Beltane Beltane Moon
Dave Scott fixed the inspection addendum items on our Andover house yesterday. The closing is on May 26th. Kate will attend. I will sign the documents here in front of a notary.
We only had one offer, but it was a good one and from people who want to garden, tend the orchard and raise bees. Makes my heart glad.
Beltane Beltane Moon
Day after. Feel pretty good. Some discomfort yesterday, not much this morning.
Another native plant class today, one tomorrow in Sterling, about 2.5 hours east on Hwy 76.
After, I’m headed into the Denver REI, the flagship store, for a pair of hiking boots. Gonna check out women’s. Yes, my feet are so small that sometimes I can only find what I want in women’s shoes. No high heels, or stupid shoes as Kate calls them. Just flats with goretex and high tops. Hat, my western hat, soon, too.
O2 saturation up. Looking reasonable at 93% up here. 96% in Lonetree yesterday. Guess that trazadone was the culprit. Whew.
The water torture of closing details continues. This needs to be signed. This needs to get fixed. Yes, you can sign far away. We’ll mail you the documents. Rented Kate’s car on Thursday. We only have one car so we rent cars for trips like this. Saves putting miles on the truck.
Beltane Beltane Moon
Well, as they say in the movies, “That happened.” Results in a week. Mild discomfort. Eigner (urologist) said a portion of the left medial looked “suspicious.” We’ll find out. Glad we’re on the way to a diagnosis and next steps.
Unpleasant, and that’s about it.
Beltane Beltane Moon
It’s a wonderful day in the neighborhood. For a biopsy. Slept well. Think I sussed out on my own the culprit in my lower oxygen readings. Trazodone. I stopped taking it a couple of days ago and I slept well (ironic, since it’s a sleep aid.) plus my breathing has returned to normal.
I have no fear, not even of the procedure itself, nor its possible information. Doesn’t feel like denial. (But, would I know if it was?) The details of the procedure and its possible results are clear to me. Though death does seem to hang around these intersections like a prostitute looking for a trick, I’m in no way tempted. Life, as long it runs, is good.
Whatever transpires, this whole month (it was april 14 when i saw lisa for my physical) has been an intrapsychic marathon, 26 miles of self-examination, staying with the feelings, considering worst outcomes. It has also been a month in which friends (especially the Woollies) and family have helped me stay strong and clear.
It could have been otherwise. One of the things that worried me when we moved out here was the loss of my friends. But I’ve found that those relationships, docents and Woolly Mammoths alike, transcend distance. The warmth and support I’ve felt from all of you is no less, perhaps even a bit more, for traveling 900 miles.
So, thanks to you all. I’ll get back to you with the results.
Beltane Beltane Moon
Tomorrow the biopsy. I feel fine, relaxed. Except. For those 12 tiny needles which will get their section’s worth of cells to analyze.
Just had a nice meal out, now for a quiet evening. Then…
Beltane Beltane Moon
Beltane Beltane Moon
Kate and I love our new home on Shadow Mountain. We both find Colorado, at least for now, like being on permanent vacation. I suppose at some point that will pass, but there are so many place to explore quite close to Conifer, like Park County and South Park. Then, after them there are New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. Each of these states I’ve seen a bit, but not in any real depth.
That family feeling, of being a real and needed part of a small human community, makes me feel good. Kate and I may offer Ruth 3 day to two week summer camps. In those we can give Jon and Jen a break from day to day parenting. It will also give us a chance to spend time with Ruth, teaching her what we each know. Kate will probably focus on sewing, cooking, other hand crafts, physics and chemistry. I’ll probably focus on native plant identification, hiking, exploring nearby spots of Western, Indian, geological or historical significance. I can also throw in literature, Latin and writing.
Gabe’s visits, due to his hemophilia, will have to be shorter. We have one idea right now, a visit to MacNation, a restaurant that serves only macaroni (his favorite food), followed a trip to the Foothills Animal Shelter. He loves animals.
Colorado’s music and theater scene has also surprised us in a positive way. The quality of the smaller theaters here is high and jazz, if not classical music, is strong.
We both love Minnesota, too, but Colorado is now our home.
Beltane Beltane Moon
Geologist Tom Zeiner from the Colorado Native Plant class calls it the “solar snowshovel.” Without spending a dime or even removing the snowblower from the garage, the weekend’s snow has melted and transpired from the driveway. This will continue to amaze me for some time. What a treat.
The forecast has rain in all of the next ten days save 2. That means more water going downhill added to the already high water levels. But, no snow.
