They have a lot of nerve (whoever “they” are) calling that thing a creek. The roiling torrent of rushing, foaming water is more akin to the river it feeds than to a creek – the very thought of which conjures up images of a rill of water percolating peacefully thorough the countryside.

But the map insists this is a creek - one of two we encountered on our backpacking trip. I consider that description a smidge deceptive. Despite this slight falsehood, the map’s claim of a footbridge nearly three miles into the hike, and a mile and a half before the “creek,” was entirely accurate. It failed to warn however, of what would rightfully be called a creek, which needed fording before arriving at the footbridge. It took a few minutes of exploration to find the best place to get across, and after removing our hiking boots and socks, we waded it easily, despite the calf-deep water so cold my feet screamed in fuschia pain – a frigid agony that erased the hurt of walking barefoot over a rocky creek bed.

That crossing, though a mild inconvenience, held no threat to life or limb, unlike the first mapped “creek crossing.” Here’s a picture of me, preparing to cross, as I telescope my trekking poles.

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Here’s Ron crossing on the return trip.

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I think I mentioned we were backpacking. Ron made crossing that log look easy and for a brief minute, while watching him, I thought I could follow his example and balance with my poles across the fallen tree. Then I touched base with reality. At first I imagined I could wear my pack and just scoot across the natural bridge on my behind, but with that water rushing beneath and the noise and the adrenaline, it took one off-balance scoot for me to change my mind. I removed my twenty-five pound pack and scooched it across to Ron before straddling the log and heaving my way easily across. That part was kind of fun and felt easy, but I was hugely relieved when I make it safely to the other side and shouldered my backpack once again.

It’s funny how the best part of a trail often lies beyond the bit you’d rather not pass through: the intimidating hill, the rocky scree, the rushing “creek.” It was certainly so on this trail. In a moment, the memory of that potential near-death experience vaporized in the beauty and quiet of the trail as it veered into the forest above and away from the river. We knew however, we’d be returning to that river, because the map warned us of another “creek” a mile and a half ahead.

Here’s the second creek.

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We gazed with greed at the trail on the opposite side, longing to pick it up and continue on. But this barrier was uncross-able and unford-able, with or without packs. So we filtered water into bottles and headed back down the trail to a campsite we’d spied on our way up.


Here’s me at the campsite. I’m wearing the dorky headlamp.

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Coleman lanterens are no longer the thing, and flashlights are those tiny key ring things that you bring merely as a back-up. Backpackers now go about at night looking like spelunkelers.


A fire ring awaited us, and the previous campers had graciously left behind a stow of firewood. We gathered more and had a great night sitting by the campfire, eating MREs and just relaxing in the isolation with the roar of the river in our ears.

Did I mention this was our first backpacking excursion? Backpacking is something we’ve talked about doing for years, but in our Southern California location, any such trip would have required days. Days traveling to a wilderness location, days hiking, days driving back home. You get the picture. And so, it would have been a venture seldom undertaken, not worth making the financial investment. Where we live now, we can drive to the end of our street and backpack to the woods if we want to. Or, like on this adventure, drive twenty minutes to the trailhead, hike five miles and camp out, then come home the next day. No hullabalu, no huge time sacrifice. Easy enough to do often enough to stay in shape for more of it.

The gear now-a-days is ultra light and transportable.

Here’s a picture of Ron stuffing his sleeping bag.

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Here’s a picture of how big the bag is, in its sack. My foot’s included for scale Those Girl Scout days of rolling and strapping sleping bags are gone forever!!!

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And they weigh only a couple of pounds, are toasty warm and quite comfortable. The bedrolls are these compressed foam things that self-inflate, roll up skinny and are really cushy. The tent goes up in minutes and comes down as quickly. We discovered lots of things we still need to figure out, like finding a way to stay organized so things – like toilet paper and band-aids – can be easily located. But we did know enough to hang our food and trash on a tree branch a long way from our campsite. This may have saved our stash; it was thankfully intact the next morning, whether sniffed out by a bear frustrated at its inaccessibility I don’t know, and maybe don’t want to know!

Though the morning looked as if rain was sure to interrupt our return, an unusually strong wind blew through the area, presenting us with an insistent headwind for our hike-out. We could hear trees breaking as we walked the trail - something that Ron admitted scared him more than bears.

Here’s a tree that blew over that morning, barricading the trail that had been clear for our hike-in the previous day.

