Category Archives: Our Land and Home

Family, Health, Our Land and Home, Weather +Climate

Optimism

April 27, 2019 Charles 2 Comments

Spring Rushing Waters Moon

Took Kate out for errands yesterday. Doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it is. She went into the goldsmiths and got a new battery for her mercury dime-faced watch. I parked, came in and found her looking at wedding rings. Well, replacement wedding rings. After 29 years she has misplaced hers. Vega ate mine with the watch band I used to hold it long ago. It’s out there somewhere in the wilds of Andover. Kate walked into the goldsmiths, walked to the car. We went to Hopsin’s Dry Cleaner, the post office, and the Village Gourmet, looking for a bread box.

When we got back home, she was not ashen, not exhausted. Her stamina has improved. A lot. A testimony to weight gain, blood and iron infusions, and her commitment to ot/pt. Her face is fuller at 94 pounds. We’re both cautiously optimistic. Next up is the lung diagnosis and the j-tube placement. Some day.

I’m off to Bailey this morning for our month’s worth of thc. The Happy Camper. I’m going to take the opportunity to go to the Rustic Station for breakfast. Their sweet cream pancakes are wonderful. Tom and Mark and Paul, I’ll eat them with mindfulness of our trip to Durango.

20180615_101542 It’s a blue sky, sun shiny Colorado day. We get a lot of them though in recent months we’ve also had our share of dark and gloomy. I like both. The sunny days lift my spirit; the gloomy ones inspire my creativity.

Got groceries delivered and the house cleaned yesterday. Having groceries picked and delivered relieves a major energy drainer. Well worth the extra 10-20 bucks. Sandy, our house cleaner, got energetic and washed some bedding, my electric blanket included. At first, I thought she had shorted it out like the first one that got washed, but no, it lives!

Dogs, Health, Our Land and Home, Science, Weather +Climate

She Does a Slow Reveal

March 26, 2019 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Recovery Moon

Each night Cassiopeia, Ursa Major, and other stars of the northern sky orbit around Sirius, the pole star, doing their dance through and just above the lodgepole pines visible outside our bedroom window. Cassiopeia, like a shy maiden, appears right now behind a clump of lodgepoles early in the night, but slowly reveals herself, her trademark distorted W shape gradually appearing in full.

This morning the waning Recovery Moon and Jupiter sat next to each other, the moon with a pale wet halo, both over Black Mountain. This is wild country here. We saw a fox two mornings ago, a healthy red fox with a bushy tail held erect, running down Black Mountain Drive with either a critter or a kit in its mouth.

We’ll be in the 60’s this week, then more rain or snow over the weekend. When I picked up a prescription at King Sooper’s the other day, the pharmacy tech looked out the window and said, “Oh, god. It’s snowing, isn’t it?” It was. A bright blue sky and round shots of graupel struck the grocery store parking lot behind me. “I love snow, but I’m so tired of it.” “Oh, it’ll quit snowing eventually.” “Yeah,” she laughed, “in August.”

When sick, getting healthy is the most important thing on the docket. When well, all those pesky things you ignored take the top spot. Like that damned dead bolt. It sticks. And by stick I mean won’t move when we try to release it. This has taken a while to get bad. I could use a small pliers and a rubber piece (for traction) to open it for a while. Now that doesn’t work. Arthritic fingers and thumbs make these simple tasks go from difficult to impossible. Then, the toilet in the loft has developed an unpleasant habit of leaking from its seal to the floor or one of the bolts holding it down. Unusable in that state. Minor things, yes, but beyond the reach of an illness focused, snot for brains me. On them today.

Don’t remember whether I said it here or not, but Kate’s up to 85 pounds! Wow. I made an arbitrary number, 90 pounds, as the signal that the mess from Kate’s bleed would be officially over. She’s getting there. Almost exactly six months later. What an ordeal for her.

