Yule and the Moon of the New Year
Sunday gratefuls: Ruthie’s troubles. Jon’s doing much better physically and fiscally. Gabe’s blossoming into a very sweet, kind kid. Bowe comes tomorrow for finishing work. Rigel wanted a different wet food. Salmon worked. That tenderloin primal and the roast last night. The induction stove.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Ruth, bright, loving. And, tortured.
Tarot: Two of vessels, attraction.
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.
Tony’s left one of the tenderloin roasts unfrozen. The rest of the primal is in my freezer. I like Tony’s and Cook’s Venture, chickens, because they demand humane conditions for the livestock and natural feed.
The plan was to use this roast for first heat in the new, completed kitchen. Sigh. I went ahead anyhow. No hardware on the cabinets, therefore no stuff in cabinets. That meant I had to go looking through various boxes for: the skillet, the dutch oven, a spatter shield, Olive oil, cooking oil, brown sugar (failed on that one), the knives, a cookie sheet, a wire rack.
Hell, I was exhausted before I got to cooking. Earlier in the day I took the roast out and coated it with sea salt. Before I began assembling my cooking tools, I took it out of the refrigerator and let it warm up to room temperature.
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.
By the time I was done I was exhausted. Orgovyx and Erleada and cancer itself cause fatigue. I was fatigued. So I took a nap, then got up and did my find the cooking utensil walkabout.
The cooking wore me out, too. A while back I purchased two fatigue mats for the kitchen, but I can’t put them down until the kitchen gets finished. The mats will help.
Even though I’m the one saying it I gotta say that tenderloin roast was perfect. A nicely crusted exterior and a pink interior with no gray streaks. Yes! I fried up some potatoes, boiled some carrots and bathed them in butter and maple syrup. A lot of satisfied noises.
A glimmer of what can happen once the kitchen has drawers and cabinets filled with tools and foods.
Happy with the results so far. My plan is to start learning basic cooking techniques and move onto Italian and Korean cuisine. I want the Hermitage to be a place where good food and good times around the table are the norm. Last night fit that notion.
But. Ruth. In crisis. What a sweetheart and so hurt, so damaged from a tough, tough early life. I don’t know all the vectors that have harmed her, but I know some of them. All sad. All unnecessary. Yet, all impacting her now.
She spent the night on a psych ward at Children’s Hospital and will go somewhere else today. Makes me very sad.
Thursday gratefuls: Under cabinet lighting! Drawer organizers. Getting closer to the finish line. But, Brian… Sigh. Rigel’s arthritis. Seeking help. Ruth wants to go to Greeley to a 
The remodeling update. Bowe installed under cabinet lighting and I love it. I like clear light when I’m prepping and cooking. He’s also going to install a magnetic knife/utensil holder so I don’t have to have the large wooden block on the counter. I’m working on a minimal plan for things actually out on the counter top. I think right now toaster, coffee grinder, coffee maker, probably a cutting board, but maybe not. I want a clean top for easy working.
The first meal I cook in the new kitchen for others will be for Jon, Ruth, and Gabe a week from Saturday. Tenderloin roast. Mashed potatoes. Vegetable salad from Tony’s. Something fancy to kick things off. Get a good vibe in the new space.
Ruth sent me a note about a model railroad museum in Greeley. She wants to go. So do I. Part of our thing has always been museums, zoos, the planetarium in Boulder. Makes me feel good when she asks to do something. Not all 15 year old girls want to be seen with their Grandpop, let alone go somewhere with him.
Where’s the Webb?: Fully deployed the Webb has come 684000 miles from home and has 214000 to go to reach L2. This is 76% of the journey in distance. However this is Mission day 15 and it won’t reach L2 for another 14 Earth days. Slowing still at .2358 mps. Sun shield temp: 131F. Primary mirror: -289.
took the time to consider my schedule. My 
At the Modern Bungalow I picked out a rocker, a coffee table, a chandelier, and a standing lamp. Found an Arts and Crafts clock with a Turtle in ceramic tile and bought that, too. Kate’s totem animal was the Turtle, slow and steady. The clock will give the new living room a definite Kate accent. I scheduled delivery for early February, a birthday present to myself and well after I’ve reestablished myself in the new kitchen.