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We saw several newly downed trees on our way back, and were grateful not to have been in the line of fall when they crashed.

On our second crossing of the “creek,” we overlapped with a horse train, which crossed on hoof near the bottom, where the water was still running too swiftly for us to have considered wading barefoot. However, we figure that with proper river shoes, we could walk across that thing without risking a tree traverse. River shoes are now on our list of items still to procure.

What fun we had! We’d planned a second trip on a different trail for this week, but a rainstorm passing through has forced us to postpone our hike. Next week, just in time for our 30th wedding anniversary, we’ll make a journey of twenty miles round trip along a different river to a lake called Emerald.

According to the map, there are no creek crossings on this trail But you can bet we’ll take river shoes, just in case!

 

Mornings have never been my best time. I love the morning hours, but I simply have a hard time waking up and getting going. Since we’ve moved here, our get out of bed time has gotten later than “usual.” The fact that Ron doesn’t have to run off to work has given him the freedom to lounge in bed and the altitude change played a role in our general fatigue factor, making early mornings especially difficult.

Now that a couple of months have passed, we are fairly well acclimated to the altitude, and we’re waking up earlier in the mornings. For me though, waking up and getting up are not necessarily proximal events. Oh, how I love to lounge and get fully roused before climbing from beneath the covers!

I’ve been working on closing the gap between awaking and arising since I realized that morning is the best time for a walk around the lake. In the morning, the surface is usually glassy and the wildlife beneath and above the water is busy and more easily observable.

Here’s our lake Simpatico in the morning:

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It was during Ron’s most recent trip to California for business that I embarked on my plan to set my alarm and get by patutie out of bed for a morning lake walk. The rewards were so great that this has become a daily ritual - one that Ron has begun to share with me. Some days nothing more remarkable than fresh air and sunshine, peace and quiet reflection mark my walk. But most mornings there’s something interesting to see.

The little birds, I discovered, will swoop low over the water when it’s so still. They fly so near the surface that it seems as if they will surely land on the water. But they are, after all, land birds and don’t set down until they’re within the reeds at the shore, where they disappear. Every morning, at one point or another, I am surprised by the eruption of a bird from within the brush or grass, flushed from its invisible lair by my passage.

Most of the ducks have traveled to other places for the raising of their families, but on this first morning there was one pair on the water. They paddled back and forth, the female chasing her partner with girlish squawking. Her continuous banter pierced the morning quiet but she was clearly unconcerned about disturbing the neighbors. Her partner kept a deliberate distance so she had to chase and quack after him like a nagging wife. We saw them again today, but they simply floated side-by-side in silence. Whoever had emerged the victor of the previous day’s bickering, they seem to have made their peace, content today to swim together among the ripples stirred by a morning breeze.

Ducks of course, can be seen on the lake even after the morning has warmed and the air currents lift ripples on the surface of the water. The fish however, can only be watched with clarity when the lake is glass. And they only seem to feed at that time when they can see the bugs above the surface of the water, which happens quiet well in the morning.

One of the best treats of a morning walk around the lake is the sight of the fish leaping from the water to nab a tasty morsel on the fly. Even above the duck racket on that first day, I could hear the fish splash. It was tricky actually to see them though, because I had to be looking at the exact spot where the fish hurled itself out of the water, or I’d miss them.

I’ve seen flying fish before – while on our boat in the ocean. They’re easier to spot because they glide for a long while before disappearing in the water. These lake fish are in and out so fast your peripheral vision barely has time to register the motion. By the time you zero in on the spot, all you see are the concentric rings spreading toward shore. But if you’re looking at the right place at the right time, what a surprise! A white flash as long as your arm erupts from the water and before you can draw a breath, it splashes back down with a lack of grace that would merit a ONE on the Olympic scale.

From our shaded side of this mirror it’s barely possible to delineate the opposite shore. Green runs seamlessly from mid-lake to the jagged horizon of the hill against the sky. It takes deliberate effort and patient scrutiny to see the line where water ends and meadow begins.

I have to drag myself back up the path and home, where life and duty await me. But these morning walks are quite a nice way to get set for the day.



 

On Sunday, my younger daughter told me about the day she’d spent with her sister. They’d gone to the Strawberry Festival, a yearly celebration of the strawberry harvest, which is a big thing in that coastal plain. I’ve never gone to the Festival, though one year when I was out of town Ron went, resulting in lingering memories of the strawberry shortcake he got there, to which he still makes fond references.