Rigel has developed a habit that will force a change in my behavior. We’ve taken to leaving certain items on the counter like bread, chips, apples and to using a small wire container in the sink as an alternative to a wastebasket. We put a plastic grocery bag over it, throw trash in it, then tie it up and throw it in the trash compactor. SeoAh’s idea and a handy one. Except. Rigel. She smells stuff she wants and uses her size to reach up and get it. Result. Mess. In three rooms yesterday. Gotta get a bread box and clear out space for the other items in the cupboard above the counter. A rejiggering of storage is necessary. Dogs.

Kate and I missed our hair cuts last month due to pneumonia. We’re both a bit shaggy and look forward to seeing Jackie today.

Ta for now.

Aging, Family, Health, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

What Will I Do?

March 25, 2019 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Recovery Moon

dreams Go now, the illness has ended. Feeling 95%. Still something in my lungs, not much. So seven weeks after the molasses filled drive back from Denver, I feel able. Still got workouts and stamina to increase, but I enjoy that. Imagine me doing a little dance on the balcony of the loft, a dance of thanksgiving for a strong constitution and a return to the unremarkable state of health.

What’s next? Call a plumber to fix the toilet leaking from its seal to the floor. Get our hair done. An appointment for teeth cleaning. Mail the taxes. Send Mary the letter confirming her part ownership of that oil well in Canadian County, Oklahoma. Finally get to my trainer for a new workout. Follow up on that PSA increase. Kate’s hi-res ct and visit to the pulmonologist. Get back to regular cooking. You know, stuff. Stuff that we do when we’re not occluded by an internal war between our immune system and some inner space invader.

I also have a lunch with Alan Rubin on Wednesday. Slowly getting back to some contact with CBE. It’s been a long while, but I miss those folks. I was still besnotted during the chicken cook soup cook off and not fully there.

If you want, you can insert a youtube video of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” here.

satire Remember the Producers? Zero Mostel? In it was the classic hit, “It’s Springtime for Hitler”. Well, it’s springtime in the Rockies and all of Colorado. Here’s another pirouette for great comedies and a plié with arm extended for the beauty of Black Mountain.

Not to go too far with this but there is a certain element of resurrection here. I used the word occluded, another word could have been buried. During a long and severe illness we turn in on our selves, our world becomes a primal struggle over which we have little if any external control. By primal I mean just that, a fight waged between cellular creatures so small we cannot see them, entities that have more in common with that first molecule that wiggled in the primordial soup than they do with us. During this conflict the body focuses on the struggle, not on errands, to do lists, future dreams, present possibilities. We become buried by the constant back and forth of immune system versus virus, immune system versus bacteria.

Now, sometimes, but only once, our body doesn’t win. That’s true burial or cremation, or going green into the ground, whatever carcass disposal mode suits you or your survivors. However, most of the time we emerge, as if in a Hammer film, from our undead state to once again walk among the tribe of the still living.

abyss And, yes, in that state now, I feel resurrected, reborn, renewed. A little shaky perhaps but that fits such a state doesn’t it? What’s next? Not in the quotidian sense I mentioned above, but what’s next in the sense of “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Mary Oliver was the poet of our intimate relationship with mother earth. She listened, saw, felt what it meant to be embodied, to be embodied in this amazing natural state, this gift, this once in a lifetime reality that we are.

This one, my wild and precious life, my one wild and precious life, has been returned to me, or at least that’s how it feels. What, as the city planners say, is its highest and best use? I’ve had ideas before, but this is a chance to consider what that means now: 72, mortality signals falling like rain, yet invigorated and experienced, befriended and befriending, not alone, well read, ready. What will I do?

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Health, Judaism, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Ruach. Breath. Wind. Spirit.

March 24, 2019 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Recovery Moon

breath ruach Head. Mostly clear. Lungs. Mostly clear. I’m beginning to feel the illness bidding me goodbye. So long, it was good to know ya. Nah, it wasn’t. And don’t come back, please.

Kate continues to show steady, if incremental, gains. She smiles more, laughs more. Until, that is, she opened the letter from Swedish Hospital advising us that our balance with them was $25,000. Oooff. Our insurance provider has not, for some reason, paid them. I get to chase that down today. Being sick in America. If the illness doesn’t get you, the debt collector will.

