Weekly recap of my ritual of existence in this liminal space called life. (See here for more info.)
- Weather
Well, we’re getting warmer, and we got about 10 inches of snow this week, in two batches. We also had some mix/melt amounting to over an inch in the rain gauge. High temperatures ranged from 51.3°F to 22.6°F, averaging 39°F, and lows ranged from -4.7°F to 35.4°F, averaging 19°F.
- Beginnings/Firsts
We turned the clocks — the non-smart clocks — ahead on Saturday night and began Daylight Saving Time again. On the 7th of March sunrise was at 6:14a and sunset at 5:44p; on the 8th, sunrise was at 7:12a and sunset at 6:45p.
- Wild Things (Flora, Fauna, Fungi) in addition to others elsewhere in this post
TOP row: downy woodpecker, red-breasted nuthatch; 2nd row: black-capped chickadee, American tree sparrow; 3rd row: tufted titmouse and goldfinch, three goldfinches and male purple finch; 4th row: female purple finch and goldfinch, five goldfinches; 5th row: goldfinch and pine siskin, three pine siskins; 6th row: pine siskin, junco; 7th row: red squirrel, wild turkey; BOTTOM row: red squirrel
- Wandering
I walked in town every day but Friday, and I didn’t leave town at all this week (though my husband did on Monday).
in town pics
- Curiosity & Discoveries
Not that curious but interesting to see a (female) purple finch and a pine siskin side by side for size contrast (beaks are also very different — finches’ much heavier, siskins’ short and pointy — but that can’t be seen well here)
- Creating
Back to not creating again, though honestly reading Patricia Lockwood feels like I’m participating in creating something.
- Repairing and Maintaining the human(s), the cat, and the cars
Humans(s): I worked out 4 times (4 hours) this week and walked every day except one. My step count was over 10,000 every day, over 12,000 steps on four days, and over 14,000 steps on two days. I participated in Dharma Sunday via Zoom for two hours, with Lama Willa leading meditation and talking about the teacher-student relationship. She described the practice of meditation as “becoming present so we don’t miss our life.” My husband cross-country skied on Wednesday and Friday.
Cat: B-cat visited the vet on Wednesday to get his nails clipped. 🙀 Here he is the night before, a contented wiggle worm, unaware —
Cars: My husband hosed off the cars’ undercarriages on Sunday when the temperature rose over 50°F.
- Nesting
Cleaning/Maintenance: I watered the houseplants on Monday, vacuumed the kitchen, hallway, and laundry room on Thursday, and did a load of clothes laundry on Friday. My husband cleaned the two air purifiers on Thursday and went to the dump/recycling center that day as well. On Monday night the thermostat in the bedroom went haywire and the temp rose to 71°F by the time we awoke (it’s set to 58°F at night, I think); husband checked it out and fortunately it was just that the (quite old non-alkaline) batteries needed replacing — they turned the heat on but didn’t have the oomph to turn it off again.
Yard: My husband cleared the driveway with the snowblower on Wed. and Friday.
Financial/Admin: I updated my passwords list on Monday. My husband filled out an online form to change our electricity supplier to a cheaper option.
Food: Monday, I reheated the last of the spinach-leek risotto and my husband ate more of his homemade chicken-veg-rice soup, and we both had roasted asparagus and dolmades. On Tuesday it was veggie burgers, mac & cheese, and sautéed broccoli. Wednesday I roasted haddock with capers, kalamatas, lemon, and grape tomatoes, and accompanied it with pine nut couscous and sautéed broccoli. Leftover fish et al. for both of us on Thursday, with couscous and raw carrots, radish, red pepper + celeriac humus dip. I made a tuna-farfelle-caper-olive-onion-garlic dish on Friday, which we had with roasted asparagus. Same on Sat. for me, and he had homemade chicken-veg-rice soup + grape tomatoes, and we both had cold roasted asparagus. And Sunday I made a sofrito risotto (corn and red bell peppers, onion, garlic, some Old Bay, lots of parsley) and added shrimp to it, plus raw carrots and the celeriac humus dip. My husband baked three sourdough baguettes on Saturday.
- Sleeping & Dreaming
Pretty good sleep week, with most scores in the 90s but also an 82 and an 84 — the latter on the night when our robo-vacuum mysteriously came to life at 2:50 a.m. Overall I managed an average of 7 hours 44 mins of sleep per night, with an average Samsung Fit 3 score of 89.7. REM accounted for 14 hours 38 mins (recorded some dreams) and deep sleep for 8 hours.