Here’s Rebecca’s account of their day:

After waiting an hour to get into a parking lot, for which they were required to pay five dollars, they forked over twelve dollars just to walk through the barricade into the Festival.

Half an hour in line to buy two hot dogs and a drink, for which they had to pay eighteen dollars.

Twenty minutes in line for condiments.

There were so many people they had to eat their hot dogs standing against a wall, at the back of a throng. “It was like Disneyland on a summer day,” Rebecca told me. “It wasn’t really worth going.”


Then I told her about my day.

I’d gone to the Taste of Durango fair.

Once a year, the city of Durango provides an opportunity for its restaurants to strut their stuff and give a taste of their creations to the community. Let me just say here, that our new city has a well-earned reputation for having one of the best collections of superb restaurants.

I went to the fair alone, Ron having left that morning for Los Angeles. I turned into a parking lot one block off Main, where the festivities were taking place, and pulled right away into an empty space. OK, I’ll admit to a bit of luck on that one.

Since I didn’t want to taste anything, but was there just for the fun of it and to experience the atmosphere, I didn’t have to pay a cent to get through the barricade and wander among the vendors.

There were lots and lots of people, but not a crushing crowd – just enough to create an energy and excitement on the street.

That energy was not merely felt, but seen in the dancing of the party-goers as they enjoyed the rocking great music. These musicians jammed on their instruments with fantastic skill and the music streamed up and down the street, evoking little dancing movements in my own feet before I ever came within sight of the band. It wasn’t until the musicians sang into their mics that I realized they were fourteen-year-old boys!

On the sidewalks and under the canopies, folk stood with plates of food, boogying to the music and drinking beer from local breweries. They were under canopies because, sigh, it was raining. It wasn’t a downpour, merely a chilly nuisance, and the accompanying lightening and thunder provided a fun backdrop.

Some of the more extravagant food offerings, as reported by the local paper were:

Grilled fennel and salami with organic greens, manchego cheese and tarragon-lime dressing

Chicken skewers with walnut pesto

Wild boar sausage and diver sea scallop skewer with calypso bar-b-que sauce and Duck Confit Beignets with Sweet Chili Red Curry Remoulade and Tropical Coleslaw.

a Chocolate Pyramid Cake with Hazelnut Mousse and Raspberry Sauce was a rich bite of striped cake, balanced visually with a bright green mint leaf and a contrast-colored red sauce. The chef deserves kudos for the effort to make "street food" look so pretty. A second dessert offering was a Tropical Fruit Napoleon with Pineapple-Passion Fruit Mousse, Orange Jelly and Coconut Ice Cream. Pineapple formed a crispy/ chewy tart shell for the delicious, airy mousse.

a visually extravagant Pupu Platter. It featured a lemongrass chicken satay skewer, a Philadelphia roll and a nest-like tangle of vegetables cut into thin strings. The roll was a technical marvel of a morsel, with inverted rice fried crispy on the outside and filled with cream cheese, salmon and vegetables.

On the other side of the culinary spectrum were the restaurants with their grills fired up and wafting forth the ever-delicious aroma of bar-b-que ribs and corn on the cob. And with the rain going on, that smoky, summer fragrance hung low and slinked down the street, just at nostril level.

Even though I didn’t eat anything, I savored the aromas. Do you ever find food that’s cooking smells better than it tastes? That happens to me all the time, so just smelling all the outdoors cooking probably satisfied me more than eating all the different foods would have.

I wandered the street, sniffing, dancing, and watching - a great time for free. And on the way back to the parking lot, I enjoyed a conversation with a woman hurrying back to her own car. Once again I was struck by the openness and willingness of these folk just to talk to strangers. From her I learned:


This year, the rain has come early. She’s an elementary school teacher and at the end of the school year they always go on field trips for which they never even have to bring jackets, but this year they’ve been caught in the rain more than once. And it’s usually “baking hot” for the Taste of Durango. (Whatever “baking hot” is out here!)

