A not so daily diary ...

Some while ago

I am once more a ten-fingered typist! Had carpal tunnel surgery on Thursday and already the feeling has returned to my index finger. The thumb is still numb, so the spacing might be a bit off. Also, the hand is purple and blue and quite awful looking. But it works.

We are having cold gray March weather. The month came in like a lamb, blue sky, mild temperatures, revealing lots of mud and wet leaves and newly freed small burrs for the YD’s madly rolling dog. Even the cat enjoyed the weather on the screen porch until I forgot to let her back in. The sliding door to the screen porch is now covered with paw marks and needs a good cleaning with Windex. Not sure the wrist is up for that.

I do have a lot of time to follow the news, though, until it heals a bit more.

I even had time to watch some videos of the gowns worn to the Oscars, the ones that the punditistas deemed worthy of notice. The skirts slit from the floor to above the waist were a bit much. But Jane Fonda, at age 80, pulled it off. And looked lovely. Although it was quite clear that she had been sewn into both her dress and her face.

Meow. Someone should shut me out onto the screen porch.

At some point I popped some stitches in my incision and it looks like hell. Oh well. I now have sensation back in two fingers and am probably managing 25 wpm on the keyboard. Whoopie.

Solstice

After a few days of continual slow snow, the weather has now cleared and it is sunny and cold. The first day of spring should not be a fine winter day.  I slogged to the back of the field to feed the deer and the walking was quite nasty. It looks good, though. Lots better than mud. We have one robin and I heard geese a few days ago. Plus, I am told the trumpeter swans are here early.  Climate change, it could be argued. My first intimation of changing climate did in fact come from birds. The mourning doves that had been summer residents only started overwintering some years ago now. I would trade them all, though, for even the density of monarch butterflies that my grandkid found searching for caterpillars only a few years ago. We had hardly any this year.

It is probably a truism to everyone else, but I can be a slow thinker. This afternoon I was mourning the latest series of mass shootings and it occurred to me that I could not recall one mass shooting, whether in a school or elsewhere, where the shooter was a girl or woman. And it is not that women are not gun enthusiasts. Around here a lot of daughters and wives shoot with their families, although I do not know many solo women hunters. My own daughter joined first army cadets and then the militia as a girl and young woman and is completely competent with long guns. It is not just boys who know how to shoot. So, what are we doing right with our girl children that we are not doing with the boys. Boys such as the poor sap who shot his sister over a board game. What???

Edited to add. As of today we have a woman shooter. Am I a jinx?

Anyway, someone is raising wonderful kids who are out protesting the lack of gun regulation in the US. Good for them. May they succeed.

Easter Monday

We have just passed through a cold and soggy, but sunny, Easter weekend, and have freezing rain forecast for tomorrow. Our elder daughter was born on April 4^th, and I still, after half a century plus, remember vividly how annoyed I was with the changeable April weather. I wanted to put the little, um, darling into her buggy and wheel her around the streets so that she would sleep. Some days I could do this but other days brought sleet, cold rain and similar inconveniences. And I would be trapped inside with Miss Sleepless wonder. The same thing happened with HER daughter whom I was called to look after when she couldn’t go to daycare. Wheeling her in the stroller brought instant cooperation and a fine nap. Bad weather, thick winter snow and other impediments made Grama into a wet rag by supper time and the return of her doting parents.

I am just back from six days of grandkid supervision in the city, with a whole pile of new books, new clothes (plus limp plastic credit cards) and a great appreciation for houses with bathrooms on every floor. The ED’s house is an infill on a very small lot in the older part of the city and is, essentially, a series of staircases with rooms off them. Lots of bathrooms, but none on the main floor. I huffed up and down a lot of stairs. And I did not see all that much of Miss G who is in two bands, takes several additional lessons a week on her instrument, trains for track three times a week, seems to have piles of homework and is tasked by her parents with all of the pet care while they are away. She likes to keep active, she says. Especially stressing is a huge salt water tank full of expensive tropical fish and even more expensive corals; it requires additions of this and that, pump supervision and feeding the fish exotic treats. Plus, the temperature has to be exact. One night she whipped open some windows to cool off the tank and also cooled off her grandmother quite a bit.

In fact, I have been chilled for quite a few days, the cold feet kind of chill, not the Zen one. We heat with wood, using a forced air furnace when it is really cold and wood stoves in transition weather. JG has decided it is now transition weather and is running the downstairs stove. With a fan to move warm air up. This is perfect on sunny days as we have big southwest windows upstairs and the living areas are nice and warm. Not so good on cloudy and windy days although it is cozy on the stair landing between the floors. Tomorrow we are forecast snain and wind. I will don wool socks and long underwear.

Ah, life in the bush.