If we didn’t have resources, didn’t have enough education and chutzpah to front the insurance company about this, we might end up stuck with the bill. Kate’s experience since September has been long, invasive, and expensive. Without insurance we’d be eating away at our IRA. I don’t think this should be too hard to clear up; but the ominous nature of a letter like that creates an unpleasant frisson. To say the least.

I’m debating going to see my doc about o2 sats. They’re below normal, though not in a dangerous range. The high 80’s a good deal of the time. Normal is above 95, though above 90 nobody worries. Since we’ve gotten here, my sats have been around 90 most of the time. As Tom pointed out, we’ve lost 75% of our available oxygen just by being at 8,800 feet. That would make a normal reading 93 if I’m doing my math and physiology right.

breath in out I really don’t want to confuse Kate’s journey right now, especially since we see the same doc, so I may wait a bit, be sure the flight of respiratory illness I sampled over the last two months has actually ended. In time I would like to know if anything in my lungs compromises my breathing. It’s certainly possible. I smoked for 13 years. Not proud of it, but I did. I also worked in a couple of high particulate matter jobs in my younger days, cutting rags at a paper mill and moving completed asbestos ceiling tiles to pallets. And, Dad had severe asthma, using an inhaler virtually his whole life.

Ruach. The Hebrew word for breath, wind, and for spirit. The Greek word is pneuma. God breathed ruach into the lungs of Adam and he lived. Since the traditional test for death was holding a mirror or a hand up to the nostrils, no moisture on the mirror, no felt breath, it’s not a stretch to equate breath and breathing with life. No breath, no life. Many traditions, especially Hindu and Buddhist, have breathing related practices. So do the Sufi as my friend Debra Cope has taught me.

breath dive reflex What impedes breathing, impedes life itself. Impedes the spirit of all life that dwells within us. Like health breathing is unremarkable to most of us until its ease experiences an interruption. Water boarding, or extreme interrogation (not torture as our CIA likes to say), is horrific because it emulates drowning. Our body has reflexes built in, the diving reflex, for example, that protect us in the case of sudden immersion in water. This means that our DNA carries a history of dangers to our breathing.

The pulmonologist treats matters related to breathing. But the pulmonologist, no matter how skilled and learned, deals with the physical challenges to breathing, not the spiritual implications. No, that is up to us and our own way of understanding the body/mind/spirit links.

Breath jacob-wrestling-with-the-angel A breathing issue is not, then, solely the province of pulmonology. It is also the province of theology broadly understood. Theology, for me, is the way you identify, organize, and deal with matters of ultimate importance. Life itself is, of course, a matter of ultimate importance to an individual; therefore, life and how it is for us at any particular point is a directly theological matter. Breath, the spirit of life that fills our lungs, provides our cells with oxygen so that they can carry out the physiological functions that are life in the body, is also of ultimate importance.

Here’s a website devoted to breath meditation.* Note in the second sentence that prana, a Sanskrit word, means both breath and life. No breath. No life.

My journey right now forces me to investigate my breathing at both a physiological and a theological level. It’s all o.k., too. None of us get leave this ancientrail alive. Something takes our breath away. That something shows the fragile nature of even the most master of the universe sort of person. Right now I’m going to attend to my breathing, my o2 sats, the spirit and life they make possible within me. An ancientrail of the third phase, no doubt.

*Breath is the universal factor of life. We are born the first time we inspire, and we die the last time we expire. Breath is life itself. In Sanskrit the same word–prana–means both breath and life.

All that lives, breathes–even plants and the bacteria that make bread rise. The process of breath is identical in all, consisting of inhalation and exhalation. It is the most immaterial factor of our existence, being a link-manifestation of the mind/spirit that dwells in all. For this reason, the breath is the natural and logical basis for meditation, the attempt to “enter into life.” The breath is the key to the cultivation of pure consciousness.

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Stress is good

March 4, 2019 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Valentine Moon

Minnesota-Winter-Weather-Forecast 2019 Zoomed yesterday with old friends Paul, Tom, Bill, Mark. Paul’s in Maine, the other three are still in the homeland, getting blasted by an old-fashioned grit your teeth, squeeze the steering wheel, freeze up the nasal passages Minnesota winter. Nostalgic, eh? Given my 40 year residence there I’m ashamed to say that I’m not sorry to have missed it. Minnesota macho no longer.