And unlike the Strawberry Festival, where a fiver handed over for a hot dog pads the profit margin of the vendor (whose per item cost including overhead is probably a buck and a half), at the Taste of Durango, the proceeds are donated to a local food kitchen. I was stunned to realize this. So much work setting up outdoor kitchens, cooking gourmet food, serving it piping hot and perfectly prepared, only to break even. It’s truly a volunteer effort and I hope those restaurants get lots of new customers. I picked up a couple of menus and plan on visiting a couple of places we haven’t yet visited.


And lookie here: I’ve copied the two recipes a couple great restaurants gave the paper to publish.


Cafe Grilled Fennel & Salami with Organic Greens, Manchego Cheese & Tarragon-Lime Dressing

• Dressing
½ cup olive oil
½ cup apple cider vinegar
1/8 cup sugar
Juice and zest of 5 limes
1/8 cup fresh tarragon, chopped
Salt and pepper to taste
1 teaspoon fresh garlic, chopped

Salad
12 slices Salumaria Hard Salami, all natural
1 bulb grilled fennel, sliced
Salt, pepper, olive oil, to taste

1 teaspoon fresh garlic, chopped
Salad
12 slices Salumaria Hard Salami, all natural
1 bulb grilled fennel, sliced
Salt, pepper, olive oil, to taste
Organic greens
12 slices manchego cheese
Kalamata olives
Grilled baguette
Slice the salami and cheese. Dress organic greens.

Assemble greens, alternate salami, cheese and fennel. Top with olives and grilled baguette. Enjoy.
Recipe courtesy Cyprus Café



Mutu’s Chicken Skewers with Walnut Pesto


Pesto

1 cup walnuts
2 teaspoons garlic
1.5 ounces fresh basil
2 ounces parmesan cheese, grated
2 ounces extra-virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon fresh oregano
Salt & pepper to taste
To make a base for the sauce: Put all ingredients except olive oil in a food processor. Pulse until coarsely ground, then add oil and pulse until incorporated.

Sauté chopped garlic in a pan over medium heat. Add three tablespoons of the prepared walnut pesto and cook for about 1 minute. Deglaze with a splash of white wine. Add in heavy cream and let reduce to desired consistency. Check for seasoning: Add salt or pepper if needed. Serve sauce warm.
Chicken skewers
1 ounce chicken cubes - 3 per skewer
Artichoke hearts, cut into quarters
Fresh tomatoes, cut into 1-inch cubes
Salt & pepper to taste

Season the chicken with salt and pepper. Pan-sear the seasoned meat in a small amount of oil. The chicken should cooked on the outside but still raw on the inside. Skewer up your ingredients, alternating the items along the skewer. At this point you can either finish them in your oven at 350 degrees for about 9 to 12 minutes, or on your BBQ grill with the lid closed for about the same amount of time.
Recipe courtesy of Mutu’s Italian Kitchen


Bon Apitite!

 

I got interrupted and forgot to include these photos of my blob issue

Here's what the blue blob looked like:

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And here's the solution. In this picture, the project isn't finished yet - a fridge is now in the under counter hole and now there's a microwave and coffee maker on the counter - but you get the idea. It essentially forced us into a good use of this bedroom-sized niche in the downstaris where the guest rooms are.

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Those of you who have read my blog for any length of time know that I love to be outdoors and active. My health issues sometimes get in the way of the active part of the equation, but there’s never any reason for me not to just sit outside – unless I simply don’t feel drawn to do so.

When we lived in California, I rarely lounged outside, or did computer work on the patio. Once in a while I’d take my oatmeal out back to enjoy the sun while I breakfasted, but I never made a habit of eating outside or simply basking in the outdoors. Maybe being surrounded by a swimming pool and block wall made the prospect less than appealing.

Here in Colorado, it’s different. My desk is basically unused. If I’m checking emails or talking on the phone or eating, I’m out on the balcony or the newly built lower deck. But even doing emails or writing seems an intrusion in the more important task of simply sitting and soaking up the sun or inhaling the breeze, or watching the wildlife on the lake and listening to the insects, frogs and birds. I feel as if I’m pulled outside, as if my life depends on the hours outdoors, even if in those hours I accomplish nothing of note.

Once in a while, I feel the unproductiveness of the time I spend sunning my eyes or scanning the scenery or laying in the sun, relishing its warmth. But on the other hand, I wonder if this irresistible pull might be a siren call of my body, beckoning me to take the time to indulge in the very thing that will eventually heal me. I feel closer to healing when I’m relaxing in the outdoors and fresh air. And time relaxing is earned, after hard work on various projects, hiking or biking.

