Easter Weekend

8 am

                So happy happy Saturday. What will the day bring? Always a question. Well I have done my stretches, and fed the buns and had my delicious psillium so that is all ok. I have sorted and folded a bunch of old towels and rags. Now I am waiting for K to get up. We are going to go to Davenport Maple Farm for bfast. This I decided last night bc I need to get fair brochures to a committee member who works there and that seems like a reasonable way to do it. It’s a bit of a drive, and K does not want to do the driving as yesterday he drove to work, drove back up to participate in the Good Fri service at Grace, then back to work and then back home. When I got home at 6 he was asleep on the couch. I crawled straight into bed myself (I was BEAT) and when I got up (starving) at 7:30 he was still asleep. So there you go. Anyway I’ll do the driving. I do wish he would get up so we could get going. I suppose after I write I could go wake him up. 

                And what about the rest of the day? Well big thing: G’s FAFSA. And then there is grading to catch up on. I have the Fri lab ferns to finish. And the Angio II drawings. The latter should not take very long. The former at least I am partly through with. So it should not be too bad. Next week they turn in their barley assignment. And then there are 2 weeks of plant projects for which they turn in nothing, then there is drosophila and chicks and there are no assignments for either. Then they turn in the plant report and so that will be a bitch to grade. And  meanwhile, I am a bit swamped with the 145 prep, but for 2 weeks they will do their projects. After that are 2 more labs (?) at least one of which  - the chordates – I think will be a bitch. So really it is kind of up to the wire for all that.

                I finished carding all the lovely soft orange stuff, and Sunday I organized it into packets for spinning. Now I get to spin it. If I ever get started. That should be nice. I must spin it quite tight as some of the white stuff is rather short. I will spin it tight and thin. Maybe I can do a bit today. Then tomorrow we leave around 10:30 to meet the entire gang for Easter dinner. This started as me arranging to take Mom out for easter. Because no one else was available to do that. Wasn’t sure if Lucy would join us, but I made reservations for 4. Then sis 1 texts that she and N would like to join us. Fine. Added 2. Then I get an email from sis 2 that they want to come too (their kids are all busy w/ the “other” families). Fine. Add 2 more. Then sis 3 texted 2 days ago to say that she was feeling left out and wanted to come to. Oh brother. Now it is the entire primal family, plus Lucy lucky Lucy. I still have to call to add 2 more to the res. So that will take a good chunk of the day. Res is for 12:30. I guess we’ll finish around 1:30, then we will drive Mom home and I will balance her checkbook. So we will leave around 2:30, home by 4. That is the day. And then there will have to be supper of course. No doggy bags from a buffet. And then it all begins again. I sure hope there is absolutely nothing planned for next weekend. Let’s see, first person will be Monday, and spinning on Tues. But bookclub will not be until the next weekend. It sure would be really nice to actually have an entire weekend “off.”

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RIP T Boy

7:30 am

                Yesterday we had to put Tigger down. It is kind of a long story that I am not sure I want to go into, but I will summarize anyway.

                He had been going downhill all week. Getting more and more bent in his back and I was having more trouble getting him into his wheels and changing his diaper. Friday is when I came home to find all the computer cables chewed, then I went out for the evening. I gave him an extra pill, and he was really out of it in the morning. Would not eat his breakfast at first, though he finally did. Sunday was even worse. He did not eat at all. I let him outside and he lay in the dirt near the steps for the longest time. I finally brought him in, but he looked really out of it. And he had started doing this odd thing where he would sit and kind of arch his back with his head going gradually up and his eyes really vacant. Anyway, K got home around 1:30 and was checking him out, giving him some rubs, and he went to kind of lift him up and Tigger snapped and bit his hand. Well that kind of said it all. We left and spent the next several hours in the urgent care to get his hand looked at. They gave him antibiotic and told him to soak it. It has really swollen up, probably from the force of the injury, though of course K is worried about infection. Anyway, that made us realize that it was time, and we decided to take him to the vet in the morning. We called and they could do it at 10:30, so I actually drove to work to get a bit done then came back. Poor K was sitting here just giving the T lots of rubs, which he did seem to like right up to the end. We managed to lift him in a rug and in his old crate. Unfortunately we did have to wait quite a while for the Doctor to arrive which was hard. Just lots and lots of rubs. Anyway, now he is gone and it is certainly odd. One thing is clear and it is what makes me most sad- no one will ever again give me such never ending unconditional love as he did. It is an odd mix right now between wanting to remember the good parts, and then also knowing that things will be a lot easier. It was really really hard over the past year or so. Gradually harder so this past week was really bad. But we will miss him. His silly behaviors, his cuteness, his eagerness. It was actually odd to do my stretches this morning and not have him right there to lick my hand.

