Imbolc and the 3/4 Moon (that’s 3/4 of a century for me on February 14)
Tuesday gratefuls: Winds. Swaying Lodgepoles. Cold and Snow coming. Polar Vortex slumping all the way down to Shadow Mountain. Bowe and his work today. Fatigue. Erleada. Mighty chemicals fighting prostate cancer on my behalf. The Assistance Fund. Cheese curds from Wisconsin Cheese Brothers. Night. Sleep. Electric blanket. Pillow. Kep and Rigel with me.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Kitchen. Almost remodeled.
Tarot: Nine of Bows, Respect
Bowe installed all of the hardware, my magnetic knife holder, a light can in place of a fan, and noted the still unfinished parts of Brian’s work. There are a couple of glitches, but I think they’re minor. Will be fixed. I love it. The hardware makes the whole. If I’m honest, what I love best are the under cabinet lights. I can see!
The kitchen invites me in. Says, work here. It’s your space. I’m proud of the design and the work to realize it. I plan to start loading the cabinets tomorrow. Too tired tonight. Even modest labor like putting things in cabinets does wear me out right now. I go slow.
This is so exciting to me. A part of the new life comes into reality. Chef mois. A lot of self-education over the next few months.
Time learning more about South Nodes and North Nodes. South Nodes present our “karmic” past. Things unfinished, things done wrong, things involved in tragedy or heartache, things that tip over into this life. Unfruitful reactions to circumstances. Spots of difficulty in career or marriage or self-awareness. This hinges on your ability to believe in past lives, of course. Tough for me. But, I’m learning it anyhow.
The North Node is the “cure” to the troubles of the South Node. If, like me, you have a South Node in Sagittarius, the North Node, directly across the face of the natal chart clock, is in Gemini. If I came into this life trailing wispy baggage of dogmatism, dark magic, rigid certainty, (all likely as dark sides of Sagittarius) then, the Gemini positives of listening and learning from others will help free me from that baggage. I’ll become a more well-rounded, healthy person.
Still unsure about all this, but over the last couple of weeks the houses, the planets, and the Nodes have become clearer to me. It’s a complex, maybe overly complex, art form, astrology. It does help me to remember that astrology and astronomy were one pursuit in ancient times.
And, too, learning something has its own value. The kabbalistic frame for astrology remains elusive for me. I’ll get there with it.
Ruth remains under Children’s Hospital’s psychiatric care. She’s been there since dinner Saturday night up here. I’m not sure the exact nature of her crisis, but her being there still underscores its seriousness. I can’t visit. I’m not on her list. I’ve got a call in, but the psych folks have not called me back.
No idea when, or even if, this will resolve. Having a grandchild, Ruth especially, with severe mental health problems. Sad. Hopeful. Puzzled. Loving. How can we help her right the ship? I don’t know.
Rigel’s getting new drugs, or rather, more of the recently prescribed drugs: oxycodone and a muscle relaxant. They help some. As Dr. Palmini said, “We’re not trying to get her into Division I athletics.”
Final note: These Winds have blown all the time I’ve been writing. I saw 35 mph on my anemometer. Some gusts higher than that, I’m sure. The Winds of change. A cold weather system is on the way and these Winds are its harbinger.
Beef primals. Who knew? These are the cuts that butchers use to divide up a carcass into particular sections. Chuck primals. Sirloin primals. And, tenderloin primals. My friends at Tony’s Market had a sale on primals last week. Bought a tenderloin primal. They will cut it up however you want. I chose two two pound roasts, several individual steaks, and two pounds of lean hamburger.
At that point I decided to finally cut up all of the Chewy and Amazon boxes piled up in the sewing room. I moved them into the kitchen, got out my trusty pocket knife, and went to work. My kitchen window opens to the front of the house and is low to the ground. I positioned both recycling and garbage bins near the window, opened it, and lifted stuff out to the waiting maws of the plastic bins.
Saturday gratefuls: Jon, Ruth, Gabe coming up for supper tomorrow. Kristie, a sweet woman and a good doc. Erleda. Kep wandering the fenceline, picking up his feet and placing them down in the Snow. Safety deposit box in Littleton. Emergency protection. Freddy’s burgers. Mmm, good. Clear driving today. Considering this question from Paul: “
Went down the rabbit hole quite a while back. Entered the Wonderland of cancer therapy. OMG. Orgovyx. $834 a month. Now. Erleda*. $3,000 a month. (and these are the co-pays!) Many blessings on whoever gives, for whatever reason to the Assistance Fund. They brought my co-pay for Orgovyx to first $10 a month and now zero. Bridgit assures me they’ll do the same for Erleda.