And it’s not just a physical thing, either. There’s a mental relaxation that overcomes me as well. While I’m sitting on the balcony watching the hummingbirds feed not four feet from me, I think, “I’ll do blogging and writing tonight, when it’s dark.” But by the time we finish our invariably late dinner and the mess is cleaned up, Ron’s ready to do his relaxing with 24 or The Office, or some ancient monster movie, and I find myself laying on the sofa with him, completely unmindful of my earlier promise.

Ah well. If I can look back and realize that this time has indeed sped my healing, I’ll not regret one seemingly unfruitful moment. I have a sneaking feeling that time relaxing in this fresh, unpolluted outdoors year round may prove to be a permanent essential ingredient to the banishment of my Epstein Barr. Perhaps when it’s not so new and completely absorbing I’ll be better able to get computer tasks accomplished while I sit out here.


Now that the opening segue is wrapped up, here’s an account of our encounter with the third stooge:



How to have water purification systems installed.

1. Open door for Curly, who will saunter in with his pants half falling off.

2. Show Curly where the kitchen sink is (for the Reverse Osmosis filter) and where to find the water line access for the house (for the whole house filter). In my house, this is downstairs in the room-sized niche at the foot of the stairs.

3. Do not imagine the Big Blue whole house filtration canister will be installed inside the wall, out of sight.

4. Leave to do shopping while Curly takes three hours to do sixty minutes of work.

5. Refrain from throwing up when you see the Big Blue filter hanging outside the wall like a petrified alien invader.

6. Make a flash decision – ugly filter, or chlorine-laden showers?

7. Think of a creative solution for hiding the filter, and pay Curly.

8. One hour after Curly leaves, call his boss to complain that the RO unit is leaking.

9. Leave door key in planter so Curly can return next day to fix the unit while you are in the midst of driving 600 miles home.

10. Two weeks later, answer your phone.

11. Refrain from throwing up when your flooring contractor tells you the Big Blue Blob has been dripping on your new hardwood floor, leaving a stain and buckling.

12. The next day, listen to Curly complain that in twenty minutes of quiet observation, he hasn’t been able to see where the thing is leaking, despite the fact that he can clearly tell that the floor has been leaked upon.

13. Listen to Curly’s boss insist that they install forty of these units per week, and none have ever leaked, and that the only possible cause can be a faulty O ring (which, coincidentally, was the problem with the RO unit) that costs ninety-five cents.

14. Tell Curly’s boss that when you spoke to Curly earlier in the day, he sounded half asleep.

15. Listen to Curly’s boss say that this is just Curly’s way, and he’s the best technician they have.

16. Refrain from throwing up.

17. Wait two days for Curly to get back to the house and replace the O ring he should have thought to replace when he’d been there the first time, making twenty minutes of thoughtful observation.

18. Move in, and say a prayer of thanks that the Big Blue Blob is no longer leaking.

19. One week later, call Curly’s boss to complain that the RO unit under the sink is once again leaking.

20. Wait around the house for Curly to arrive and fix the nicked tube in the unit.

21. Say a prayer of thanks that the unit no longer leaks.

22. Do Not hold your breath.


I’ve been making fun of these service folks, and I’m not done yet. But I do have to say that despite a certain degree of casualness in their approach to life and getting their jobs done, all the folks we’ve encountered here are extraordinarily friendly. One conversation with anyone and he’s your next best friend. The standoff-ishness we’re accustomed to simply is nowhere to be seen – if we run into someone who’s not interested in taking the time to shoot the breeze, it’s a person who’s a transplant and hasn’t gotten it yet. We’ve made more friends here in two months – service folk included – than we did in our first year in Simi Valley. So, as I poke fun and enjoy the humor of these situations, it’s with a large degree of admiration for people who have discovered how to get through life minus the stresses that drove us to move here.





 

Before I post the next installment of the Three Stooges encounters, I thought I’d share a couple of photos from last week in our new home.

Here’s what it looked like on Cinco de Mayo:

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We woke to snowfall and decided to go for a walk. It snowed for the entire three mile jaunt and beyond, into the next day. It was wonderful to have an excuse just to sit with the fireplace going and watch some fun monster movies, and to take the time to get pictures and artwork hung around the house.