30 years + I’ve known these guys. There’s an ease to being with them, even in little squares (Hollywood Squares sort of) created by the magic of pixels and bytes. We know the back story, the good times and bad, the struggles and the victories. When we speak together, the subtext is often as loud as the spoken. When Roxann’s mother faces the transition from home to assisted living, we know about Tom’s mother and the long process finding her a safe place. When Bill says, how do you solve a problem like Regina, paraphrasing the Sound of Music, his history with the Jesuits and hers as a nun is unspoken. So is the difficult time span of her death from cancer now some years ago. Old friends, like old dogs, are the best.

Ode signed in from near Muir Woods, a cottage overlooking the Pacific. Two weeks of vacation. Tom’s headed for Hawaii and Mama’s Fish House later in the month. Bill spent five days in Florida. Paul had, and I think I had something very similar, a disease that his doctor called the plague. His doctor fingered the same culprits as Kate did for me: kids. Fomites, Kate says. Paul visited grandkids; I taught 6th and 7th graders.

Took the Kep in for furmination yesterday. Before our now below zero temps we had a run of 50 degree weather. (The reason Minnesota macho has faded from my body.) Blew his coat. When he blows his coat, he looks like a ragamuffin, small tufts of fur his body deems not necessary hanging all over, falling off, making Kate crazy. Off to Petsmart for a thorough wash, comb out, vacuuming. He looks pretty good now.

Ode talked about living a stress free life. I know what he means, no work deadlines, no income needs, no drama at home, much less home maintenance (condo), the chance to go where you want, when you want. Like California in the midst of a brutal Minnesota winter. The chance to work on art projects either set aside while working or not pursued. The chance to visit with old friends, go to the Robert Bly evening at Plymouth Church. In general a life peaceful, not troubled by the undercurrents of the workaday world. He calls this The New Senior Reality Game-plan. And good for him.

reslience Not my goal. I thought about it. I see the allure. In some ways I wish I could want that, too, bow out of the ongoing stream of pressures, both domestic and personal. But I don’t want it. To be clear I’m not a stress junkie, nor an adrenaline junkie. I manage my anxiety much, much better than I ever have, not letting the day’s troubles spill over into what might happen next. I’ve tried and often succeed at acting without care for results. But stress per se still keeps me engaged.

I like the challenge of learning to teach middle schoolers, of integrating enough of the Jewish tradition to walk among my friends at CBE, of caring for Kate and the dogs. I like the challenge of coming up with a new novel, even though I’ve never sold one. I like the challenge of becoming a better painter, of finding my voice with oils. I could give up home maintenance responsibilities, like when we have ice dams to deal with or a driveway to plow or electrical matters to resolve. The priority of the living ones in our nuclear family, Kate, the dogs, and myself vitiate that for now, however. I enjoy the challenge of learning about astrology, keeping up with science, especially NASA and genetics.

Stress itself is neutral. In fact, it can be a good thing, motivating us to stay in life, to learn, to engage, rather than become socially isolated. It can, of course, be too much. And recently I’ve had more, much more, than I want. I would appreciate it if some of this stress would fall away. Kate gains 20 pounds, gets her stamina back. I’m back to working out, a real stress reducer. I have a novel and a painting underway again. But for all the stress in my life to go? No, not for me.

I’m in this life fully until it’s over and for me that means stretching myself intellectually, emotionally, spiritually. Stress free is not for me.

Family, Health, Our Land and Home, Politics, Third Phase

Better

March 3, 2019 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Valentine Moon

Glad to see the Valentine Moon fade away. It presided over a difficult month.

The snow storm that wasn’t. Instead of 6-12, we got maybe 2. But it is -2 for temp. Before the storm that failed Kate and I watched the fog rolling in, covering the lodgepoles and the aspens. A bit of snow here and there, but mostly the fog coming down Black Mountain.

