Monthly Archives: January 2015

Colorado

At the Wildflower Cafe in Evergreen

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Winter                                                                 Settling Moon

Breakfast and business meeting at the Wildflower Cafe in Evergreen. The Wildflower has small tables in a small space, a two-seat counter and a diverse menu. We were there about 7:45 and there were no other diners, save two men at the counter. The tables were hand-made, the decor photographs of wildflowers. The waitresses and the cook went by more than once, greeting us each time. This is a welcoming place.

We went over the move so far. The cost is about what we estimated, high but manageable. We’re willing the markets to behave at least through the sale of our house. The new carpet goes in this week which means the staging can begin, photographs will get taken and the marketing process will get underway.

It’s strange to have so much of our liquid asset base wrapped up in a place we can no longer visit easily, a place in which we no longer live. It’s as if it belongs to a former life. Which, if you think about it…

Our much more placid than not, even joyous, mood continues. We have hit problems along the way, solved them and gone on to the next one. Soon we will have only the ordinary issues of everyday life and the settling in will grow deeper.

My space will, I’m sure, be the last to come together. I have so many books which first have to be unboxed. Shelves will have to be reassembled. The treadmill and television need to get put in place. The center workspace has to have a platform built for it and its working surface reassembled. Our two large art crates must be relieved of their contents and brought up here, so they can take their new life as room dividers. Jon has proposed hinges, which will allow me to store art in them, a great idea. March, maybe April.

Colorado, Health

Early to Bed…

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Winter                                          Settling Moon

Up at 4:30 this morning. Not insomnia. Since moving to Shadow Mountain, I’ve been going to bed at 9 pm.  This means I have 6-7 hours of sleep by 4:00. I prefer 8, so 5 am or so is better, but 4 am on will do.

This transition occurred naturally thanks to switches from daylight savings time to standard time and the exhaustion brought on by unpacking while acclimatizing. I like it. It’s quiet in the early morning, just as it is late at night. Plus there’s the cultural lift that goes with being an early riser. I know about and believe in chronotypes (different sleep patterns), but there’s such a positive Western cultural value placed on early waking, especially among northern Europeans.

 

 

Colorado, Health, Politics

Last Big Piece (other than selling the other house)

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Winter                                                   Settling Moon

We’re in a long spell of days in the 30’s and 40’s, apparently normal January weather here. That milder winter we were talking about.

The main big transition piece undone is health care: doctor, dentist, health plan. Made some progress this week, but nothing done yet. More complicated than it needs to be, than it should be.

Linking the pieces of primary care doc, hospital of preference and health insurance has the feeling of playing three card monte on the streets of Times Square. But at least there you knew the con was on from the minute you stepped up to the piece of cardboard and the tented cards. With medicine the putative beneficiary is you, the patient, who receives good health care; but, in fact, just like Times Square, the game has other intended beneficiaries whose needs count more than yours: the administrative apparatus of hospitals and clinics, the vast network of employees working for the insurance organizations and the greedy bastards who run the pharmaceutical industry.

OK. So, it’s a rant. Doesn’t mean it’s not true.

 

 

Colorado, Family, The West

Stripping Away the Minnesota Identity Markers

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Winter                                                                    Settling Moon

Over to Evergreen today. Jefferson County Sheriff’s office verified the VIN on the Rav4 so it could have its title converted to a Colorado one. That got done. Only time I can remember when I thought (semi-) fondly of Jesse Ventura. Since he drove a Porsche, he made a key point of his administration lowering vehicle registration costs. He has not been governor here.

More fun than that. Right next door is the Evergreen branch of the Jefferson County Public Library. New library cards! Libraries are one of the world’s key institutions and they relax me the minute I enter them. This one has a lot of good photography hung including one spectacular portrait of a buffalo.

It also has a reading room with a surrounding circle of tall windows. They overlook a lone pine tree with a large boulder just to its left. Felt like good feng shui to me, but then what do I know?

Outings like this, not really all that demanding, wear us out still. Nap.

After the nap Kate went to the King Sooper to get supplies.

The National Western Stockshow starts on the 10th and this will be my 5th year taking the grandkids. This year Gabe and Ruth and I will see Superdogs (not so hot really, but Gabe finds the idea enthralling). The rest of the family will join us later for a chainsaw art demonstration and a bit of time petting the superdogs.

At 6:00 pm Jon, Jen, Ruth, Gabe, Barb and I will attend the MLK rodeo which features African-American cowboys and cowgirls. Family stuff. Good.

Colorado, Great Work, Weather +Climate

Down Turkey Creek Canyon

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Winter                                                          Settling Moon

Emissions testing is necessary before converting an out of state title so I was on my way to Ken-Caryl Aircare, a testing site with a low wait time. Denver has pretty bad air pollution, especially when there are inversions, a layer of warm air over a layer of cold. Denver metro counties have emission regulations and we’re in a western county of the metro area, Jefferson.

In what has become a regular occurrence the technician, a dread-locked African-American of about 40, told me he could do the VIN verification (also needed for title conversion), but, “I’ll charge you $20 and the Jefferson County Sheriff will do it for free.” He smiled, “Well, I won’t charge you. The company will.” Very friendly folks so far.

A nod to what’s left behind finished up the errands at Fedex, mailing the disclosure statements for the Andover house and the memory stick with Mark Odegard’s brochure to our Realtor.

Back home. All this driving through the Front Range foothills or in their periphery, the beginning of the Denver area from the West.