                Didn’t do much last night.  Well, I gave the buns hay and brought the babies in, and checked weather before that to see if it would be cold, and I hunted for Gs school awards records, and read them off to her, and I started a fire and brought in wood, so I guess I did not do nothing, just nothing that felt very accomplished. I went to bed early, and read a bit more of Confederacy of Dunces which I am enjoying though it is odd.

                And what about today? Well, on a few other notes: yesterday I also dropped Mom’s tax stuff off  with the accountant, and over the weekend I finally managed to write something up to send off to the woman about renting the farm. Those felt like big huge burdens off my back. And I finished all the sea urchin lab grading and returned those yesterday. So things feel a lot lighter, at least momentarily. I do have the fern assignments and the angiosperm II assignments to grade, and the proposals to look at, and tomorrow I will get 2 sets of pre-labs. And then there is a lovely meeting tonight in Cummington with the fairgrounds committee. Oh lovely. So it is not like everything is free and clear, time to Party, but I feel a bit less burdened with things hanging over my head. I think I might even set up to spin some of the orangey angora that I carded last week.                            

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The End of "Spring Break"

8 am

                Well I should start by saying that I have been doing reasonably well the past several days. I guess the reality is that when I feel ok I am too busy to write. Wednesday I had quite a nice time; I had myself a “café crawl.” Kind of like a pub crawl only different. As in, each place I went I graded another paper. First one cafe where I got tea and a palm. Graded one paper. Then on to another where I got more tea (it was only 11) and a breakfast sandwich and graded another paper. Then on to a third where I got the nastiest mint tea and a stale chocolate cookie and still managed to grade 2 papers. It was kind of fun and I felt productive. Even though a lot of time was involved not to mention the cost of all these goodies. I got home around 4 and had only graded the 4 papers. Still, at least it felt kind of fun. Thursday I did get started pretty early. I knew the guy working on the basement  was coming around 9 so first I had to put drop cloths around in the basement and clear up the carding stuff. Oh, I did get some carding in – I carded up the dark orange stuff with some dark fawn – 8 ounces total. And now I am doing the same amount of the bright orange with white, a bit of fawn, and some light brown. Anyway, I had to move it out for him to work. Then I started in on grading. Only then, a friend appeared to weave. I got her tea, then got her set up, and brought the carding stuff back down and set it back up. She left around 1? Or noon? And I cleaned the carding back up, and went back to grading. Managed to get 2 more done. I have TWO left. And then I took a break and plucked 2 rabbits, or finished Crystal and started Ethyl. I managed to eat something and even watch a bit of 12 Angry Men and got to bed early, which has been pretty crucial to getting enough rest lately.

                Yesterday turned out not so great. I went in to work – left about 8:15 and stopped at the cafe on the way. I got 2 palms this time so I could give one to my office mate. She has had a rather crappy week herself. I started putting things around for the profs, then we all met at 10 and for about 2 hours we hashed out what they will do next week. After that I spent a while setting things around, and luckily my coworker mentioned that, though she heard us talking about planaria, none had arrived with the animal order Thursday. Well that is because dumb-ass me had not ordered them. So that added a big step to my day – I drove out to the animal supply place – getting lost along the way – and picked up planaria. Got some hydra too, as the ones we had were looking pretty insipid. And I did some errands on the way home, so arrived at 5. To find a disaster. Tigger had chewed through all the cords on the back of the computer. Even the cord of the nice new keyboard that my neighbor gave me after he chewed through the cord of our original one earlier in the week. I put the computer up on the desk and am leaving it all for K to deal with. I can still get on the internet, so screw the rest. I did tell him when he called last night and suggested that he might need to bring the computer back down stairs.

                So now I get to start my day. One good note: I gave Tigger one of his chill pills before I went out last night. Then when I got home I gave him his usual 2. Then at about 3 I woke up and gave him another. So he did not wake me up. I got up at 7 and put his food in his dish. He did not come out to eat it until after I’d done the buns.  Now he is outside. Probably vegging poor guy.

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pre-snow photos

emerging daffodils

winter branches

my shadow

my shadow with the fish-eye lens

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Morning Thoughts

7:30 am

                Funny. Some folks wake up and right away sit down to a nice cup of coffee to start their day. I sit to a nice cup of psillium. Mmm mmm. Oh well. And if I sit, as now, doing something else, sipping rather than gulping it down,  then, rather than the coffee getting cold, the psillium just gets solid. It turns to a gelatinous mass. When I get up I will need to add more water, stir it up and drink down the globs of gelled stuff. Yum.

