Category Archives: Colorado

Colorado, Health

Still Paying Attention

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Winter                                                   Settling Moon

Another on task day. At ten we met with a Minnesota financial adviser by phone. She praised our methodical process and its result. There is one more missing piece, the selling of the Andover property, but we won’t know more on that until next month at the earliest.

Kate went on a sundries purchasing trip: shampoo, conditioner, cleaners of various kinds, laundry basket, trash can, rug for the lower level door. Meanwhile I got the material together to convert our title to a Colorado title and register the car with the state. Tomorrow I’ll get the Rav4 emission tested, the VIN number verified and hopefully complete the title conversion and registration.

There’s also the Medicare advantage plan. We have a couple of months to switch from UCare, which we’ve liked, to a Colorado plan. The Medicare.gov site, which has a lot of information, makes determining which plan makes sense a sort of complex game I’d rather not play. I consider myself able to read and understand with the best of them, but it baffles me. Another financial adviser has reached out to a Colorado colleague to find us a trusted broker.

We’ve had to keep one or more items related to the move in our consciousness since May, 2014. As the time for the move grew closer, the number of them increased. We’re now in a time period when the number has begun to dwindle, but it’s not zeroed out, not yet.

Colorado, Mountains

The Haloed Moon

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Winter                                                       Settling Moon

Out for the paper this morning at six. The full settling moon hung low in the western sky, framed between a couple of lodgepole pines, a corona around it, bluish gray fading to white gold. Above it and a bit to the left, a bright Jupiter stood, a jewel somehow shaken loose from the moon’s morning crown.

The immersion in settling has begun to diminish enough for us to begin noticing, really seeing, our surroundings. The haloed moon, for example, standing over the dark bulk of Black Mountain.

This also means my thoughts can begin to turn to Latin, which I miss. To writing, which, apart from this blog, I miss. Novel ideas keep pushing their way forward and I push them back down. Not ready. Well, I’m getting ready. And then there are those Edx and Coursera MOOCs. Ready for another one, soon. Exercise, too. Have to turn the treadmill, mount the TV, connect it.

There are yet more boxes, but they now fall into two main categories: our private spaces and the garage. We will, for the most part, put together our own spaces and the garage won’t take too long once we focus on it. That doesn’t mean we have all of our clothes, kitchen things, furniture, art (another, and last, matter altogether) where we want them, but they are all, with the exception of the art, out of their boxes.

 

 

Colorado, Health

Thresholds

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Winter                                                        Settling Moon

Found my Swede saw and loppers. Went out in the 60 degree! afternoon and pruned the pine tree whose drooping limbs obscure the view of Black Mountain Drive to the left. When driving out, I like to see what’s coming.

Opened a few book boxes while Kate napped this afternoon and finally found the light switch for the single overhead light that has been on since the movers packed boxes in rows four deep against it. Turned it off.

Both of us passed a significant threshold today. We were able to work with fatigue as the only barrier, though the fatigue did come earlier and deeper than comparable work in Andover. We are becoming of the mountain.

In Andover our woods obscured sunsets, but here the sky is clear over Black Mountain to our west. Clouds form above it (or above other, higher peaks) and reflect back the sun’s last light. Clear air and an unobscured vista make for the regular extraordinary.

 

Colorado, Weather +Climate

A Post-Chinook Day

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Winter                                                                Settling Moon

The post-Chinook day, today, is bright, clear and warm.  Snow in our north-facing back remains while the snow on the south-facing driveway has begun to disappear. Yeah, Chinook.

Up and down the stairs to the second-story loft, clearing out misplaced boxes plugging up Kate’s sewing room. The exertion did not leave me breathless or dead, evidence of acclimatization. Not done, but much better.

Opened an area around Kate’s sewing table. She can now set up her Bernina if she wants. We’ll continue clearing her sewing area out until she can resume sewing. Having a creative outlet is key to our mental health and she needs to get back to needle, thread and cloth.

We’re learning to pace ourselves better and acclimatizing ourselves at the same time. Makes for a much improved settling in process.

 

Cinema and Television, Colorado, Family

Grandkids

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Winter                                                      Settling Moon

Spent the late morning and afternoon with the grandkids. Lunch at Which ‘Wich (a new chain sandwich joint) then Into the Woods. Into the Woods is a Stephen Sondheim classic, one of my favorites and this movie version is good, if not great. Meryl Streep as the witch is excellent. The plot wanders some and the show is too long, but overall I enjoyed it.

After the movie we went to Target so Ruth and Gabe could spend their Hanukkah gift. Gabe picked up a large lego set, an Antarctic research facility. Ruth got a bow and darts (plastic) and a robotic insect. Looked like something I’d enjoy.

It was fun to have this time with them, felt like a good beginning, underlining the grandparent motivation for this move.

Jon’s had strep and a flu-like illness for the last week. He sounded croaky, but looked good. Sounds like the Woollys.

