Category Archives: Family

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Health, Memories

Surgery?

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Lughnasa                        Waxing Harvest Moon

This was a doctor day.  Kate and I went to see a spine surgeon she has seen before.  She leans now toward some surgical intervention since the various palliatives:  drugs, nerve root and facet joint blocks, exercise and stoicism no longer provide sufficient relief.   Surgery is the last option and in the case of matters spinal one usually chosen as such.  Her surgeon is positive about the chances for success, success measured as a substantive reduction in pain, though not cessation.

We stopped at Burger Jones for a delayed lunch.  3200 block of West Lake Street.  If you want a trip back to the late 50’s early 60’s, but updated with booze and choices in shakes and burgers you didn’t have back then, Burger Jones is the place.  Fun.

Long nap.  Just now getting roused for the remainder of the day.

Liberalism and the liberal tradition is much on my mind since  have to write a sermon for the 6th of September.  Reading, reading, reading.   Thinking.  Pondering.  Like that.

Aging, Dogs, Family, Friends

Barriers and Transitions

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Lughnasa                               Waxing Harvest Moon

The day so far.  Bought 55 granite blocks to use in constructing barriers to the dogs.  Bought 10 straw bales to reinforce a barrier to the dogs.  Do you see a pattern?

A nap, then a workout and some Sierra Club work.  The day has sped past with work and play, now winding down toward the evening when I sit with the dogs, read or watch television.  Eat supper.

Kate’s in a definite transition mode this year, perhaps even in the next few months.  The pain causes her increasing difficulty, sometimes she spends her non-work hours recovering from work.  Literally.  Not a situation that can go on forever.

The neighbor whom I have mentioned in the past, though, has bigger issues.  His mental decompensation seems to track with his physical.  He grabbed his daughter’s arm and bit her.  His wife had to call the police to come take him to a psych ward.  He returns home tomorrow with nothing different.  A sad situation.

Family, Garden, Our Land and Home

Down in the Trenches

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Lughnasa                             Waxing Harvest Moon

Kate’s pain continues.  “I don’t even  feel guilty about not going into work today,” she said.  Whoa.  That says it all.

Her condition creates  a moving target, how to balance therapies and activity with the pain and newly emerging symptoms.  We’ll find a place for her to be, at least until we have to find another one.

The gradual slide toward fall, now most noticeable in the changed angle of the sun and the decreasing average highs, has energized me.   The trench for the electrical wiring linking the honey house (in process) to the grandkids playhouse has soil over the wiring now.  The trench had to be redug where Vega and Rigel had prematurely pushed soil back into the trench.  That was work for an adze, work done while kneeling spread wide over the trench.  A wide stance, I guess you could say.

I checked the bees this morning, too, sending them love as Queen Latifah suggested in the Secret Life of Bees.  Though I love them and they seem happy, that is plentiful and busy, there is not much honey, maybe a frame and a half at most.  Why this is, I don’t know.  It seems the learning curve here will be long, but that’s ok.  I’ve got time to learn the way of the beekeeper.

Bees, Cinema and Television, Family

Pain and Work

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Lughnasa                         Waxing Harvest Moon

Kate came home early from work.  Not working, not pulling her load is hard for her to bear, psychically much harder to bear than the physical pain.  She goes to work when she is in pain, partly because that’s how doctors have been socialized, but also partly because she wants to do her share, or pick up another person’s, if necessary.

This is not a fun way to live her last full year of work.  My hope is that we can find a way, with the help, perhaps, of the two surgeons and the PM&R doc.  She is, as a co-worker told her, a strong woman.

Just watched the Secret Life of Bees.  A fine movie, feelings popping out all over the place and at unexpected moments.  “Just send out love to the bees,” Queen Latifah’s character says.  Yeah.

Aging, Family

Happy Birthday, Kate

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Lughnasa                            Waning Green Corn Moon

Kate turns 65.  Once in our culture this birthday was as important as 21.  It meant the date when retirement began for most workers.  Now it is another birthday since the retirement date has been sliding gradually forward as one of the “fixes” for social security.  Kate and I both have a social security retirement date of 66.  Those born after 1960 have a retirement date of 67.  The consensus of things I’ve read suggest that age will have to get pushed to 70 in any new fix.

