Mabon Moon of the First Snow
For Mary in smoke besmirched Singapore:
Category Archives: Family
Unplugged
Mabon Moon of the First Snow
Still have snow under the pines, but on the driveway, in the way of Colorado, the snow melted with no need for removal. Most excellent.
We had an interesting medical event yesterday. And why not! This is the year of bodies gone wild. At least here on Black Mountain Drive. Kate had her shoulders x-rayed. Instead of getting any information about the shoulders though, when the nurse called with the results she said the radiologist found that Kate’s pacemaker wires were loose, disconnected. OMG.
After a call to the electro-physiologist, Kate got forwarded to the device department. Not kidding, actual name. When the device department called back, they asked her to do a tele-trace. This involves putting a small electromagnetic disc over the pacemaker. The disc and its machine then interrogate the pacemaker, check up on how it’s doing.
While on her way into Denver to pick up granddaughter Ruth, Kate got the call. The pacemaker responded to the interrogation and reported in as active. So, no disconnected wires. OMG. Please come in for your regular checkup next year. They are, and I’m glad, calling the radiologist to see WTF.
Maybe now we can get back to the shoulders.
Recovery, Generation, Remodeling
Mabon Moon of the First Snow
Kate’s progressing in her recovery. Her right thumb seems more and more usable. It got the platelet injection. Her soft bandage gets replaced today with a harder cast. Her ability to maneuver with one good hand and four fingers amazes me. She’s making curtains for the loft right now, for example.
The generator got installed last week. John the plumber came over yesterday and ran the natural gas to it. It needs tweaking since it’s now living at 8,800 feet rather than 900 feet, something like a 3% loss in efficiency for each thousand feet above sea level. You engineers who read this understand.
The kitchen remodel proceeds apace. The cabinets are chosen. The appliances purchased. Custom cabinets are under construction. I’m most excited about better light. My rods and my cones they fail me. Not gathering illumination like they used to.
Granddaughter Ruth will be here Friday, Saturday, Sunday while her parents attend a school conference. Jon and Jen now work in the same school district so they can go to these things together.
Slowly, slowly the new place is coming together. By the Winter Solstice we should have solar generation of electricity, a new kitchen, a working generator and a mostly finished loft. Too, the fire mitigation and solar panel shading necessitated tree cutting should be well along, or finished.
Surgery. Done Right.
Mabon Elk Rut Moon
The waning crescent Elk Rut moon stood off in the east this morning with Jupiter just above. Beautiful.
Kate had her thumb surgery and platelet injection, left and right respectively. The surgery went well according to the surgeon Janet Leo. Kate’s resting and preparing for her first night post-op. I’m headed to the grocery store to pick up pain meds and few supplies for the weekend.
They Say It’s Her Birthday
Lughnasa Labor Day Moon
Kate leaves tomorrow for Driggs, Idaho. Her sister, BJ, and her long time s.o., Schecky, have bought a house outside Driggs. BJ’s living there this summer while she plays violin at the Grand Tetons Classical Music Festival in Jackson Hole, a short drive away in Wyoming. She’s played this festival for several years. Schecky and BJ currently live in the Beacon Hotel on Broadway in NYC, not far from Juilliard and Lincoln Center where they met. They’ve lived in the Beacon their entire professional lives. Rent control.
Driggs, then, will be quite a downshift in terms of people and energy. Schecky is originally from the west and they’ve both done extensive backpacking. He plays the cello and has a solo career in Europe and Japan. In the U.S. he plays for the New York City Ballet and the New York Symphony.
BJ turns 60 on the 8th, so this is a birthday trip, but a quick one, since I’m leaving Wednesday for Indiana. With the dogs it’s difficult for Kate and me to travel together on these shorter journeys. Since we bought the Rav4, we’ve only had one car, so we rent from Enterprise and leave the Rav4 for whoever’s at home.
Kate’s taking her featherweight sewing machine and will help BJ with window treatments. She made her chili and cornbread for me yesterday, as well as a peach pie from Colorado Palisade peaches which are now in season.
The Eyrie
Lughnasa Labor Day Moon
Shadow Mountain homestead still under construction. Jon added the shelving unit on Saturday that will hold my tea, teaware, coffee and water heating appliances. That will make the winter a more civilized moment up here in what Kate calls Charlie’s Eyrie. A second story loft at 8,800 feet. An eyrie.
We added a new gas stove to our kitchen yesterday. Kate’s adventure with thumb surgery will find me happily back at the grocery store and cooking. But, I really don’t like electric stoves. The kitchen will get a complete makeover, but the stove we needed now.