The Webb. With all of the turmoil and division roiling the political landscape it sure felt good to see a BIG project like the Webb get through launch and deployment. So many of my friends also seem enthralled with this new tool for deep space observation. A lot of its work will be in spectra of light that human eyes cannot see.
Simple things that make me happy. Moved my doc to Conifer Medical Practice’s Evergreen location. So, so happy. I drive a familiar road, down Black Mountain Drive and then Brook Forest Drive to 73. Into Evergreen to Stagecoach Boulevard. Stephanie, the PA I saw today, was chatty, friendly, unguarded, knowledgeable.
The kitchen remodel grows closer and closer to the finish. Bowe put up cabinets, got water to my dishwasher. Brian still owes us two cabinets, a few doors, and shelving for installed cabinets. He did the take the China display cabinet I’ve been trying to get out of our downstairs since we moved in here. Fist pump!
Lights on. Lights off. Generator on. Power back. Generator off. Repeat. 8 or 9 times in the morning, another 3 or 4 in the afternoon and evening. Wind, high winds. 40-50 mph gusts here all day and into the dark. 100 mph in Boulder County where grass fires used the oomph to burn over 600 houses. Coulda been here. The nightmare scenario. Cold weather, high winds, wildfire. A nightmare, but not impossible. At all.
Boulder County is 35 miles or so north of Conifer, a larger part in the Foothills to the west, but a significant chunk to the east where the Great Plains meet the Mountains. That area, and its continuation into the northern Denver metro, burned. Grassy Fields, flat. Winds coming down the Flatirons.
Sorta screwed up with my health insurance. I had an appointment with Kristie on Monday. January 3. Occurred to me only Tuesday to check if there was a referral. No referral, I pay. None. A phone call to Arapaho Internal Medicine said I was an inactive patient. Would not make referral.
Tom told me yesterday he worried about me living alone and isolated. I could fall, break a leg, whatever. He was right. I’d considered it, but put it away for a future date. Last week I slipped on the stairs up to the loft. Ice. Gave me, as Kate used to say, “An adrenal squeeze.”
Jon and Gabe are coming up around 3 or 4 to spend New Year’s Eve. Ruth, the 15 year old, is going to a party that Jon referred to as chaperoned. Hormones. Need supervision.
After I got up from my nap, I began to feel off. Just not quite right. Stomach, head. That dissonant sense when the body’s no longer in homeostasis. I held off messaging Tom as long I could, but finally I had to say no. I can’t do it tonight. A shame since he’s here and I see him in person rarely. Still. Illness is no respecter of persons or calendars.
Quartzite fabricator comes today. Measuring. Then, a lull in the action while Brian finishes the upper cabinets and the cabinet doors and the quartzite gets cut. It will be close, but I think we’ll make Christmas. I’m excited about reorganizing the kitchen, cooking in it. An ongoing treat.
Saturday gratefuls: Cincinnati Chili. Cooking. Learning how to again, on induction. Mini-splits at work. Experimental month with the hot water heat all off. Kate. Missing her sweetness. Holiseason well underway. Exercise finally back all the way. Core exercises. Diaphragmatic breathing. Kabbalah. Tarot. The Eel. Alan.
I told Alan about my Hermit neon sign that is underway. We got a good laugh out of the Master Benders. He wanted to know why. Because I see myself a hermit now, I said. We can fix that, he said. No, thanks, but I appreciate the thought. Maybe I should have gone with the Fool. The beginner’s mind. Setting off on the journeymen’s pilgrimage. Each morning. Maybe that will be one for the loft next year.
Back home for a nap. Then, workout. I have, at last, gotten back to my old intensity. Been going at reduced speed and intensity since late June when I pounded my IT band into high tension on the sidewalks of Hickam Air Force Base.
After I workout, I go downstairs, eat lunch, have a nap. Often I don’t feel like doing anything after the nap. Easy, you might say, stop napping. Yeah. Except. Started napping in 1989. Continuous then to now. That’s what, 32 years? Pretty much a habit.
Brother Mark asked in an e-mail this morning if I’d gotten back to my Latin. No. I haven’t. But I appreciated the nudge. I want to get back to Ovid, to Latin, to the writing that flows from it. Painting, too. Slowly, slowly. Taking life at a pace that works. Wu wei.