LIMINAL LIVING #96: 27 OCTOBER TO 2 NOVEMBER 2025

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LIMINAL LIVING #96: 27 OCTOBER TO 2 NOVEMBER 2025

November 2, 2025

Weekly recap of my ritual of existence in this liminal space called life. (See here for more info.) Click on any photo to see it better.

Weather

Our weather station recorded .63 inches of rain this week, almost all of it on Thursday (it was misty all day with some showers), but neighbours’ rain gauges recorded from .20 inches more than ours to almost twice as much, so I’m not sure. But, we got rain, and that’s good.

High temperatures ranged from 51.1°F to 45.9°F and several days were windy and/or cloudy. Lows ranged from 28.6°F to 39.6°F. Overall, the average high was 48.5°F and the average low was 33°F. I’m wearing my lighter winter coat and a scarf all the time when I’m outside now; no gloves yet.

Beginnings/Firsts

Well, we’re back to standard time after a summer of daylight saving time, so it’s getting dark an hour earlier now, around 4:30 p.m. I don’t mind the earlier evening but I miss the warm weather and being able to go outside without gearing up.

Wild Things (Flora, Fauna, Fungi) in addition to others elsewhere in this post

Wandering

Mostly took some long walks in town this week, and on Wednesday walked around the lake with a friend (ED) and my husband and I walked the bog on Saturday. Ventured to Hooksett, NH with a few friends on Friday for Salon at a friend’s (BUF).

in-town

lake on Wednesday

bog on Saturday

Curiosity & Discoveries

Not a week goes by that I don’t discover something new (or unremembered) and not a day goes by that I’m not curious about something (many things) but did I write anything down or take a photo this week of those things? No.

Creating

The tedious kind of creating, pouring over all my blog posts to find those that report on various field trips to cities and towns, museums, trails, botanical gardens and arboretums, etc. and painstakingly adding them to a page that will eventually gather all of these in one place. I’ll be pleased with it when it’s done but doing it is only a tiny bit joyful.

Repairing and Maintaining the human(s), the cat, and the cars

Body/Mind: I worked out with weights four times (4 hours) this week and walked more than 10,000 steps on six days and more than 14,000 steps on three days. (To that end, I walked/jogged on the treadmill twice, for a total of 50 minutes for 3.30 miles.) I participated in Dharma Sunday for two hours on Zoom with Lama Willa (in Hawaii) leading about 50 of us in meditation and teaching on “The Art of Savouring.” Yes, please!

Cat: My husband took the cat to the vet for his annual physical (senior cat visit) and pawdicure on Saturday morning. Bumble wasn’t happy about it but he had urine taken and bloodwork done and was proclaimed a healthy little specimen, a fine figure of a cat. And he knows it.

Gardening/Yard

My husband worked on the snowblower on Tues. and Wed. this week, replacing belts and a plastic guide, getting it ready for winter.

He also fixed some siding that had moved out of position on the house.

I worked in the garden for about an hour this week, mostly pulling out invasive plants like euonymus, glossy buckthorn, and Norway maple saplings. I’m still watering the three baskets of annuals in the sunroom and they’re still blooming, though it’s in the 40°Fs in there.

some garden pics this week

Nesting

Cleaning/maintenance: I vacuumed the family room and hall on Monday and the kitchen on Tuesday. I did clothes laundry on Thursday. I cleaned the kitchen counters (more than usual) on Wednesday. While the cat was away at the vet on Sat. I cleaned out two cabinets, one my gift/Christmas cabinet in the credenza and the other a sort of miscellaneous nook in the bedroom armoire. I also cleaned out a container of maps, travel brochures, and trail pamphlets and another container of cards, letters, and similar ephemera. (For three of these, I needed to spread out and make piles on the floors without a curious feline “helping.”)

Financial/Admin: On Thursday I spent about nine hours (off and on) organising and cleaning up blog posts, some of which have been mis-formatted since a required WP template change a year or two ago. I’m also creating a page of links for all the field trip types of posts over the years, listed by state/place. There’s so much more to do but I rarely feel like sitting at my desk longer than necessary.

Food: I made Martha Stewart’s Tuna & Farfelle Puttanesca on Monday and we had that through Wednesday’s dinner. On Thursday it was veggie burgers with arugula, corn, and rice pilaf. Friday I made a spinach-potato frittata, which we also had on Saturday and I had the last piece on Sunday while my husband had the last of the chicken and rice soup he’d made from a rotisserie chicken carcass a few days before.