Beltane Beltane Moon
The hits just keep on comin’. Now, in addition to the biopsy this Thursday I have lowering oxygen saturation. This is not good. It can and does destroy brain cells and my brain is my favorite organ. So, I have an appointment with Lisa Gidday sometime in the next three weeks. Geez. This all converges with long standing, but well-managed issues (right now) like high blood pressure, cholesterol levels too high or too low, stage 3 kidney disease and others like left ventricular hypertrophy.
Now, I choose to see this all in a positive light. I have some chronic conditions that are common to many people and the dietary and pharmaceutical solutions to them have been successful so far. The kidney disease and left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) are not good, but they both seem stable.
Unless. The LVH ends up reinforcing the lowering oxygen saturation. That’s for the follow-up to my appointment with Lisa.
My sense of myself, in spite of all this, is that I’m healthy and strong. Doesn’t feel like denial. I know about each item here and its implications. My choice is to take positive and aggressive action where I can and to accept the limitations or ultimate consequences in those instance where no action can be taken.
Two different streams of thought have lead me to a calm place. The first, experienced immediately after the beginning of the prostate journey, involved facing my actual mortality. We maintain throughout most of our life a subtle innocence about the probability and even the possibility of our own death. In my opinion this attitude is the reverse of unrealistic. In fact it is protective of our need to get on with living in the face of an inevitability about which we can do nothing.
The prostate findings lifted that protective innocence from me. There was death peeking over my shoulder, the agency of its coming perhaps revealed. This shook me. Hard. Finding my way into it, not running away, took the better part of a week and a half. Then, I realized that, if not this, something. If not now, sometime. With that frame and the palliative effect of taking the actions I could take, I became peaceful again.
The second thought involves living until I die. This has always been intention, not to run away from life or problems but to embrace them. Make choices. Take action. If I see a problem that affects me deeply, my tendency is to move toward it, see if I can do something. The realization here is that no disease, no condition can stop me from living until I die. I will, in other words, continue doing those things that matter to me. As I have done. Death cannot defeat my life, just end it.
So far these two thoughts: something, sometime will kill me and death cannot defeat my life, have helped me see that I am in no different situation now that at any other time in my life. Nor will I ever be.
Beltane Beltane Moon
Snow began coming down in parallel streaks about 2 p.m. yesterday. It built up quickly, then slacked off. Overnight more snow fell. This is snow with a 3/1-7/1 water ratio so it’s wet, heavy. I estimate 4-6 inches which, with a different water ratio, would have been 12-18 inches.
10 days after Beltane, the beginning of summer in Celtic lands, we have snow laden ponderosa boughs, a driveway covered in a thick blanket, roofs and yard all white.
This brings us to flooding. According to weather5280, the front range has absorbed all the water it can. The rest now gallops downhill like a herd of wild mustangs. Up where we are the mountain streams are thick with fast moving water. It has spread beyond stream banks and minor flooding has occurred. But we’re the feeder system, our streams smaller, more shallow. It’s when Cub Creek hits Maxwell Creek and the two become one heading for Evergreen that the real danger happens.
Down mountain the streams collect the Cub Creeks, the Maxwell Creeks, the Shadow Brooks to create fast moving, not to be restrained small rivers. A couple of years ago this created serious flooding in Boulder, Golden, Manitou Springs, Denver all distinguished by their positions along the beginning of the high plains.
(This one from May 9th.)
All the water from the Eastern Slopes, by virtue of gravity’s strong pull, has a passionate desire to get lower, reduce the tractor beam energy created by lower altitudes. And it will see its desire met. No matter what lies in its way.
This is nature at its wildest. Floods are a force like hurricanes, tornadoes, avalanches, wildfire. We humans build our houses, pave roads, throw up restaurants, grocery stores and filling stations and often wild nature lets us have them for a time. But. Ask the residents of New Orleans after Katrina, of New York City after Sandy, the nearby residents of Waldo Canyon who saw the 2012 Waldo Canyon fire ravage their homes, the merchants in Manitou Springs who had two feet of mud in their basements, folks living in Moore, Oklahoma after the F-5 tornado did a Dorothy on their homes. Ask them whether human artifice seems so permanent.
Now there is significantly more water up here in the mountains. It came over the last week in the form of rain and today, for those of us above 8,000 feet, as snow. The rain is already on its way to the Denver metroplex. The snow may, thankfully, delay some of the water by plugging up streams and releasing its own moisture gradually over the next days.