Here’s Ron in his red coat standing on the dam of the lake:

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And here’s five days later:

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This trail begins about half a mile from out house, at the end of our street. It enters National Forest and goes for another eleven miles before intersecting with a highway. Or, if you turn left at the fork, you can continue up the mountain and emerge at the crest. We haven’t completed either journey yet, but certainly plan to!

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This is the kind of green we so rarely saw in California! As the weather warms I get less and less done. All I want to do is be outside in the sun or on the balcony enjoying the breeze and fresh, fragrant air. I almost look forward to the hours of clouds and thunder so I can get myself back in the house and do what needs to be done in there!

I’ve got a photo album set up to store pics of the places around here. If you’re interested, you can take a look-see at the place where we live.

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A month before we made our move to this Colorado mountain home, Ron and I came here for a week to do some chores. The main thing that needed doing was the clearing of snow and ice off the bottom of the driveway, so seven tons of hardwood could be delivered. There’s a patch of driveway on the north side of the house that remains in shadow during the winter, so the snow doesn’t melt away – instead it transforms into ice if not cleared away. We’d been informed that our tenant had not performed the feat of maintenance, despite the presence of a snowblower in the garage. The result was a thick patch of ice that truly needed removing before the truck could come down there with the flooring.

All the way from California, I located a guy who removes snow and ice, and twice I paid him to solve our little problem. Twice he failed to finish the job. Enter the Martins. It took four hours of work to get the job done, and believe me, there will never be an ice rink in our drive again.

Since we were here doing work anyway, we decided to maximize or time by having the washer and dryer delivered and the water filter system installed. Smart moves, we thought. Two fewer things requiring attention amid the chaos of the move-in.

It would be convenient to blame the near-disaster on a snowy driveway, but thanks to our elbow and back grease, the mushy, slippery stuff was totally, completely, entirely gone and the driveway had dried in the sun.

Here’s what the drive looks like:

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The unmarked delivery van parked up at the top of the driveway on that sunny morning. The passenger got out and had a nice conversation with Ron, as if he were a neighbor shooting the breeze, instead of a Sears delivery man who had numerous stops to make that day. As I watched from the front door, I wondered at this fellow with a few missing teeth who’d gotten out of his van for a chat, but a friendly neighbor is exactly what I took him for until Ron came into the house and said, “I don’t know where Curly is, but Larry and Moe are here.”

Here’s the story I got from Ron:

The dude at the top of the drive stood watching while his driver proceeded to back the van straight down a curved driveway, never giving any signal or warning that his partner was headed for trouble.

“I kept wondering when this guy was going to holler or do something to signal the driver to turn the steering wheel, but he just kept standing there with his hands in his pockets, like he was watching a movie, waiting to see what would happen next,” Ron told me.

The fellow watched as the back of the van approached the edge of the driveway and the tree that would eventually stop its progress, commenting stoically, “Well, looks like we’re in trouble.”

I stepped outside and saw the back of the van kissing that tree you can see on the left of the driveway, looking up. The tires were sunk in mud, and I just knew we’d have to call a tow truck. And oh, my gosh, I thought. Where are we going to find a tow company? Back in California, tow trucks could be found every few miles, and still it could take an hour to get one when you needed it. Here, we’d have to call down to Durango, thirty miles away. I figured these bozos would be visiting with us for hours. Not what we’d had planned for our day, by a long shot.

Heroics saved the day, however. It took a bit of time, but Ron dug them out under the careful eye of the semi-toothless fellow, who supervised from a near distance. With the additional aid of a few spare boards in the garage, the driver freed the van from the mire, and miraculously backed it unerringly down the driveway, with some guidance from Ron.

In a fit of ostrich-like behavior, I lost myself in the task of painting baseboards while the installation of the washer and dryer took place, which much to my surprise, went uneventfully. The fellow who was short on teeth even knew how to operate the machines and explained it all to me with the utmost thoroughness.

And only the merest lisp escaped around the empty spaces in his mouth

 

Well, I thought I’d have some time to write today, but Ron and I started out on a hike that ended up lasting two and a half hours. Now, I’m tired and may write a blog entry or two this evening.

In the meantime, I thought I’d share this link with you all. One of the wonderful things about Srping in the mountains is the fascinating cloud formations that wander past. The mornings open with full sun, and as the day progresses the clouds begin showing up, little fluff by little fluff by bigger fluff by big fluff. By late afternoon the thunder and lightening rock our house, often without rain. Then, the clouds blow away and sun shines for the end of the day and we get to enjoy the full moon in a clear sky.