It still seems like a milestone of sorts, halfway between 60 and the three score and ten of a good life in the Jewish tradition.  Wonder if they’ve upped the age, maybe to three score and fifteen?  I read a great sermon on aging by a rabbi.  He is 92 or so.  When asked how he felt about having lived so long, he said, “Surprised.”

It will be good when Kate comes home for good.  Her back needs the rest and her heart can use the freedom.  We have a life here that is full and complete, one that needs the both of us with our increasing gardens alongside our creative and volunteer work.  She’s worked hard all her life and earned good money, so our retirement will be fine from a financial perspective.

Early on when she told me how money she made, my mouth dropped open.  It didn’t occur to me that people I knew might make that much.  Now I know she’s on the low end for docs, but it’s still a lot, plenty.   I said then and believe now that taking care of children is a morally unambiguous way to earn a living, one of the few I know.  So there are no regrets with her level of income for either of us.

Her gifts are much larger than that however.  She’s kind, generous, imaginative and patient.  She’s a great cook, a highly skilled seamstress and quilter and has a green thumb.  I’m lucky to have found her in this big world.

Cooking, Family, permaculture, Woolly Mammoths

Kate the Cook

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Lughnasa                                  Waning Green Corn Moon

It was fun to see Kate get compliments on her cooking.  Her cooking skills are remarkable.  Her nutmeg sauce melts the heart of the largest Mammoth.  We had a ceremony, a brief one, in which Kate passed to me the new wedding ring she purchased for me in Jackson Hole.  We also acknowledged the reason for the ceremony, Vega.

Though we have not done our work here for a public or any public, it gratified us both to have genuine interest in our permaculture efforts.  Having said that I need to get and plant some fall crops right now.

Cooking, Family, Woolly Mammoths

Mammoths Trek North

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Lughnasa                          Waning Green Corn Moon

Today the Woolly Mammoths put themselves on the ancient trail to the north, a gathering of the herd happens here in Andover starting at 6:00 p.m. or so.  Kate has helped me with the meal the last two meetings, or, better, I have helped her help me.  The menu includes two brined and roasted free-range chickens.  It also includes potatoes from our garden with our parsley, roasted beets, turnips, and carrots, and possibly, tomato and onion salad from our garden.  I say possibly because three of our Cherokee Purples began to turn last Friday, all the rest of our tomato explosion are still green.  Kate will also make her signature dish, a rhubarb pudding.

I have to go out this morning and retrieve my new wedding ring from the jewelers so Vega, Kate, and I can have a small ceremony during the meeting blessing the new ring.  Then there’s a chain to get to keep Rigel out of the damned orchard.  Ice.  Bones to keep the big dogs happy during the meal.  The little things that have to get done before a large meal.

So, I’d better get to it.  Talk to you later.

Aging, Dogs, Family, Health

Eureka!

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Lughnasa                                 Waning Green Corn Moon

Got some sleep.  Feel better this morning.  A busy day ahead.  Groceries, recycling, straw, more weeding.

Kate comes back from Denver today.  I  had a bit of a snit yesterday when she wanted to stay an extra day.  My Woolly meeting is on Monday and she’s a big part of the get ready for it plan.  Also, her birthday is Tuesday–65!–and I have an evening ready for us.  I wanted her back her with me, but felt conflicted because she wanted to stay with Jon.  He had a bad ride home from the hospital.  A moot point as it turns out, since it would have cost around $500 to change the ticket with $150 airline fee, $30 Orbitz and $320 in additional ticket costs.  Not proud of myself over this, but I’m glad she’ll be home today.

Vega or Rigel, remember them?, ate my pocket moleskine diary and a current novel I’m reading, Consider Philebas.  By eat I mean shred and coat with drool.  The diary’s pages are recoverable and Consider Philebas, though badly mauled and wet, contains the pages I’ve not yet read, which is good enough for me.  Just one more of the V&R stories.