Speaking of my husband, he made a delicious sourdough boule on Wed. using a Dutch oven and a silicone sling a friend (RL) gave him.

Supplies: We shopped at the 🎄Christmas Shop 🎄open house that a local consignment store held on Sunday and got a couple of gifts and some festive decor for us. The place was packed with people in all six or seven rooms, but it was fun, with lots of cheery items priced very well.

Here’s some of what we bought

Sleeping & Dreaming

I got an average of 8 hours and 12 minutes of sleep per night this week, with an average score of 96.7. My worst night of sleep by far was the night we turned the clocks back, which meant we gained an hour but somehow that didn’t translate to a good night’s sleep for me. My scores were five 99s, one 96, and an 86 on Sat. night to Sunday, and I got only 15 minutes of deep sleep that night compared with over an hour on each of the other nights. REM sleep accounted for 14.5 hours this week and deep sleep for just about 8 hours.

Reading / Words & Ideas / Listening / Watching

Reading

BOOKS

I finished Patricia Cornwell’s Sharp Force (2025), 29th in the Scarpetta series. It’s set at Christmas!, in Alexandria VA and Washington DC mostly. A serial killer is lurking, one whom the press and public have dubbed the Phantom Slasher, who first struck (so far as we know) on Valentines Day and who thoughtfully forewarns his victims with a spooky holographic image before he disables their wireless systems (alarms, phones, etc.) and stabs them to death on holidays, bleaching the crime scene afterward to leave no trace evidence. Sure enough, on Christmas Day a woman is stabbed in her riverfront home on Mercy Island, near the psychiatric hospital where people have been dying mysteriously for decades (centuries), including cases Scarpetta is involved with. There’s quite a bit of AI (artificial intelligence) involvement in this story, including as in past books Lucy’s dead partner Janet who is an online hologram now, able to interact with and do research for the gang. This is weirdly my most cozy contemporary crime series and I’m always sad when I come to the end of the newest book.

This interchange between Kay and Benton from the book made me laugh, it’s so typical Benton:

OTHER

I really enjoyed this essay: Viscerality: some notes on pleasure by Simon Sarris at The Map is Mostly Water. He starts off with this exchange:

“INTERVIEWER: There’s a certain esthetic to the way you live. You once talked about using good silver every day. [Joan] DIDION: Well, every day is all there is.” YES!

I could pull out dozens of sentences or paragraphs here, but I’ll just share this one:

“Air conditioning is a miracle, but if we use it all summer long then we lose our visceral sense of being a part of our surroundings. When it’s hot outside you are hot. There is a pleasure in needing to dress down, in craving ice water, in having the windows open at night to hear the crickets. There is even sometimes a pleasure in the languor of an inescapable heat. More broadly there is a pleasure in comfort but also a pleasure in discomfort. They give a different shape to our spirit. … That does not mean we should give up air conditioning. We should adore its miracle of comfort. But we should be careful of the overreach. The danger of all this convenience is that one begins to live inside a very narrow band of the visceral world. I believe our surroundings exert themselves on us, gently but continuously. Everything we see and touch day to day conspires to shape our moods. When places are too antiseptic, we grow unaccustomed to noticing visceral details. We start to use less of our senses. Over time, our surface for pleasure thins.”

OK, and also this:

“I think people would be better off if they learned to use the whole earth, not just a narrow band. All five senses. The world is a very sensual place, you know.”

✨✨✨

Watching

We’re into season 8 of “Death in Paradise” on BritBox and also watched the season finale of “Only Murders in the Building” (Hulu) this week as well as one “House Hunters” and a “Keeping Up Appearances” that we’d dvr’d. And some football.

Connections & Community

Local Support: I bought some spinach at the local co-op on Friday and we had breakfast at the local bakery/café on Sunday morning, before we hit the Christmas Shop open house at a local consignment store. We were seated inside but the sun was bright through the windows and the warmth was welcome.

Relationships: Sent my nephew and his new bride their wedding gift on Monday. Also sent my niece some smoked salmon that day (from Seabear), just because I felt like it. Walked around the lake with ED on Wednesday. Three of us drove about an hour to another friend’s for Salon on Friday. Ran into a friend (BB) while walking in town on Saturday and we chatted for 5-10 minutes while walking the same route. Sent some folks Jacquie Lawson Advent calendars this week. The usual texting and emailing.

Donations: Renewed memberships with NH Audubon and Ausbon Sargent on Thursday,