This link has photos of some incredible cloud formations.

http://leenks.com/link70511.htm

Enjoy!!

 

I’ve never lived in a place where the word, Spring, had any particular meaning. In the coastal desert of Southern California, the changing of the seasons was indistinct and difficult to distinguish. The only clue that Spring had arrived was the budding of the trees, though in warm years they could be tricked into squeezing out their blossoms part way through winter, so even that signal was unreliable.

This morning I really appreciated for the first time, what Spring means.

We arrived here on the third day of April and have been enjoying the experience of Spring’s changing mood in the mountains over these last three weeks. Bright, sunny days; passing clouds; thunderstorms; snow showers and one snowstorms; more sun. We might wake up to sun flooding the front rooms, then have a partly cloudy afternoon, topped off by a snow shower, only to see the clouds part and the sunset color the lake behind the house before seeing the moon take over its shift. Such a variety in weather is a wholly new experience for us.

There are other new and different Spring features. Upon arrival, the nights were quiet – so quiet, except for the occasional sound of geese or ducks preening. The woods were still and during the day the only sound to be noticed was the sighing of the breeze in the trees and the occasional woodpecker working its way after a juicy morsel. From the balcony, the surroundings were still as a photograph, unless a neighbor was walking on the path or the ducks were paddling in the lake.

Today it’s a different picture all together. Now, there are a gazillion birds all fluttering to and fro, gathering nesting materials and singing their songs from the treetops. The ducks are still down there on the water, now calling to each other; wide, white foaming wakes vee behind them as they make their way across the lake. At around ten-thirty in the morning, the frogs begin croaking, adding back-up bass rhythm to the birds’ soprano melodies. Squirrels run across the yard, up and down the trees, and the sound of their nibbling can be heard all the way up here on the balcony. This is a sound I’ve heard only once before, while on a vacation in a mountain cabin. It’s still hard to believe this isn’t just a vacation.

Up here, the trees and shrubs leaf out later than the ones a thousand feet lower in town, so we are just now seeing the yellow-green haze begin to envelope all those bare branches. Not a sight ever seen mid-winter in this neck of the woods, I’m sure!

Out on the balcony in the morning, the temperature now generally reads 46 degrees, up ten degrees or so from the morning temps over the last weeks. In California, I’d stay indoors and turn up the heater if the thermometer’s red stripe didn’t reach the 60-degree mark, but here 46 degrees feels truly good, and we open the windows to let this fresh air indoors.

The silent nights have changed, too. Insects chirp, and the frogs ribbit from the water’s edge. These are entirely new sounds for us and we stand on the balcony watching the shadows move under the moon and listen, enthralled.

There’s one familiar sound – one that I didn’t expect to hear, and haven’t until this morning. It’s the rumble of a small plane motor. It doesn’t fit into the atmosphere very well, as you can imagine, and I hope this doesn’t become a regular contribution to the season’s chorale.

There’s a sound we are accustomed to that we haven’t heard here, yet. It’s a sound we used to hear from March all the way through fall. The chirp of crickets. I don’t know if crickets don’t thrive at this altitude, or if they make their appearance later in the season – I guess we’ll see.

And speaking of cricket racket, I’m reminded of the summer Ron and I were at Gettysburg during an outbreak of cicadas. I’d heard of their reputation for making noise, but had never heard it in person until then. I guess there’s supposed to be a record hatching this Spring in the mid-west. Many of you will no doubt get to live through that, and perhaps have experienced other cicada invasions.

Here’s a link to a video about the life cycle of these little buggers. It’s so interesting and raises questions about the purpose for their creation. It’s one of those subjects that can keep the mind occupied for some time.

http://blog.sixwise.com/blogs/vaszily-brian/archive/2007/03/11/the-sound-of-a-bi...

We’ll just sit here listening to our frogs and wait to hear how those in the cicada battle zone survived.



 

Wasn’t it Dorothy who said, “We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto?”

I’m not Dorothy, and this sure isn’t Kansas. It isn’t California, either.

We knew when we moved here that most aspects of life would be different - from the beautiful surroundings to the fresh air to the absence of freeways to the relaxed lifestyle. We knew also there would be issues with things like getting contractors to show up and do work on time, and getting delivery on some things here in the forest.

