Spring and the Garden Path Moon
Thursday gratefuls: Ruth, creating three oil paintings: Dear Dad. Mia, an artist, too. Tiny. Gabe. Loud and full of bad jokes. Here yesterday through tomorrow. Doug. Finished Garden Pathing the main level. For the most part. A small bathroom and that weird wall in the new dining room remain. Kep, better this morning. A bit. Doverspike. Driving into Denver. Into Spring. Leafy Deciduous Trees. Daffodils. Feelings. Still Winter on Shadow Mountain.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Teenagers
We’re treating Kep empirically. With antibiotics. Hoping that whatever took him downwards is an infection and not cancer. The first couple of days of amoxicillin will tell us what we need to know. He’s comfortable, lying down. Not coughing. No labored breathing. I had to dry pill the meds this morning and found my grip strength inadequate. Messy and difficult. Gotta get back on that resistance work. This is unacceptable and unnecessary.
Ruth and Mia brought Kep up the stairs last night so he could be with us while we ate Beau Jo’s pizza. That was sweet. We had the living room still in dishabille from Doug’s work. Couch across from the Fire place. My chair at a right angle to it. Ruth sat on the ottoman, Gabe and Mia on the couch. Kep took his night time meds in pizza crust. Didn’t work so well this morning.
Ruth and Gabe are comfortable up here. It’s a second home in the Mountains for them. I’m glad they feel that way. Makes me feel like a good grandpa. Both of them bring friends up. Another clue about how they feel about Shadow Mountain.
It’s nice to have people noises in the house. Footsteps. Refrigerator door opening. Food disappearing.
Doug got almost finished with the main level. That wall and the small bathroom. He’s going to finish the downstairs next week. Gotta message Vince for an art hanging and small fix-up day. Some mild furniture rearranging. Later one more day with Robin and Michele. I know the remaining closets and storage areas. Probably one morning’s worth. Be good to have all of those things accomplished.
Another good workout today. 240 minutes for the week. Enough. May go with the kids on their hike today. May not. Depends on how I’m feeling.
A strong week. Luke on Sunday. With Doug. Doverspike. The kids. Exercise. Breakfast with Alan tomorrow. Maybe take the kids, too. Dreams. First dream session with Irene at 11:00. Life up here on Shadow Mountain. Real life.
Still reading Undertow. Maybe a quarter done. Sharlet’s a good writer. And he’s empathetic even when he’s with folks like he discusses in the “manosphere.” This is the online world of incels, sluthaters, fans of the guy who shot up a college in California because it hadn’t given him the “beautiful girlfriend he deserved.” He reports on them as they are, not as they should be, not as he feels about them, but as they are.
He did the same thing with Rick Wilkerson, Jr. The third generation clergy in a mega church dynasty. Miami. A guy who thinks the gospel is about getting yours and being pretty. Sharlet builds a portrait of an America most of us (readers of this blog, for example) have no idea exists. Or, if we do, we know little about the real people inside it and how they live their lives. Remember the subtitle: a slow motion civil war. I can see what he means already.
The manosphere and the Wilkersonsphere are Archimedian levers that pry open cracks in the body politic. As are the Christian Nationalists heading for northern Idaho and those wealthy coastals exercising their right to exit, heading West.
I can see them all from up here on Shadow Mountain.