Over the last few days I have dutifully filled the large rubber water container we have outside.  And refilled it.  Those big dogs, I thought, drink a lot of water.  Then, shortly after I filled it yesterday morning, I put the hose away, turned around to see Vega curled up in the water container.  She was happy.  Archimedes could have had his eureka moment watching her.  90 pounds of puppy displaces a lot of water.

The Denver Olsons have had a rough summer.  Hirschel their 6 year old German Shorthair developed cancer and died.  hirschJon’s surgery has created the kind of upset recovery from any surgery always does.  Next up is Gabe’s surgery to install a port for his prophylactic factor.  That comes on the 27th.  Not to mention that they started back teaching two weeks ago.   A lot for a young family to absorb.  Why I was conflicted.  (pic:  Hirschel)

Family, Health, Memories, Weather +Climate

Fall

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Lughnasa                              Waning Green Corn Moon

Even though summer seems to have arrived, or returned this week, I can already feel social rhythms beginning to change.  Fall has begun to peek up over the calendar.  Ads for school supplies have begun to appear.  I remember getting a  mimeographed sheet (remember mimeographs?) in elementary school of the things we would need:  lined paper, #2 lead pencils, paste, a paint set.  Those are the things that remain in my memory.

They achieved totemic value for me.  These simple items carried the promise of learning, of new areas to explore, a new year away from home and in the company of other kids, at least for most of the day during the week.  Mom and I would go to Danner’s or Murphy’s 5 and 10 cent stores.  To this day I love going into office supply stores.  They bring back that anticipation and wonder.

Many of our vegetables have matured and others are well on their way, the harvest season has begun as the celebration of Lughnasa marks.  The angle of the sun has begun to change and the days have continued to grow shorter since the Summer Solstice.  At the Autumn Equinox we will be halfway between the Summer Solstice and the Winter Solstice.

Jon and Jen have started their new school years, back with the elementary school kids in Aurora, Colorado.  There’s news in their family, too.  Jon has partial shoulder replacement surgery this Wednesday, still fixing a skiing injury now three years old.

Gabe has had 13 bleeds in the recent past, including a spontaneous bleed on his back and a swollen hand.  In trying to get factor into him he has suffered many sticks.  He has small veins.  He will get an internal port on August 27th so he can  receive factor infusions prophylactically instead of acutely.  This should give him a normal childhood and relieve the anxiety for Jon and Jen.  There is, though, one potential problem.  It is possible the body will develop antibodies against the factor.  That would make things tougher.  A balancing act.

Kate’s going out there on Wednesday and will stay through Saturday.  We go see a neuro-surgeon tomorrow morning, still trying to track down more effective treatments.  She’s done very well with this degenerative disc disease, but it has not been easy.  She’s tough.

Family, Great Work, Politics

Barking Dogs

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Summer                     Waxing Green Corn Moon

Oh, oh.  The neighbor called and said our dogs barked constantly from 3pm to 7pm.  He’s home all the time now with his m.s.  I empathize with him about barking dogs, even my own, because they drive me nuts, too.  I doubt they barked the whole time, but it did probably seem like it.  Have to manage them for noise again.  That means keeping the two mouthy whippets, Hilo and Emma, inside more.  They won’t mind that a bit.

On a sad note tonight was Max’s last night.  Tom said today that he and Roxanne had an appointment with the vet tonight.  Max was a sweet dog, a wounded soul from his previous owner, but with more depth of character because of it.  I’ll miss him.

Worked out and then went into the meeting of the Clean Energy and Renewable Energy Committee.  The first hour of the meeting was a presentation by Steve Taff, an ag economist/environmental economist, on low carbon fuel standards.  He advocates keeping the focus on reducing carbon build up rather than on the policy tool.

Another important part of his presentation involved the complexity of the various policy areas:  low carbon fuel standards, CAFE standards and cap and trade.  The tendency, he says, is to consider only one policy area at a time and to ignore the total field of policy initiatives.  Keeping the whole field in mind is key to the eventual development of effective green house gas reductions.

Over the upcoming weeks I’ll unpack some of this jargon.

The committee understood the need for taking the initiative with developing legislative priorities.  Makes my work easier.