                Another morning thought. There is evidence (where do I hear or read these things?) that one’s mood is not necessarily the loftiest first thing in the morning. That one might have more energy and feel more positive as the day goes on. So maybe if I wrote Afternoon Pages, or Evening Pages they would turn out less glum. More cheery. Does sitting here writing help disperse the negativity (spill it all onto the page and out of me)? Or does it just compound it (focus my attention on negative stuff and thus magnify it)? Who the hell knows. Who the fuck knows? Does it matter? Whether I do or do not disperse or compound negativity, I still must get up and going once I finish. And most days in the week I have no time to write anyway, so how I feel is irrelevant to anything.

                Yesterday I managed to get started and grade (well, nearly finish, I later thought of more things I want to say) one (ONE!) lab report. I did that at Raos and to be honest it was pretty distracting. But I felt like I needed to get out of the house.

                Earlier, well, I did go through more of the tax worksheet. I have a few questions, but not too bad. And I filed some papers. Now I mostly just have the huge pile of Mom’s stuff that I have to deal with (for her taxes). Wow, that is a thought to bring on negativity!

                I also managed to pluck Ebony, while listening to Nicholas Nickleby.  And I spun the rest of the 1^st 2 skeins of the light angora. It is ready to ply. And I finished Nicholas Nickleby.  What shall I listen to next? I will have to choose something and get it on the computer and thence to my mp3. I wonder if it is possible these days to get portable radios – like the old days of walkmen or (gasp) transistor radios. I would love to be able to run/walk and listen to loud crazy music in my headphones, without having to go to the bother of downloading a bunch of songs. Mostly this would be useful in the summer when I don’t go to the gym. Or maybe, I was thinking this yesterday, I could get the girls to make me a nice long mix of really wild and crazy dance type music, good for running.

                It’s snowing a flake. And I often lately see in the water of puddles the crystal teeth from the frost that lurks in the earth beneath…. Speaking of Frost. Well. Recently at night I have been trying to remember all the letters of the old horoscope code I knew so well. I was upset bc I could not remember all the letters. I think I have remembered most if not all. I think I will write it down somewhere. Maybe I should also write down the words to the poem, though that could be looked up easily enough.

                AND I started something last night that could be fatal if allowed to continue. I started doing a Sudoku puzzle. I find them actually quite hard. And frustrating. I don’t honestly know how my sisters can do them so quickly. I do pride myself on being fairly intelligent. So I was working through this one with some determination. But boy they can be utterly addictive and take up all one’s time. At least that’s how it was with the sis’s for quite a while. They seemed to spend all their time on these stupid puzzles. Not something I want or need to get into. Rather “waste” all my time knitting. At least you have something useful to show for it. And I can listen to Dickens while I knit.

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long week

6:30 am

                I think one of my troubles these days, part of why my spirits are low is that my back has been hurting. And that in spite of the running I’ve been doing. For several years, the running has seemed to keep the back trouble in  check, but now it has been hurting. Those scary little “twinges” that I used to get. And add to that how bad I feel about Tigger who can now barely drag his hind end around. And add to that all the grading I now have to do. So what the hell can I think of that resembles fun?

                Well for “fun” today what I will really need to do is pluck bunnies. They really need it bad. And for more “fun” I MUST work more on all the taxes. It would be very good if I could get in a good walk, a good brisk fairly long one.

                Lab did not go very well yesterday. It was too rushed. There was not enough time. I spent too long just yakking about things. I ended up feeling very incompetent this week. I ended up leaving work at 5:45 since I had to stay late with some students, then email them all their photos, then tidy up. And I did bring the car, but had to drive to Brookfield and get the winter share. And once home, well there obviously was no supper acooking, so I had to make that. I did not mind that so much, it was kind of soothing to cook.

                Well I put Tigger into his wheels and let him out, and he somehow got out of the wheels. So he is lying on the ground, which is also ok. At least he is not in the neighbor’s yard, I put him on the leash.

                I did get a fire going which is nice. After supper last night, I just sat and stared at the fire for a good good long time. I had no energy or incentive to do anything else. I finally had to get up to do bunnies. I finally did some spinning and listened to more of Nicholas. I got fed up with all the voices on the version I had originally downloaded, and so looked and found that there was an entire version recorded by Mol Nicholson (?) so I got that and it is much better.

                Dog is barking, time to deal.

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