Kate’s feeling better. She smiles more, jokes. Her food intake was low and not nutritious before the tpn. It seems like we may be going in the right direction. At last.

Got the freezer defrosted. We have an insulated garage. As I restored the items to the freezer out of the Option Care styrofoam containers, I took inventory. Good stuff in the freezer still, even though we lost several items to freezer burn. Chili. Gravy. Challah. Sauces.

Very domestic day. Defrost freezer. Change Kate’s nutrition bag. Cook supper: hamburgers, tator tots, and kale cooked with bacon in the instapot. A load of laundry. Empty and reload the dishwasher. Home stuff. Satisfying.

Saw a meme on facebook. A deranged, autocratic psychopath showed up in Singapore. Kim Jong Un was there, too. Korea is personal. Not only is it SeoAh’s home, the two of them could return to Osan at some point.

Dogs, Family, Health, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Waiting on the Storm

March 2, 2019 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Valentine Moon

Snow storm headed our way. March and April are big snow months in the Rockies. Looking forward to watching the snow fall and temperatures drop. Black Mountain will be white again for a while. Shadow Mountain, too. Flakes already spitting as I went out to get the paper.

We’ve settled into a routine of sorts. Sometime during the day I swap out Kate’s tpn bag. She assists by drawing up the vitamins. I make small meals or heat up left overs. We both eat when we’re hungry rather than at meal times except for breakfast. Being hooked up to the oxygen concentrator all day, her nutrition bag, too, makes Kate restricted in her movements. A major reason I bowed out at CBE. Responding to anything out of the ordinary is difficult for her right now. Lot of reading. Some television. Talking.

Placing the feeding tube awaits the pulmonologist’s assessment of Kate’s lungs. If she gives us a go, then the feeding tube could go in as soon as a week. That will change the routine. The J-tube, as it’s called because it goes into the jejunum, will not have the sterile procedures of the tpn and is gravity fed, so no pump. How things will look then we’ll have to see.

defrost Our Kenmore frostless freezer forgot its prime directive. I had to take everything out yesterday. Fortunately, I had all those styrofoam coolers the folks at Option Care have been sending with vitamins and nutrition bags. Checked it on the way up here this morning, the freezer’s in the garage. Almost all the ice build up is gone. Gonna get out the lysol and wipe the whole thing down, restore what wasn’t freezer burned and turn it back on. Having a freezer in Minnesota in the winter always made me think of salesmen and Eskimos.

Though I’m tired by the afternoon, my energy level has begun to return to normal. We’ve still got a puzzle to solve, revealed by my illness. What do we do if I get sick again? Hard to imagine I’m gonna get something this dramatic again anytime soon, but it didn’t occur to us that I’d get sick at all. We’re noodling this one.

We also agreed yesterday that I can go out as long as I’m not more than a half hour away, have my phone with me, charged and on. That means I’ll be able to go to CBE events occasionally. This is a time of intensive healing for Kate, getting her nourishment levels back to normal, then working on weight gain. Don’t wanna screw that up in any way.

As to moving. We’re going to consult the pulmonologist who is the ultimate authority here on these matters. That’s this Thursday. Once we get her input we’ll be able to make more intelligent decisions.

We have impressive ice dams on our north facing roofs. Before the idea of a move came up I was going to have them removed and electric heat tape installed to prevent them in the future. Now each thing that involves putting more money in the house will require scrutiny. Still going to have the ice dams removed though. Not cheap.

Meanwhile the dogs are healthy. Rigel’s eating well. Her predatory instincts have remained strong. When I cleared the deck last week, a rabbit squirted out from under it and ran to the shed. No wonder she spends a lot time sniffing at the deck, clawing rocks out of the way (when things aren’t frozen). Kep’s blown his coat with the recent run of over 50 degree weather. Off to Petsmart this week for defurmination.

