nature Photos album and emailed the link to the people on the list on Friday.
- Wild Things in addition to others elsewhere in this post
- Wandering
We took a short walk at The Fells on Monday and in-town walks on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.
in-town walks
The Fells
- Curiosity & Discoveries
Some interesting birds seen in the Virtual Birding session on Tuesday (via Zoom from Maine Audubon). In order from top left: eastern bluebird and northern cardinal in Lancaster, PA; bridled titmouse, mountain chickadee, and dark-eyed junco near Sedona AZ; side by side of boat-tailed grackle and common grackle in Nokomis, FL; and many brambling finches in Somogy County, Hungary. (Click and open photos in another window to enlarge.)
I discovered over the weekend that due to bird flu, our grocery store had almost no eggs.
- Creating
Other than thrown-together meals, nothing.
- Repairing and Maintaining (everything but the house & yard)
Body/Mind: I worked out 4 times (4 hours) this week, and besides the outdoor walking mentioned above also walked 6.75 miles on the treadmill this week. My steps totalled over 8,000 on six days and over 11,000 on 3 days, including one day over 15,000. My sleep scores were pretty good this week. I tried, as usual, to be here, now, with mixed results. 😒
- Nesting – cleaning/maintenance, food, supplies, financial/administrative, yard
Cleaning/Maintenance: Besides the usual toilet cleaning, counter and sink cleaning, etc., I cleaned some of the master shower on Monday, vacuumed the bedroom and mudroom on Tuesday, and did clothes laundry on Friday and towel laundry on Sunday. I tried to clean the inside and outside of some of the family room windows on Sunday — the ones through which I take photos of birds at the feeders — but couldn’t make some smears and scratches disappear.
Food: I finished the Christmas Indian food on Monday! Tuesday I made dilled-bourbon shrimp and rice, our usual New Year’s Eve dinner. Wednesday we had the last of the leftover crabcakes from Saturday on arugula, with a breakfast radish. Thursday I made another batch of dilled-bourbon shrimp over rice, and Friday I added the shrimp leftovers and some peas to bucatini. We had that on Saturday along with carrots, radish, celery, and olive tapenade, and on Sunday it was veggie burgers with Swiss cheese on arugula, corn, and mac & cheese. My husband made three loaves of sourdough baguettes on Monday and gave one away to a friend.
Supplies: Nothing really in the way of supplies this week, though a friend (RL) supplied me with two butternut squash-cranberry risotto cakes from the regional co-op on Thursday.
Yard: I cleaned the heated birdbath (in gloves) and tossed the October pumpkin into the backyard on Tuesday. My husband did a little more mouse-proofing around the foundation of the house, also on Tuesday, and he set up our new smart birdfeeder on Saturday. On Monday, he made a repair with epoxy to a yard ornament that holds birdseed.
Admin/Financial: I spent a half-hour on the phone on Thursday and 20 mins on chat on Friday with Anthem to ensure that my autopay was working and to request my new health insurance card be mailed to me (and I printed off a paper one from their website).
- Sleeping & Dreaming
Sleep scores (FitBit) were pretty good this week, averaging 88 over the six days the FitBit was operating properly. I averaged exactly 8 hours of sleep, with a high of 8 hours 22 mins and a low of 7 hours 1 min. REM sleep accounted for slightly more than 11 hours and deep sleep for 6 hours 43 mins of the total on those six nights.
On Tues. night, I dreamed of a sprawling brown house on a city block, which we’d just bought, along with the furniture that was in it though we also had furniture to bring — I was already thinking about moving some of the dressers out to other rooms to accommodate our armoire in the bedroom. A few (seemingly benign) Indian or south Asian men turned out to be living in the house, I discovered while walking through trying to figure out what all the rooms were (at least one of the men had been showering in a downstairs bathroom), and I also discovered some water on the floor of one of the many closets. These weren’t exactly pleasant surprises but they didn’t worry me. When I woke from the dream, there were still parts of the house I hadn’t explored but it was exciting to me to live in this completely new (to me — the house itself was on the old side) house with so many undiscovered and interesting spaces.
- Reading / Words & Ideas / Listening / Watching
Reading
BOOKS: I’ve been slowly reading and savouring Louise Penny’s latest Gamache novel, The Grey Wolf, this week. I finished The Comfort of Crows by Margaret Renkl on Wednesday, read with my permaculture group over this last year.
OTHER: Read several interesting things online this week:
Bird Flu: DEFCON 3 for H5N1. (DEFCON 1 is the worst.) Why my threat assessment has changed by Jeremy Faust MD at Inside Medicine. (may be behind a paywall)
AI & Medicine & Gender: Another one from Dr. Faust, which may also be behind a paywall, was this really fascinating (hilarious, disturbing) interaction between a human and AI, trying to get AI to create an image of a doctor and nurse together in a way that made the two colleagues appear to be on somewhat equal footing: AI has an antiquated view on gender and medicine: What that says about us.
If you can’t see it, here’s one bit of it, where Chat GPT makes the wild claim that the doctor and nurse are exactly the same height!
