• Tag Archives Kate

  • The Outdoor Season, Well and Truly Begun

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                    Bee Hiving Moon

    Kate got a nasty cellulitis on her left arm.  Probably from scratches incurred while vigorously pruning and weeding.  Spring clean up.  It swelled up, got hot and sent her to the urgent care last night, the doctor visiting her own clinic for treatment.  They gave her a couple of jabs of rocephin, prescribed some sulfa and sent her home.

    After a restless night, she got up and drove out to the arboretum (today) for a class on fruit tree pruning.  She’s a Viking, moving past the pain, just as she has from the first days of our life together.  I’m no where near as stoic.

    Later on today I’ll check on our new colleagues, making sure they’re clustered under the feeder pail, then I’ll leave them alone until next Friday.  Next Friday I’ll go in and check for larvae.  Finding larvae means the queen has gone to work laying eggs and the colonies will be queen right.  After that, it’s the normal hive checks, hive box rotations and following their life as the colony builds up to full strength.

    The outdoor season is well and truly underway.  Got 2.5 pounds of potatoes from Seed Savers yesterday.  I’ll supplement them with sprouts from leftover potatoes of last year’s crop and, possibly, a few from Green Barn, up the road a piece near Isanti.  That bed has to be dug and amended.

    Also on today’s docket.  Move the large limbs I pruned a month ago onto brush piles, clear out the work Kate did yesterday, clean off the AC and do some weed prevention.  That’s enough for today.


    📂This entry was posted in Bees Family Garden permaculture 📎and tagged

  • Saturday

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                   Woodpecker Moon

    Did my workout last night so I have Saturday and Sunday free.  Feels very luxurious.  This short burst workout economizes time while maximizing result.  What a deal.

    We had our business meeting.  Still tinkering with the budget.  We’ve got the large outline and the big expenses well in hand, now we’re looking at other areas where we spend less per transaction, where the patterns are not yet obvious.  Kate’s learning Excel and grumbling all the way about it, but I can tell she’s proud of her progress.

    Kate made pumpernickel bread.  It has molasses, espresso and chocolate among other things.  Who knew?  A moist tasty bread.

    I’m feeling good about the start on reimagining.  I want to get a little looser, more free-form with the words and their implications.  Over time certain things will begin to clump together.  Right now, this writing aims toward a presentation on April 1st at Groveland UU.  It is also the first essay of maybe 10-12 that will constitute Reimagining.  At least as I imagine it now.  Ha, ha.

    Off to the grocery store.  Using that former exercise time for the common good.

     


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Cooking Family Health Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant. 📎and tagged

  • Go, Santorum

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                      Garden Planning Moon

    Hey, how about that Santorum?  Way to mix it up.  The longer the Republicans savage each other and the longer the nomination drags out without a clear victor the better.  If the  economy can right itself a bit more, unemployment come down and consumer spending go up (think those two are related?) the Democrats might look better in the fall.

    I’m working right here at home, filling up my day and working out at twilight, then reading.  A couple of tours tomorrow and I’m looking forward to them right now because I’ve been writing and doing Latin for 5 days in a row with a bit of a break on Monday.  The productivity feels great, but a change of pace will be welcome.

    Grandson Gabe has a bad cold or croup or something respiratory.  Grandma Kate got a chance to pass on some knowledge to Jon and Jen last night.  She’s a good one to have your corner if you have a kid.

     


    📂This entry was posted in Family Politics Writing 📎and tagged

  • Dining In Lima, Peru

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter                                            Garden Planning Moon

    Another bit of photoshop work.  This photo in Pizarro’s house in Lima, Peru.

    One other odd bit of info.  Tomorrow I go off private health insurance and enter Medicare.  A transition I’m making with this beautiful lady.

    Also, look tomorrow for Imbolc posting.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Family Travel 📎and tagged

  • Why Do I Write Novels?

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter                                     First Moon of the New Year

    So, why do I write novels?

    In a writing group some years ago, maybe 20, a writing exercise turned into 120 pages of Even the Gods Must Die, a novel inspired by the Norse Ragnarök.  The doom of the gods, Ragnarök foresees the end of the nine worlds, the death of the Aesir and the Vanir with plenty of teeth-rattling battles.  Fenrir fights with and kills Odin.  Thor fights the Midgard Serpent, kills it, but dies later from its poison.  What’s not to like?

    The exercise came in the midst of a writing group I formed to help me as I wrote my dissertation for McCormick Seminary.  My dissertation on the decline of the Presbyterian Church satisfied the writing requirement for a Doctor of Ministry which I received in 1991.

    By that point I had met Kate and discussed with her leaving the ministry. If I left the ministry, what would I do?  The skills I’d learned didn’t transfer readily.

    Well, there was that 120 page story.  Hmm.  Maybe I’ll write.

    Not a big stretch, really, since my Dad had earned his living as a journalist and columnist.