Then there’s Gertie. This bitch bit me in the thigh last week. Three holes in my leg, blood dripping down, and a monster bruise. She wanted to get to the gutter guy who was trying to give me an estimate on the heating tape. She has an anger problem when it comes to any visitors. She’ll bite without warning. That was the issue that caused Jon and Jen to decide to euthanize her. We took her to spare her life. Most of the time she’s a really sweet girl, all doggy leans and kisses, especially to me. She spends most of her time with me. But…

Aging, Cooking, Dogs, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Friends, Health, Judaism, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain

What next?

January 30, 2019 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Waxing Moon

Wednesdays have a tendency to get busy. Today, for example. Make soup, eat some, deliver the rest. Drive Kate back home and myself over to CBE for religious school. At 5 pm Irene will do a class on dreams. I’d love to stay for it; but, when she comes, I’m leaving and heading over to Aurora for Jon’s opening. Looking forward to seeing his new prints. As I’ve mentioned before, Aurora (the sun rises first on the Denver metro in Aurora) is almost as far away as the airport. Drive home, then. This is retired busy, of course, with much more choice involved than obligation.

Monday was 4 months since Kate’s bleed and subsequent hospitalization. Weight gain still eludes her, possibly because shortness of breath, waking up nauseated (some days), lack of stamina, and her dry mouth from Sjogren’s Syndrome make eating a chore, a have-to, not a want-to. Whatever it is, we both feel stuck, wheels spinning on the icy surface of recovery. Not sure where we go from here; but, it’s life; so, moving forward even without clear direction.

Gertie’s healing up from her latest experience as a pin-cushion for Kep’s canines. She’s still a little down, a little sore, but she’s up and moving around. Dogs typically don’t linger over insults. Look at all the tripods. Kep has no remorse, that’s part of not lingering over results. Rigel, our healthiest big dog ever, has developed a strange habit. She eats some out of her bowl, walks away from her food to the glass in the outside door, looks outside, then returns to eating. This may happen a couple of times in a feeding.

After a mussar friend did a short riff on responsibility, I began to wonder about my role here. Her husband died of a lingering illness, took months. She says, “I look back and am certain my husband and I would have fared better had I interpreted my responsibility as being his wife rather than his nurse (just commenting in broad strokes).” She went on about a party. “I recently hosted a large party and, in contrast to my usual MO, relinquished some of the logistics in favor of engaging and having fun with my guests; to a person, each told me it was the best ever.” And she finished, “It makes me reconsider the languages of love: gifts, acts of service, quality time, words of affirmation, and physical touch.”

Am I really doing what I need to be doing? I’ve emphasized cooking, laundry, some cleaning up, grocery shopping, being present with Kate at the hospital, rehab center, doctor’s appointments, taking care of the dogs, other home related chores. Am I replacing doing with graceful being? Not an either or. The domestic chores have to get done, but am I not husbanding enough? This is not an abstract question. It’s present to me right now. Do I need to learn new languages as my friend suggest?

These are difficult questions that every couple has to answer throughout their marriage. Illness can make them fraught.

Asia, Cooking, Family, Minnesota, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Puzzled

January 28, 2019 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Waxing Moon

20190127_163835 Snowing here. About an inch already. Then comes the cold. But not like the cold my friends in Minnesota are going to feel. For example, Tue -7 for a high, -27 for a low. Wed -15 for a high, -30 for a low. Also, winds in the 10 to 19 mph range. Wind chill will be brutal. Enduring the last of any January will qualify you for Minnesota macho. Plan a trip there now to claim it for yourself.

We got started on the 1,000 piece jigsaw. Kate may have underestimated how long it will take to do all five. She said ten years. After yesterday? Maybe into our 90’s. New to me. Surprised how satisfied I was when a couple of pieces fit together. Kate’s pretty good at this. As you might expect.

Wondered yesterday about the origin of jigsaw puzzles. Kate thinks it was somebody who wanted something for the kids to do. So, I let wikipedia teach me.* Coulda been the Spilsbury kids, I guess.

