Lughnasa Waning Summer Moon
Sandy came yesterday. She’s now four weeks or so out from the last of the radiation treatments for her brain tumor. A difficult medical story with an unsatisfying partial resolution. They couldn’t remove the tumor all at once, left much of it in place after the first surgery, then nerves grew into the tumor meaning it couldn’t be removed at all. Hence, radiation to shrink it. It’s benign, stretching the meaning of that word, but it has knocked out her hearing in one ear and seems to have left her in a permanent state of slight dizziness. She’s young, late forties I imagine, so a lot of her life is ahead.
Gabe’s been watching cute baby videos. His words. I asked him if he might want a baby of his own someday (he’s 10). He said, “I don’t know. Maybe.” We’re going to a movie today.We can do that because Kate wisely decided to skip needleworkers today.
On her 74th birthday, this Saturday, she’s organizing food for an interesting event. The Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum in Golden offers a documentation service for quilts. They have teams that go to quilt clubs (and other venues, too, I suppose). The teams collect archival data like maker, history, description and photograph the quilts. Those records become part of the ongoing collection of the museum. The Quilt museum folks are coming to the Bailey Patchworkers meeting place, the Catholic church in Bailey. It’s before Crow Hill, the steep decline that goes into Bailey proper.
Her stamina seems to be decreasing, too. I really hope the ultrasound for her gall bladder and the new upper GI look find something. She needs to be able to gain weight. Soonest.
Thunderstorm yesterday. Nice rain. Lots of noise. Wildfire fears have eased for this year. This article in my favorite publication about the West, the High Country News, explores the angst that many of us who live out here feel. “One truism about the future is that climate change will spare no place. Still, I suspect the threat of warming feels more existential in New Mexico than it does in Minnesota, the land of 10,000 lakes. Drought has gripped the Southwest for 19 years, more than half my life.” In this rapaciously dry year, a quiet question grows louder: What are we doing here? HCN, Aug. 6, 2018
California fire seasons, which have grown longer and longer, producing worse fires, the Mendocino Complex Fire is now the largest ever in the state’s history, keep us always aware that what’s happening there can certainly happen here. Damocles. Closer to Shadow Mountain there are, too, the 416, the Spring Creek, the Buffalo Pass fires now out, but active this year in Colorado.
I agree with Cally Carswell, the author of the article, that our experience, our Western experience, is a foretaste of what is to come for most if not all of the planet. Her article says out loud what lurks just below the surface for Westerners. When might the fire or the water shortages be too much? When might the increasing heat dry us out or burn us down?
As the Donald might say, sad.
There’s a sort of sneaky self-satisfaction that comes from holding a business meeting on the boardwalk in Evergreen. Alan Rubin and I met at the Muddy Buck in the morning, sitting outside on its veranda, really a wide spot on the couple of blocks long board walk that I mentioned a few posts ago. On a Monday morning discussing the religious school class we start teaching on September 5th, we saw the usual flow of cars on Hwy 74, the main street of this tourist destination portion of Evergreen. This is a place people come to visit for an afternoon or a weekend or a week. And we live here.
Incidentally, you have aortic atherosclerosis. But, no arthritis in the sacroiliac joints. Oh, well, thanks. X-ray results. Learning to flinch a bit when I get x-ray reports since the last two have had incidental findings. They’re not just a BTW, but a, hey, look at this! My usual position is knowledge is better. In this case though it comes unexpectedly, sort of out of left field. It can, and has, shocked me.
The third phase of life is anomalous in many ways from the first two. It’s happier, less tense. It encourages self-expression and downplays, if not eliminates, striving. At the same time the slow insults of age begin to accumulate kidney disease, prostate cancer, high blood pressure, atherosclerosis, arthritis severe enough to require a new knee in my case. Each of these is a mortality signal. Still flashing yellow, but evidence that the light’s gonna change at some point. To red. As it has and does, for 100% of us.
X-ray of lower back. Might be that my back pain is arthritis in my sacroiliac joints. Well, that part of my body, like the rest of it, isn’t getting any younger. After thinking about my life, I realized I spent 20 years gardening intensively. That was considerable time bent over, weeding, planting, dividing, pruning, harvesting, amending soil, all the various chores that go into horticulture. A lot of chainsaw work over the same time, too. I enjoyed it immensely, but repetitive motion is one of the causes of arthritis. Seems logical. Not a lot to be done about it. Dr. Gidday gave me a tramadol prescription, which I will use mainly for sleep.
A good soaking rain yesterday, extending into the night. And cool sleeping. Two huge benefits, mitigates fire danger and improves sleep. Go, rain.
Tomorrow afternoon I get a new workout. Exercising has been more 
sporadic of late, partly due to my aching back. The back stays ouchy because I’ve been doing the chainsaw work, cutting up (bucking) the downed trees. This involves bending over, holding a heavy saw well below waist level and controlling its movements, especially the gyroscopic force of the chain around the bar. Not a recipe for good lower back health. I’m getting there with the trees though. I have two fully cut and a third part way there. That leaves two plus the one Jon says he’s going to mill, create boards for a project of some kind.
Lifted a case of 24 cans of wet dog food out of the box on Thursday. Kate happened to be there. The moment I straightened up, I said, “Fuck. I shouldn’t have done that.” I lifted it with my back slightly bent, not with my legs, but my arms. Friday and Saturday were walk around like a hunchback days. I know better, but it had a cardboard cap on it. I took that off and it was very light, just cardboard. Somehow my body took that as a cue that the canned dog food would be light, too, so I let my guard down. Better this morning, but geez. How old am I again?
Sixth dead tree down. All limbed, the slash moved to the road, and Elk Creek Fire Department notified. They have a new program this year. We put slash within 5 feet of the road and in 5 foot or so piles. They’ll come by and chip it. This is not a small deal since the last slash chipping I had done cost $600. Sometime in the next few days I’ll cut all six of them into fireplace sized chunks and stack them.
A friend wrote about my life here in Colorado. He is, he said, intentionally simplifying, trying to have fewer obligations, yet I’m taking care of dogs, doing more work around the house, cutting down trees and teaching at Beth Evergreen. Now I happen to know that this same guy, who is older than I am, recently completed a show in which he made posters of all the bridges across the Mississippi in the Twin Cities. He has also found a patron who loves his art, so he’s producing larger art works across various media. Not exactly slowing down in that sense. Life in the old lane does force us to make choices about how to use the energy and time we have, but so does every other phase of life. Now though we know ourselves better so we can get more bang for the time and energy.
Here’s my situation. I have my chronic illnesses, collected along the way. I don’t hear worth a damn, have stage III kidney disease (stable), glaucoma, high blood pressure, an anxiety disorder (which, frankly, is much, much improved), arthritis in various spots. A repaired achilles tendon and a titanium left knee make my legs not what they were. All these are facts. If you ask me, I’ll tell you, though, that my health is excellent. None of this drags me down, either physically or emotionally.
Kate bustled around yesterday in short bursts and defeated the nausea demon by not taking her diclofenac in the morning. Or at least we think that was it. She’s engaged in an experiment right now to test whether the diclofenac might be a major contributor. Problem is that the diclofenac covers her arthritis pain and without it she’s in pain. Difficult and complicated.