The kids were off to swimming lessons, so Kate and I drove home in the pm rush. Still learning routes and strategies for coping with traffic between Conifer and Denver.

Colorado

New Fab Diet! Guaranteed.

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Winter                                                   Settling Moon

Kate’s lost weight; she’s now down to 115. I’m going to weigh myself today. I may have, too. If so, I’m going to introduce a new diet: the interstate moving diet. This simple diet requires only thousands of dollars and weeks of focus on your stuff. Spending the money itself might work for some, but throw in a necessary obsession with each and every item you own, including touching, packing, re-positioning each one and you have a perfect antidote to flab. Of course, for those of you who choose to follow this diet, you get, too, the focus on leaving friends and familiarity for a new spot. All of this is in its own way surprisingly positive, and it wears away at the comfortable habits that put on those extra pounds. Try it! You’ll be a believer in no more 2 0r 3 moves.

 

Colorado

Snow and Wind

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Winter                                                                      Settling Moon

Fourth snow removal this morning. My neighbor, Eduardo, with a mattock, was hacking away at snow plow deposit blocking his driveway. It slopes up from below grade. Holly was out with a snow rake removing snow from their roof. I’ve never done that. Wonder if it’s necessary?

The winds have begun, heading toward 90 mph gusts tomorrow. The pines sway with them, readied by millions of years of evolution. The lodgepoles are one of the pine species, like jackpine, whose cones only open in the heat of fire. Fire is natural here, so natural that it aids in the dispersal of the very trees it destroys. Houses aren’t like that.

Even though we’ve become  much more acclimatized a morning’s labor can still do us in. And it did today. We both took long naps. No more work for today.

Colorado, Family, Health

Little Boxes, In a Pile

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Winter                                                                   Settling Moon

All the kitchen boxes are empty. The cupboards have begun to fill up. A milestone. Ridding the living room of boxes was another. Getting the Swedish shelving  up (all Kate) another. The washer and dryer, one more.

Also, our acclimatization has continued. We can both work longer now without fatigue setting in. No light-headedness on exertion. Sleep’s much better. There still remains a good distance to go before we’re fully here physically, but we’re both here emotionally. In a short time this spot on Black Mountain Drive has become home.

Monday afternoon we’re going to take the grandkids while Jon and Jen are in meetings. This will be the first time we’ve seen them together since we got here. Illness and some lingering disagreement about where we should have lived have dulled the joy on this aspect of our move.

Colorado, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Desire, Emotion, Asceticism A Critical Look

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Winter                                                                     Settling Moon

Opened the last kitchen box this morning. Kate’s busily creating spaces to put the treasures I dig out. At one point this morning she said, “We’ve got so much stuff!” with an exasperated sigh. She’s right, I suppose, though we’ve gathered this stuff over 25 years together. A third purge, which Sarah Strickland predicted, will occur. Goodwill Denver, here we come.

The Stoics want us to be free from emotional entanglement. The Buddhists want us to be free from desire. Western spiritual thought wants us to be free from things. Think George Carlin’s famous rant about stuff. None of these blanket proscriptions satisfy me. In fact, they seem to pointedly ignore the human condition.

Our emotions guide us, warn us, help us make decisions. Desire defines our pursuits through this life. Following our bliss, finding our passion mark desire as an important element in living a full and authentic life. And then there’s our stuff.

Like emotion and desire, stuff can overwhelm us, cripple us, even, in some cases, defeat us. But, like emotion and desire, the physical things with which we surround ourselves support us and give us the tools we need to live our lives. Raising our emotional life to consciousness, raising our desires to consciousness and raising our stuff to consciousness so we can make choices about them seems the critical piece to me.

In other words the life controlled by repressed emotion, or ridden by desire, or the live lived for accumulation of things is an inauthentic life. An unconscious life. A life lived in thrall, no matter to what, is a life shorn of its potential and shrunken in its worth. In this way I take the extreme positions of Stoicism, Buddhism and anti-materialism as signposts warning us, danger ahead. Useful, but not if taken as absolutes.

 

Colorado

Settling Moon II

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Winter                                                        Settling Moon

Have a feeling there will be a settling moon II, the first in the almost 10 year history of Ancientrails. We’re making regular, steady progress, this after that, but we moved a house full of belongings and have to find new spots for everything.

The first packed, my books, may well be the last unpacked as we move through many other spaces before the loft gets my full attention. It’s had a little since I had to set up my main desktop computer. Each time I go up I open a box, take things out, put them on shelves. At some point, with the books, I’ll have to stack them on the floor since the disassembled book-shelves will go up where book boxes form three deep piles, three boxes high.

No more silence, at least not down here in the living room where I’m writing on my laptop. The boiler behind me gurgles, pops, clanks softly and water courses softly through the pipes, a hum. Even so, the overall effect is one of quiet, a top of the mountain, far from the city and its light pollution, quiet.