Weekly recap of my ritual of existence in this liminal space called life. (See here for more info.)
- Weather
The first three days of the week were pretty cold, in the teens for highs and negative single digits for lows. After that we had a bit of a warming trend, with temps in the mid- and low 20°Fs and then on Sunday we hit 32°F! High temps ranged from that 32°F mark to 14.4°F, averaging 22.2°F, and lows ranged from -7.2°F to 11.1°F, averaging 3.3°F. Brr. As mentioned last week, we got about 4 inches of snow overnight from Sunday into Monday, and we had flurries a few times later in the week.
- Beginnings/Firsts
The inauguration of the new U.S. president was on Monday. Enough said about that, except that most people eligible to vote didn’t vote for him and we should remember that.
- Wild Things (Flora, Fauna, Fungi) in addition to others elsewhere in this post
Top row: two mourning doves and an American goldfinch; second row: American goldfinches; third row: two black-capped chickadees and a hairy woodpecker; fourth row: two red-breasted nuthatches (actually the same individual) and a white-breasted nuthatch; fifth row: a blue jay and two tufted titmice; bottom row: a purple finch and a grey squirrel.
- Wandering
We walked in town for about an hour each on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, and through snowy gardens and on snowy trails at The Fells on Saturday, where a flock of large birds — turkeys? geese? — had bedded down on the lawn and left behind lots of poop, which we avoided.
seen in town
seen at The Fells
- Curiosity & Discoveries
1️⃣ I attended a webinar on Tuesday evening, “Arctic Glow: A Photographic Journey Through Iceland’s Midnight Sun,” a slideshow of and talk about a trip to Iceland, offered through Cary Library in Lexington, MA. The presenter, Bruce Magnuson, had visited there with his wife and daughter in the summer and they spent most of their time outside, mapping out their own journeys to black sand beaches, geysers, waterfalls, trails, churches, and other sites.
2️⃣ I happened to hear a helicopter on Tuesday afternoon that didn’t sound like our usual DHMC medical transports, so, curious, I checked the Flight Radar 24 app and found that it was a U.S. Army chopper. I noticed quite a few others in the general vicinity (NH,MA, upstate NY). These three Sikorsky Black Hawks, a Eurocopter Lakota, and an Air Force (or Air National Guard?) Lockheed C-130H Hercules turboprop were all flying between 2:35-2:50 p.m. on Tuesday. On the maps, they’re shown in red.
- Creating
Hmmm. Well, I want you to see what I have to go through to get bird pics at the family room windows. This is the set-up, with a cat condo blocking the window inside and black parachute cord hanging at vertically 4-inch intervals outside of a smudgy, scratched window.
- Repairing and Maintaining (everything but the house & yard)
Body/Mind: Got pretty good sleep this week. I worked out four times (4 hours) this week. Step count (Fitbit) was over 11,000 on four days and over 8,500 on six days, including treadmilling on three evenings for a total of almost an hour and almost 4-1/2 miles. I attended Dharma Sunday for two hours, with Lama Gursam talking about and leading “calm abiding meditation.” Sunday was a low step day for me — I spent the afternoon mostly relaxing, reading a novel, playing a slightly competitive word game on the sofa while watching football from 3pm to bedtime.
Cat: Bumble had his follow-up post-surgery visit with the vet on Monday afternoon and was cleared to eat dry food again. We’re adding oral health kibble to his diet.
We share the same hobby —
- Nesting
Cleaning/Maintenance: I did clothes laundry on Wednesday and vacuumed on Friday. My husband was able to figure out how to get the Birdfy smart feeder to charge using the USB-C cable and he set up the solar panel for it this week, too. He also made a slight sewing repair to a long-sleeved T-shirt I bought from eBay this week.
Food: I made a tuna & pasta (farfelle) dish with capers, kalamata olives, garlic, onions, and white wine on Monday, which we also ate on Tuesday along with some corn and sourdough bread. Wednesday it was cheese grits with red and orange bell peppers, onions, black beans, and tomatoes. Thursday I made a pasta dish (fusili) with marinara sauce, soy “ground beef” crumbles, artichoke hearts, black olives, and onions, which we ate with raw cukes and carrots, and the same again on Friday (with cukes and celery), and on Saturday & Sunday (both nights w/ cukes, carrots, and spinach dip). My husband made a sourdough pain de campagne loaf on Sunday. I made (local) eggs, which we had with leftover cheese grits, on Thursday for breakfast.