At 74 is this my life now? Drugs, expensive drugs, that put the hurt on cancer but also give me side effects? Kristie says no. That I’ll probably take Orgovyx for two years, Erleda for one. At least. Then both she and Dr. Eigner, her supervisor and my oncologist, prefer giving a holiday for some period of time. No drugs at all.
*Actual Erleda Advertisement on a site for savings on pharmaceuticals
Finally will see Kristie today. Oncologist PA. Scheduled first for January 3rd. Then for January 25th. Now, scheduled for today, Friday, January 28th. I’m pretty level about this but when my old Doctor’s group wouldn’t give me a referral for the 3rd I get angry. The 25th cancellation was because I didn’t yet have approval for Prolia, a once every six-months shot for bone health.
Still happy with the overall results. Will be happier still when it’s finished and I can start reorganizing the cabinets. Even better, cooking with all my tools and dishes available without a walk across the living room floor.
Spent yesterday morning studying Sefer Yetzirah. This is dense material. Sanders uses material from many different texts, short sections, maybe a page or a page and a half. Some comes from the Middle Ages, some from more recent scholarship. All of it reads like philosophy or theology. Which, I guess, in a sense, it all is. Historically philosophy and theology have been brother and sister disciplines. They share a convoluted writing style and ideas that often don’t make immediate sense.
The astrology class has begun to make more sense. Part way into the third class, not bad. I learned the symbols for the Planets and the Sun signs. Learning what the houses suggest in a reading will take me a bit longer. The aspects? That’s a bit further away for me. But I’m making progress.
This is heady stuff. Right up my alley. The focus right now is on the nature of language and letters and words. A lot of this class proceeds by story, a common way of learning in the Jewish world. Here’s one story from today’s class:
The focus for this class was that last sentence. The flying letters returning to their point of origin. What does it mean? It begins a conversation about the origin of the alphabet (alef-bet, the first two letters of the Hebrew alphabet), the relation of letters to word, words to reality. The letters flew? Where did they go? I thought they went to the second tablet, the one Moses brought down from Sinai. Apparently I was in agreement with the Talmud. But there was also a middle point, a sort of letter and word limbo, where they resided for a bit.
I love that Jews love learning. And offer so many opportunities. A rich playground for a guy like me. Why am I studying this? I don’t know. It’s interesting. It’s complex. It bonds me to different groups of people, some living in New Mexico, D.C., Denver, the Mountains.
Dropped Kep off at Sano at 7:30 this morning. Drove down Shadow Mountain in a medium intensity Snow. Those Blizzaks grip the Snow. Much better than that damned Ice. Which I avoid even on level Ground. Up here, I just don’t move when it’s icy.
Start working out again. That’s body level prozac. Keep learning, keep studying. That’s mind level prozac. Lean into wu wei, that’s spiritual level prozac. And call me in the morning.
Activities to plan and execute MCC2 – the insertion burn for Webb’s L2 orbit. MCC2 corrects any residual trajectory errors and adjusts the final L2 orbit.
A Shrinking Band of Southern Nurses, Neck-Deep in Another Covid Wave. 
There is a small herd of Mule Deer Does who’ve been coming up the utility easement to eat needles off slash Derek dumped there. When they’re here, the scene becomes instant backwoods. An over the river and through the woods tableau. They’re here right now. The Buck, an eight-pointer, was here this morning. Neither Kep nor Rigel paid attention. Just as well. A chance encounter between a Dog and a Buck can result in injury or death for the doggy.
Deciding that next year and thereafter I’m going to focus my giving beyond CBE in a different way. My largest non-CBE donation was to the Land Institute where Wes Jackson and his crew push toward perennial Crops and no-till agriculture. I’m gonna lean toward these radical solution organizations, ones working with the Soil, with Plants, with agriculture. I value the courage it takes to stand against farming practices that seem so entrenched as to be unmovable. And I value the creative thinking that the Wendell Berry’s, the Mary Oliver’s, the Aldo Leopold’s, the Thomas Berry’s, the Wes Jackson’s represent.
Where’s the Webb? 98% of the way to L2. 16000 miles to go. 465 mph. Cold side: -344. Hot side: 128. Mission day: 29. The last day of the trip. Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow!
Went Jewish caroling in Golden. Up on Meadow Run Drive where Judy lives. I hum. Besides, I didn’t know the words. They were in Hebrew. Judy has ovarian cancer and is in yet another round of chemo. The MVP Mussar group, gathered by Susan Marcus, sang to her and delivered a Tree of Life silver scarf pin. Judy had made cookies and tea, so we went in and sat around her lovely dining room table, teak, I think, and chatted for a half an hour.