Healing: Letting the wound work on us by Holly Whitaker at Recovering, from which: “Last week, I could not stop crying. A friend reminded me that everyone needs more than anyone can give right now, and I am trying to remember that. … So often my first inclination is to curse the wound, then work furiously to fix the wound or overcome the wound or incorporate the wound into my heroes journey, when all I am really really being asked to do is look at the wound and talk to the wound and let the wound be the wound.”
Microchip monopoly: It’s the Most Indispensable Machine in the World—and It Depends on This Woman by Ben Cohen in the Wall Street Journal, 30 Dec. 2024. Brienna Hall is “one of the engineers assigned to the fabrication plants [at Micron Technology in Boise, ID] … where ASML customers manufacture their semiconductors. … ASML [Advanced Semiconductor Materials Lithography] is “the glue holding the chip business together. That’s because this one Dutch company is responsible for all of the EUV lithography systems that help make the chips in so many of your devices. Like your phone. And your computer. And your tablet. And your TV. Maybe even your car, too.”
And finally, Why are we sacrificing any joy in our very short lives, when our sacrifices are doing virtually nothing to “save the earth”? One Short Life by Climate Survivor at Medium (possibly behind paywall). Climate Survivor is tired of wasting time and energy on hatred and judgment and things that don’t actually matter. So they’re focusing on what does matter.
“Last year I wrote a piece that changed my entire worldview. I did the math on my contribution to the climate crisis and to collapse. And it turns out, even if I vanished right now, it would only delay collapse by two tenths of a second. A literal snap of the fingers.
“That isn’t me going vegan. That isn’t me not taking vacations. That isn’t me only using public transportation. That isn’t me being the most ecologically pure person on the planet. That’s me dead, right now. You’re no different.
It hardly matters even if we went full Thanos on the entire United States. Snap of the fingers. Poof! 330 million people gone. Thanos-ing the entire population of the US would buy the world only about 2 and a half years in avoided emissions.
So why the hell are we spending all this time pointing fingers at each other and acting like the environmental morality police?
In the end, each of our lives is an insanely rare, precious gift on a rare and beautiful planet. I don’t decide for you what you should do with yours; nor should you decide what I decide to do with mine.
Yes, there are a million problems in the world, from genocide, to mass extinction, to climate change. And on and on. I can’t solve them, as much as I might want to. These things are awful, and I in no way approve of or endorse them. But that doesn’t mean that I can do much about them. … . I am changing what I can. But I’m also going to do what I can to enjoy every precious remaining moment I have in this miraculous place.”
Watching
We watched a few things this week besides football, old British comedies, and a couple of House Hunters, including favourite films “Foul Play” with Goldie Hawn & Chevy Chase and “Holiday” with Cary Grant & Katharine Hepburn, and The Rose Parade from Pasadena California on New Year’s Day, my favourite parade.
I also watched this video (2 min 23 sec) on YouTube this week and liked it: “SOY CUBA” (“I AM CUBA”) FUNERAL CORTEGE SCENE at KBN Next Media. It’s notable because it’s one continuous scene, “almost an impossible one,” with a camera on a crane, then the camera handheld, then the camera hung with two cables over the street.
Listening
Shazam’d these this week.
- Connections & Community
Local Support: Most of the the local places we frequent for vegetables, baked goods, and such are closed this week. I did pick up a couple of things at the local co-op on Sunday. Also had breakfast and bought a few veggies at a localish farmstand/café on Monday before they closed for two weeks.
Relationships: My aunt died on Tuesday morning; I spent 20 minutes on the phone with my sister that day and 1.5 hours the next day. On New Year’s Day evening we went to a friend’s (LD) for wine & cheese (and on Monday we took him a loaf of sourdough bread). There were 8 of us in the permaculture Zoom meeting on Thursday and 7 of us at the Salon meeting on Friday (6 in person, 1 on Zoom). As mentioned above, a friend (RL) dropped off some items from the regional co-op on Thursday. After I posted the nature photos album on Friday, a bunch of people emailed me with (nice) comments. Texted and emailed with some friends over the weekend. A friend (LFR) mailed me her Christmas bird calendar this week. Christmas cards have still been trickling in, too.
- Endings
Besides the end of 2024, these was another big ending in my life this week: my aunt Martha, my mother’s sister and the last remaining sibling of either parent, died on New Year’s Eve morning, at home in Maryland. She was 85 and 4 months exactly. Her husband, my uncle, survives her, as do two of her three children and two grandchildren. Perhaps not surprisingly, she always reminded me of my mother, in a good way, particularly her laugh, her voice, and her dark sense of humour.
Lesser endings: My permaculture group finished Margaret Renkl’s The Comfort of Crows, which we’ve been reading together for a year, on Thursday. We start discussing Ed Yong’s An Immense World on 16 January. Also, our next-door neighbours left for Florida on Thursday; always sad to see them go, but they’ll be back (we hope!) in the spring.
- All This Useless Beauty
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