Samain Moon of the Winter Solstice
Jon came in yesterday evening, billowing chartreuse ski pants, boots with snow fresh from A-basin’s recent 18 inch snowfall. It was, he said, “Worth it.” Skiing, Jon told me long ago, is “when I feel most like who I am.” He turned 48 Saturday. His 48th year will be a significant one, moving him past a painful chapter and toward what we all hope will be a better one.
Ruth built a fire in the place: small to big, one match. She did it. She is now one-match Ruth. She also moved split logs closer to the house using her plastic toboggan. A problem with the lodgepole pine that we burn is its poor heat to weight ratio. Burns fast, not much heat, lots of resin. When the fire mitigation wood runs out, I’ll probably buy a cord or two of hard wood. We can get that, at a price, from down the hill where deciduous trees make their last stand before the Rockies.
Jon’s birthday meal was yet more steak from our Carmichael Cattle Company quarter beef. We discuss the cow from which the meat came, not every meal, but often, following our short ceremony thanking it for its life on the occasion of our first meal with its meat.
Pat, the leprechaun p.t. guy who lives down Shadow Mtn. Drive on the grounds of a 1920’s/1930’s tennis camp will be here in a few minutes for another round of exercises. My follow up with the surgeon’s p.a. is this Friday so I’m prepping for what I imagine will be a less painful phase (less, not none) of the recovery. As soon as I’m off the narcotics, I can drive.
I’ve been in a morphine, dilaudid, vicodin haze since the 1st of December. I lose track of the conversation, can’t follow sentences in books, generally feel gauzy. Less so now as Kate has me on a slow wean, a tricky balance, as I’ve said, between enough pain control to exercise, but not more than enough.
Even with an attractive goal and the knowledge that I volunteered for this, the immediacy of pain and the druggy haze dominates the moment. Hard to feel beyond.
In other organ recital news Kate is off to a rheumatologist today to see if there is more that can be done for her rheumatoid arthritis: wrists, shoulder, back, ankles. When we crossed the border into Colorado, myself with Tom Crane, Kepler, Rigel and Vega, Kate with Gertie a bit later, the entire medical services industry in Colorado joined in a chorus of that old Leonard Cohen song, Hallelujah! A major revenue source coming to stay. Welcome!
This week should see marked improvement. I’m looking forward to it.