That generator, the project that will not die, will get leveled and stabilized and wired on September 1st. Alpha Electric will install a ceiling fan in our bedroom on the same day. The gas will get attached, an inspector will come, then we’ll be ready for what happened a couple of weeks ago. In the same process we’ll get an estimate on redoing Kate’s bathroom with a walk-in shower. Safer over time. Skylights need repair, too.
The house, even after all this, will still be missing its soul, our art. The walls are bare, waiting a good feel for where we want paintings, sculpture, travel mementos, photographs. Until the art is hung, the house will not feel fully like home.
That will leave the external sprinkler system, probably next spring, whatever kind of cover Jon can create for the gap between the house and the garage (too much snow and uneven icy, ground in winter) and garden/bee works. Jon has an idea for the house/garage gap that may include a greenhouse, which would solve the garden works.
My original vision was fully moved in in two years. I still think that’s about the right length of time. We may make 18 months.
This process is, by turns, frustrating and exhilarating. The frustration is dealing with trades people and their shifting schedules, plus the difficulty of accurately assessing their work, both what needs doing and how well it’s been done. The exhilaration is finishing projects, bringing the whole closer to our vision of home. Time and money.
Immersion
Lughnasa Labor Day Moon
Grandparent immersion finished up yesterday with a trip to the Colorado History Center. This two week time got us all the way here with the grandkid experience, something we had lagged on a bit with finishing up the move, then the prostate cancer. We ate meals together, rode a train, saw Buffalo Bill’s grave, hiked in the mountains, put our hands on the active exhibits at Robot’s Rising and played with toys at the Colorado History Museum.
There was quiet time with dogs, wandering around in the backyard, playing with legos, reading, sewing. We had to learn each others idiosyncrasies and adapt. There were kerfuffles, too, of course. All of this led us to a deeper appreciation of each other.
Mountain living combined with family, that was the goal. We wanted our home to be our home, separate from Jon and Jen’s not only by distance, but by geography. Buying the house on Shadow Mountain accomplished half of our goal.
The other half has had more complications. There was initial resistance to the distance we were from Pontiac Street. And our refrain in that instance is, “We’re 900 miles closer.” I’m not sure how much of that resistance remains, but this past two weeks demonstrated our resolve. There is, too, the change from occasional visitors to full-time residents. This requires fine-tuning our relationships in ways not previously necessary.
We’ve begun this process, but are far from finished with it. I imagine it will take months, if not years and even then the fine-tuning will change as the kids grow older. Us, too, for that matter.
Upper Maxwell Falls Trail
Lughnasa Labor Day Moon
On the Path
Lughnasa Labor Day Moon
Two hours in the dentist’s chair yesterday. Cleaning, followed by a crown prep and filling two cavities. When Kate came back from the dentist on Wednesday talking about the sticky fluoride treatment she’d received, it made me realize we’ve had no fluoride in our water for over 20 years. Living with our own well.
Took Gabe and Ruth to the Upper Maxwell Falls trail yesterday afternoon. We didn’t make it to the falls, instead wandering off on an alternate trail that climbed through jumbles of boulders and large, rocky cliffs. The regular trail is very popular in spite of its out of the way location. Over the summer there have been no fewer than six cars and often twenty parked at the trailhead.
We examined plants. Ruth found a snake (she wants one for a pet.), but it slithered away 
beneath the rocks. We climbed on the rocks and looked out. Nature provides something new, something noteworthy every foot or so. It was a slow hike. Here were lichen, familiar forms from Minnesota. There was a very late blooming Indian Paint Brush, its fiery bloom resting on the ground. The trees, some of them, were huge, trunks so big that Gabe, Ruth and I couldn’t get our arms around them holding hands.
Maxwell Creek exerted the magnetic attraction that water has for humans. We went down twice to be closer to it, the first time we crossed over to the alternative trail that we followed. The second time we crossed back to the Falls trail. Ruth talked about some camp counselors who followed a mountain stream to its source, an artesian spring, drinking from it, since “water is never fresher.”
Being in the Arapaho National Forest has its own version of mindfulness, one in which attention leaves the world of the day-to-day and focuses on an interesting rock, a blooming flower, the sound of water rushing over rocks, the view from a boulder. The eye scans for what is new or unfamiliar, being delighted constantly by a patch of cowslip, a bit of lichen on a lodgepole pine, a small squirrel playing peek-a-book around a thin aspen trunk.
Ruth and I are going back this morning, taking Kepler along in his harness.
1.5 miles from home
Lughnasa Labor Day Moon