20190127_174935 The bulgogi was good. So was the dumpling soup. The porkbelly last night? Not so much. Got a little rushed since I fried the smelt at the same time. Shouldn’t have done both. The smelt, which I realize now were considerably smaller than the Lake Superior smelt, fried up fine, but I bunched them together too much. And, fried things don’t work so well as left overs. In the trash after my meal. SeoAh sent me her sauce for the porkbelly, which I used. It couldn’t rescue a too fatty, not enough taste dish. Not sure I’ll try that one again. Didn’t seem worth learning how to do well. Tonight straight up American fare. Macaroni and cheese? Hamburgers? Steak and potatoes? Something more in my wheelhouse.

The snow falls straight down, looks like a gentle, white rain. A flour sifter somewhere above us, gently shaken by the deity we know isn’t there.

I’ve started on a cleanup, straighten, reorganize project for the whole house, loft and garage. Working on one room a day, or more if needed. I’m no Marie Kondo. Just want to get things spruced up a bit. Read an NYT article on stocking the modern pantry. When I get to the kitchen, I’m going to follow its suggestions. Suppose this is a cabin fever moment.

*”Jigsaw puzzles were originally created by painting a picture on a flat, rectangular piece of wood, and then cutting that picture into small pieces with a jigsaw, hence the name. John Spilsbury, a London cartographer and engraver, is credited with commercializing jigsaw puzzles around 1760.^[1] Jigsaw puzzles have since come to be made primarily of cardboard.” wiki

Asia, Cooking, Family, Our Land and Home, Third Phase, World History

Salmon Heads and Organic Miso

January 26, 2019 Charles Leave a comment

Winter Waxing Moon

20190125_101104 Yesterday. A do this, then do that, then do that day. 1st up. Feed dogs, then write blog. 2nd. Make breakfast. 3rd. Blow snow. 4th. Workout. 5th. Drive to H-Mart in Westminster. 6th. Back home through rush hour traffic. (bad planning on my part) 7th. Phone call from Kate just as I turned on to Shadow Mountain Drive. Kep attacked Gertie. 8th. Get home, unload, check Gertie. One puncture, a couple of scrapes. 9th. Cook supper. Bulgogi. Clean up while Kate cleaned Gertie’s wounds. 9th. Watch the last of Unforgotten, a Masterpiece presentation. 10th. Finish Terminal list. 11th. Go to bed. Got a lot done. Good use of a day.

Busy days like this go by quickly. I prefer the quiet days. Time to reflect, read, paint. But things have to get done, too. Once in a while I like these days filled with purpose. Used to have them all the time during the growing season in Andover. Planting, weeding, amending soil, tending the bees, working in the orchard. I like the physical stuff blowing snow, carrying groceries, cooking, cleaning, working out.

This morning I’m back for my monthly run to the Happy Camper. THC. Indica for sleep, Sativa for Kate’s appetite. I might head down to the Rustic Station for breakfast. It was closed when Ode and Tom were here, apparently they only serve breakfast on weekends. After that, a quieter day.

H-Mart is a trip. As an experience and as a trip. You definitely enter Asia when you walk through the door. In the aisle entering the building were the giant and tasty Korean pears, bundles of 24 ramen packs. Then on into the produce section. Persimmons, Korean melons, huge papayas, durian, jack fruit, bitter melon, lots of mushrooms, bok choy, noodles. Next up was beef and other meats. A whole 20 foot display held beef hearts, tripe, liver. Sea food. Dead, frozen, live. Packages with whole salmon heads, for example. Sushi fish, some sashimi, beds of ice with prawns, shrimp, large dressed rainbow trout, golden pompano, China grown tilapia.

20190125_150107 I was not the only round eye in there, but I was the only round eye male shopping alone. In this H-Mart, located in a relatively upscale suburb, Westminster, the clientele was mostly Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. In the much larger H-Mart located in more downscale Aurora, the mix is much more diverse with East Indians, Filipinos, more round eyes, Malay, Latino.

SeoAh’s cooking impressed both of us and I was after pantry items for making soups, stir fry, noodle dishes. The bulgogi, which both SeoAh and her husband recommended I buy premade, was supper last night. I threw in some Vietnamese rice noodles. Quick. Tasty. Today I plan to try one of her soups.

Here are a few more photographs of foods on offer.

20190125_145115

20190125_145535

And, finally, a plea from the owners found in the men’s bathroom.