- Reading / Words & Ideas / Listening / Watching
Reading
BOOKS: I finished Patricia Lockwood’s non-novel novel Will There Ever Be Another You. It follows from her previous one, No One is Talking About This (2021) and like that one, it seems to be complete autobiography, poetically written; even the names are not changed. Lockwood herself, reports a New Yorker essay about Will There (yes, I resorted to the internet as a deciphering aid), “prefers to call it a pineapple, or a chandelier — ‘a revolving object that you’re seeing all sides of at once.’” That tracks. It has a “prismatic” structure (and prisms are mentioned several times in the book, and how light behaves). It’s chaos in a good way and you just kind of have to go along for the vibe ride as there many sentences and paragraphs that don’t make sense in a logical or linear way; the fragments don’t snap together to make an identifiable whole, if you’re looking for that. The gist is that the narrator is suffering from Long Covid and it shows; Lockwood wants us to experience the “stumbling in my speech, transposing syllables, choosing the wrong nouns entirely,” her crumbling memory, her migraines, her sensory disturbances and enhancements, her sudden inability to read and understand narrative. That said, there is some content, including a notebook she keeps while reading Anna Karenina, a trip to Scotland with family, her husband Jason’s catastrophic hemorrhages while on a plane together and later in a hospital, her care of “the “The Wound” that results from said catastrophe, taking up metalworking, several trips made to promote her previous book and some discussions with Heidi Schreck, who is helping her adapt her life story for TV (which brings in memory remnants of past family experiences; her father was featured in her 2017 memoir, Priestdaddy). As the Cleveland Review of Books notes, Will There is “a reminder that not all texts exist to be understood, and that their true meaning could reside in their ultimate inability to be comprehensibly read.” As another reviewer commented, it’s serious and silly, it’s trippy and sober. I liked it.
OTHER
About Patricia Lockwood’s books:
Profiles: Patricia Lockwood Goes Viral: The writer’s new novel, “Will There Ever Be Another You,” is a singular account of losing her mind, body, and art to covid—and of trying to get them back, by Alexandra Schwartz, The New Yorker (but in markdown file form, so free), 25 Aug. 2025.
Down The Rabbit Hole: On Patricia Lockwood, by Meghana Kandlur, Cleveland Review of Books, 17 February 2026
Not about Lockwood’s books: Here God, I got you this basket of my candy bars for Lent, by Nadia Bolz-Weber in her newsletter The Corners, 7 March 2026: “Lenten fasts and disciplines simply allow me to see my small comforts and layers of insulation for what they are: the things I reach for to feel safe and cared for, if not by God, then at least by myself. The things I use, often without thinking, to take the edge off being alive. … Why do I reach for the thing I’ve given up? What am I hoping to numb? What feeling am I trying to avoid, outrun, or change? What is it I actually need, that by reaching instead for what I want, I’m ignoring?”
and
“Friends, a spiritual life does not demand that we pretend the world is any better than it is; only that we do not miss how the world is often much better than we feel.”
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Listening
Shazam’d songs this week (in one ear, out the other) (I do like this pink border!)
Watching
Our usual House Hunters and Britcoms at the start of the week, and a “Death in Paradise,” then the latest season of “Shetland” the rest of the week, to be continued ….
- Connections & Community
Local Support: Bought birdseed and screws at the localish hardware store on Monday and Friday. Ate at the local bakery/café on Thursday and Saturday. Shopped at the local farmstand on Friday (bought two bags of their winter spinach and two Maine Harvest celeriac humus dips).
Relationships: One big thing going on this week for us, leading to a flurry of chat texts, was that my youngest sister’s dog was having concerning symptoms that led to a series of vet visits, scans, a spinal tap, etc., to determine what was wrong with him. It started on Tuesday and by Thursday all that had been done, amazingly, thanks to everyone’s sense of urgency, and he was diagnosed with an ear infection that had spread to his spinal cord and face. He is on meds to clear the infection, to reduce inflammation, and to alleviate pain, and he will be having a procedure next week. Though he will be (or is already) deaf in one ear due to the infection, we hope this treatment will return him to good health. Dog tax:
In other news: Neither the permaculture group nor the Salon group met this week. On Wed. my husband helped a friend/neighbour (LD) with his non-responsive car battery. On Sat. afternoon we walked over to friends’ (N&TD) for a 1-hour+ visit (and to drop off a sourdough baguette) and my husband returned that evening to help them with something. Chatted with my (middle) sister on the phone on Friday for 1 hour & 10 mins.
We walked to an Open Greenhouse event on Sat. morning at the farmstand (after we got out of our icy driveway) and chatted with a couple of folks who work there (LL, GB) as we inhaled the soil scent and appreciated the many seedlings of all sizes and the houseplants and fruit trees.
Afterward, while we were having a late breakfast/brunch at the café (mentioned above; the potato leek soup was 😋), a friend (JS) texted to ask where we were and came to meet us there; he brought my husband a sheet of relevant-to-us song lyrics published in the mid-1800s that were in a trunk he’d bought at auction years ago (!), and he hung out with us for a while. We chatted a bit with our longtime CPA (TS) on Wed. when we walked up to his office to sign off on our taxes. While I was walking on Sunday, an acquaintance (MH) and I exchanged greetings as I walked by her house.
- Endings
bu-bye standard time, we hardly knew ye
- All This Useless Beauty
the light
ice on glass
this
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