    Early on I decided to focus on ancient religions as a fundamental component of my novels, fantasy novels all, so far.

    So, in one important sense, I wrote novels to escape the ministry after it had become a swamp.  Do I write to overcome existential alienation or do I write so that others can overcome their existential estrangement?  No.  I write because the process and the stories fascinate me.

    At some point I hope I can make some money, too.  And, if you read my work and find your angst or your anomie lessened, all the better.  But I’m not counting on it.


    📂This entry was posted in Writing 📎and tagged

  • Ouch

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter                                        First Moon of the New Year

    We landed.  We drove.  We napped.  Ah.

    Got up, went to Armstrong Kennels to get the dogs.  While getting the dogs, Kate had Rigel, a big girl, around 100 pounds, on a leash.  In her eagerness to get in the car and go home, Rigel tugged the leash, Kate tripped, hit her head and opened a three-inch gash over her right eye.

    She’s at Urgent Care right now getting it sewed up.  No, she did not want me to drive her.  She’s tough.

    Rigel got in the car.  Now she’s asleep on the rug upstairs.  Back home again in Minnesota.

    BTW:  It cost more to board the dogs than it did to board Kate and me at the Best Western.  Hmmm.


    📂This entry was posted in Dogs Family 📎and tagged

  • Free Time

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter                    First Moon of the New Year

    The grandkids are back in school today;  Jon and Jen back in their classrooms, so we’re on free time.  I want to go to the Denver Art Museum and see a Pacific Northwest exhibit they were installing last time I was there.

    Due to Kate’s impending retirement this may be the last time we travel out here together for a while.  Too expensive to board all the dogs.  While we won’t be on a fixed income, it will be less plastic than during Kate’s employment years.  Unless, of course, I finally push a novel over the transom.  Then we could a little extra cash.

    Limitations are part of life so I don’t find that prospect daunting, only something new to take into account.

    That’s all from the Mile High City for today.


    📂This entry was posted in Family Retirement Travel 📎and tagged

  • Shopping in the Physical Universe Is So Last Millennium

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter                                       First Moon of the New Year

    Off to Joann Fabrics with Ruth.  Kate and Ruth found fabric to make several dresses, some for Ruth and some for Elizabeth, her American Girl doll.  Granpop went off into the wilds of mall land, proving to himself once again that shopping in the physical universe is so last millennium.

    Searching in real time for objects that can be in one of several locations takes a lot of time and, as happened to me this morning, is not always successful.  I did get a new battery for my watch…something that has to be done in the physical world since I don’t remove my own watch backs, though I could I suppose.

    Finding a camera strap and a lens cap for my camera proved impossible in the amount of time I had.  Best Buy had neither one, but I did pick up some double A batteries.  The Wolf Camera, supposed to solve my remaining problem acted like the ivory pileated woodpecker.  It just wouldn’t appear.

    By the time I got back to Joann Fabrics, an hour plus later, Ruth and Kate had made it to the cash register.  They paid, we hopped in the car and went to Panda Express.  Big fun all round.


    📂This entry was posted in Family Travel 📎and tagged

  • A Morning During Our Long November

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter                            First Moon of the New Year

    Our long November continues.  Patchy snow, mostly bare ground and leafless trees.  Occasional sunshine, like today, otherwise gloomy and gray.   I’m disappointed in the season since I believe we have to earn our springs here and I’m not sure we’re going to this year.  Of course, last year may have counted for two.

    Action method and Evernote have both made my work on the computer much more productive.  I can switch seamlessly among projects now without having to do a lot of hunting for files and resources.  Since my days have become more and more study oriented this means a lot to me.

    (remember last winter?)

    Kate’s out having lunch with a friend, Penny.  I worked on Ovid, finished up my ten verses for this week.  This afternoon I’ll check out my objects for my two China tours tomorrow and probably enter some more of the material I wrote last March at Blue Cloud.

    I’m getting close to having that finished.  Once I do, I’ll go back over my notes and start writing again.  I expect I’ll have a rough draft finished in February if things go well.  I’ll start on Book II after that.

     


    📂This entry was posted in Humanities Literature Myth and Story Weather +Climate Writing 📎and tagged

  • 2012

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter (snow, at last!)                           First Moon of the New Year

    OK.  I stayed up until midnight.  Now what?

    Another year.  Didn’t we just do this last year?  The whole new year’s thing.

    Kate and I shared champagne flutes of a Fre sparkling wine, toasted her retirement, our family and friends, the next year together, our 22nd as a married couple and then she went to bed, she who usually goes to be around 8pm stayed up until 11:30.

    We watched a Netflix streaming movie, Mao’s Last Dancer, a so so movie about a Chinese ballet dancer who chose to stay in the US after a year with the Houston Ballet.  This was the mid-80’s.  The movie barely makes sense in current time.  China’s much different, more confident and we’re much different, less confident.

    So, Happy New Year to each of you and all of you, all at once!


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Holidays 📎and tagged