Supplies: Ordered from Walmart on Thursday a few containers of quick grits, some N95 Aura masks, wide Chinese noodles (impossible to find locally!), and some Ponds facial wipes. An order of two long-sleeved T-shirts for me from eBay arrived this week.
Garden/Yard: My husband cleared the driveway of four inches of snow on Monday. We refilled the heated birdbath and the birdfeeders a few times.
Financial/Administrative: I checked recent transactions on credit accounts and the bank accounts online (which I do regularly).
- Sleeping & Dreaming
Sleep times varied from 6 hours 6 mins (early haircut that day) to just about 9 hours, averaging 7 hours 36 minutes. Scores ranged from 92 to 81, averaging 87.6, which is pretty good. I was in REM sleep for about 13-1/2 hours this week and in deep sleep for a little more than 8-1/2 hours.
- Reading / Words & Ideas / Listening / Watching
Reading
BOOKS: I finished The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story (2022/2024) by Olga Tokarczuk this week. Interesting read. I wouldn’t call it horror, though there is an otherworldly element, and it contains disturbing events and is a bit suspenseful; mostly, it’s a sly and dark feminist take on Mann’s The Magic Mountain. Mieczyslaw Wojnicz, a young sewer engineer, arrives at a sanatorium in Görbersdorf (now Poland?) in 1913, where he and several other men who also have tuberculosis talk constantly and with the help of an hallucinatory alcoholic drink (Schwarmerei, made of local wild mushrooms) about philosophy, religion, culture, politics, and especially women, whom they despise, fear, and consider emotional and feral, requiring restraining by men. My Goodreads review of it contains spoilers that I won’t share here. A small excerpt from the book, on hypocrisy and conformity:
OTHER:
This essay was published in Sept. 2024 but I just came across it (Hugh Hollowell’s newsletter linked to it): How to build a village by Rosie Spinks in her newsletter What Do We Do Now That We’re Here. From which are these suggestions for creating local community: You don’t need friends, you need more people in your life, about 50 to be sort of exact; Consider, what does this use of my energy give back to me?; Be the person who asks twice, and don’t be the person who says ‘let me know if there’s anything I can do’ (stressed-out people don’t know usually what they need or what you can provide); Get into consistency and ritual in your local place — be at the same places at the same times week to week. And more. We need community now more than ever.
R.I.P. Jules Feiffer, who died on 17 January: Jules Feiffer, Acerbic Cartoonist, Writer and Much Else, Dies at 95 (gifted NYT link). As a kid, I loved Feiffer and not for The Phantom Tollbooth, which I read later in life. I loved his political cartoons and this book, which I still have, The Unexpurgated Memoirs of Bernard Mergendeiler (1964). Now I want to read through all of his political compilations.
And more …
Love this —
Listening
Some things I listened to this week — I sure like Darius Rucker’s “Wagon Wheel.” Also Blondie, Boston, and Suzanne Vega.
Watching
We finished the 7th season of “Shetland” on BritBox this week. Also watched PGA golf and NFL football playoffs.
- Connections & Community
Local Support: Shopped at local co-op on Tuesday. Shopped at farmstand on Friday.
Relationships: I hosted our Salon group here on Friday (5 of us) for two hours. Sunday we visited a friend (DH) at her lovely lake house for an hour to look at a collection of her late husband’s (which was of interest to my husband). Chatted with my stylist/friend (GV) for 1/2 hour on Tuesday during my early morning masked hair appointment. Texted and messaged with friends all week as usual, and a friend (KKT) sent a long email, but in general, my winter hibernation continues.
- Endings
Lots of endings in the political sphere but you either know about them already or don’t want to know about them. (And if you want to know and don’t, might I recommend Wikipedia’s Current Events Portal, and also, especially for those interested in the U.S., Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American newsletter?)
- All This Useless Beauty
this one
this landscape
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