Colorado, Memories
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Winter                                                     Settling Moon

The boiler gurgles behind me. A slight ringing in the ears tells me I’m not done adjusting to the altitude. If I step outside, I’ll no longer see bare tree limbs, shrubs and the remains of last year’s perennials. Instead there will be the thin fingers of pine trees pointing up toward a clear, dark sky. The land beneath them has little undergrowth up here though about 600 feet below there are meadows with grasses and thin leaved shrubs.

Settling in has a lot of components. Yes, of course, there are the details, the net of the ordinary. It slips over us and we are unaware, caught in it and wriggling only folds it tighter around our day.

There is, too, letting go of there while trying to live here. That was made easier by the leave takings we both had. We left having said real and good good-byes.

There is the subtle and longer term process of developing new memories, Colorado memories. Making Colorado memories seems harder when caught in the mesh of car registrations, insurance to buy and bathrooms to clean. I say seems because it is often in those acts that the first memories begin to take root.

The clerks at the Colorado License Bureau laughing about the Omaha steaks Kate and I had planned for New Year’s Eve. “Don’t be surprised if a van pulls up. We know your address.” Driving home from Jon and Jen’s in rush hour traffic and, as a result, going slow enough to take in the Beirut Restaurant, the Corvette only car dealer, the modernist houses on Monaco Avenue. Taking our business meeting to DW’s 285 Cafe which had a large group eating breakfast, at least two of whom were clearly drunk.

Settling in, then. Underway.

Colorado, Health

Still Paying Attention

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Winter                                                   Settling Moon

Another on task day. At ten we met with a Minnesota financial adviser by phone. She praised our methodical process and its result. There is one more missing piece, the selling of the Andover property, but we won’t know more on that until next month at the earliest.

Kate went on a sundries purchasing trip: shampoo, conditioner, cleaners of various kinds, laundry basket, trash can, rug for the lower level door. Meanwhile I got the material together to convert our title to a Colorado title and register the car with the state. Tomorrow I’ll get the Rav4 emission tested, the VIN number verified and hopefully complete the title conversion and registration.

There’s also the Medicare advantage plan. We have a couple of months to switch from UCare, which we’ve liked, to a Colorado plan. The Medicare.gov site, which has a lot of information, makes determining which plan makes sense a sort of complex game I’d rather not play. I consider myself able to read and understand with the best of them, but it baffles me. Another financial adviser has reached out to a Colorado colleague to find us a trusted broker.

We’ve had to keep one or more items related to the move in our consciousness since May, 2014. As the time for the move grew closer, the number of them increased. We’re now in a time period when the number has begun to dwindle, but it’s not zeroed out, not yet.

Colorado, Mountains

The Haloed Moon

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Winter                                                       Settling Moon

Out for the paper this morning at six. The full settling moon hung low in the western sky, framed between a couple of lodgepole pines, a corona around it, bluish gray fading to white gold. Above it and a bit to the left, a bright Jupiter stood, a jewel somehow shaken loose from the moon’s morning crown.

The immersion in settling has begun to diminish enough for us to begin noticing, really seeing, our surroundings. The haloed moon, for example, standing over the dark bulk of Black Mountain.

This also means my thoughts can begin to turn to Latin, which I miss. To writing, which, apart from this blog, I miss. Novel ideas keep pushing their way forward and I push them back down. Not ready. Well, I’m getting ready. And then there are those Edx and Coursera MOOCs. Ready for another one, soon. Exercise, too. Have to turn the treadmill, mount the TV, connect it.

There are yet more boxes, but they now fall into two main categories: our private spaces and the garage. We will, for the most part, put together our own spaces and the garage won’t take too long once we focus on it. That doesn’t mean we have all of our clothes, kitchen things, furniture, art (another, and last, matter altogether) where we want them, but they are all, with the exception of the art, out of their boxes.

 

 

Colorado, Health

Thresholds

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Winter                                                        Settling Moon

Found my Swede saw and loppers. Went out in the 60 degree! afternoon and pruned the pine tree whose drooping limbs obscure the view of Black Mountain Drive to the left. When driving out, I like to see what’s coming.

Opened a few book boxes while Kate napped this afternoon and finally found the light switch for the single overhead light that has been on since the movers packed boxes in rows four deep against it. Turned it off.

Both of us passed a significant threshold today. We were able to work with fatigue as the only barrier, though the fatigue did come earlier and deeper than comparable work in Andover. We are becoming of the mountain.

In Andover our woods obscured sunsets, but here the sky is clear over Black Mountain to our west. Clouds form above it (or above other, higher peaks) and reflect back the sun’s last light. Clear air and an unobscured vista make for the regular extraordinary.

 

Colorado, Weather +Climate

A Post-Chinook Day

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Winter                                                                Settling Moon

The post-Chinook day, today, is bright, clear and warm.  Snow in our north-facing back remains while the snow on the south-facing driveway has begun to disappear. Yeah, Chinook.

Up and down the stairs to the second-story loft, clearing out misplaced boxes plugging up Kate’s sewing room. The exertion did not leave me breathless or dead, evidence of acclimatization. Not done, but much better.

Opened an area around Kate’s sewing table. She can now set up her Bernina if she wants. We’ll continue clearing her sewing area out until she can resume sewing. Having a creative outlet is key to our mental health and she needs to get back to needle, thread and cloth.

We’re learning to pace ourselves better and acclimatizing ourselves at the same time. Makes for a much improved settling in process.