So far, things have worked out pretty well. We lucked out with our floor guy who, hailing from Southern California himself, has a good sense of customer service, and though it’s been a tad bit diluted with the Southwest Colorado laid-backedness, still it steered our installation to completion on time.

Our luck just ran out, though.

On Sunday, my three week old washing machine broke. After dumping the liquid detergent all over my bed sheets, it refused to fill with water. I was fit to be tied, having four loads of laundry to do, and totally pissed off that a brand new machine broke.

Well, it’s a Kenmore, what else can I say?

I don’t know if it’s me or what, but I’ve never had a Kenmore appliance that didn’t break down or that worked as it should. I’d vowed never to buy that brand again, so in a way I guess I have only myself to blame. But in my defense, let me tell you that I talked to lots of folks in this area and learned that it’s next to impossible to get service on the machine brands sold in the Home Depot and the appliance store. I figured if I bought from the local Sears my chances of getting service would be better.

If what I’m getting is better service, God help all those neighboring owners of LG and Whirlpool appliances.

I’ve been talking to the Sears people since Sunday; today alone I made four phone calls before finally getting a callback and – Glory Be! – a date for service.

On Thursday.

And let me tell you, if I hadn’t been on their back, this would have gone on for another week or two since the person in charge of routing the service dudes is out of the country and no body’s picking up the slack.

I give credit to the lovely woman at Sears who intervened for me and made phone calls, discovering what the delay has been and getting my service date set. She has the heart for customer service, just not the resources.

So, the laundry will have to wait two or three more days – not the end of the world. But ask me if I’m holding my breath for the call that’s supposed to come on Wednesday, confirming a time for the guy to show up. I’m not counting any chickens just yet, my friends.

On Sunday, my blessed husband came to the rescue, shining a little light on my black, stewing mood.

“There’s no reason a three-week-old machine should break! And our bed sheets are covered in detergent!” I stormed.

“Don’t we have another set?” he quietly inquired.

“Yes. But I don’t like them!” This was uttered in a tone somewhere between a rant and a pout.

He removed the sheets from the bone-dry washer and hand washed them in the laundry room sink, then put them in the dryer. Which is still working.

No, we’re not in California anymore. But we have clean sheets to sleep in.

Remind me to tell you about the water filter fiasco. Oh, and the delivery of the washer and dryer




 

I’m at my daughter’s and just checking up on stuff. I ran across this link and enjoyed it, so thought I’d share it with you-all.

It’s only a few minutes long, so take a break and have a treat.


http://www.moillusions.com/2007/04/journey-to-world-of-illusion-video-clip.html
 

Three days of blogging in a row! Wow, I feel quite prolific after a long absence. This evening I fly back to Los Angeles to spend Friday with our girls and grandbaby, and to attend one daughter’s dance performance. Saturday, Ron and I will drive the car we left behind back here, to Colorado.

One final long ride to what is now home, and we’ll be left to settle into some sort of daily life. I’m looking forward to seeing the girls, but don’t want to leave here. I sat on a boulder in the sun among the pines in our yard this morning, eating my oatmeal and enjoying the lake and the birds and the breeze in the treetops.

Nope. Don’t want to leave this, even for a weekend



Now, the Blog:


This new home is reeking with domesticity.

In a recent blog entry, vivacious touched on the subject of the cycles and phases of life. My whole life has been an example of living through one cycle after another.

School years. Early marriage. Bank teller. At-home mom and teacher. Horse rider and trainer and runner of the riding school. Sailor. Artist. Massage therapist. Writer. Now, I’ve come full circle, back to the days of taking care of my husband and living with him more than a few hours each week.

For so many years, I’ve been largely independent of Ron, except on weekends. I’ve had my own exercise, work and eating schedule, and it’s suited me fine. Keeping the house clean was the extent of my domestic duties. I did laundry, but his work shirts and anything else that needed ironing went to the cleaners. I didn’t cook because Ron often had big client lunches or didn’t feel like eating much when he got home or he wanted to go out. When we did have dinner at home it was something super simple, eaten late and in front of the television.

In those years, looking after my husband wasn’t my primary job. He pretty much took care of himself, and I was for the most part simply a companion. I did have the obvious job of raising and teaching our girls, and it was when they grew and my job of looking after them was finished that I cycled through the creative “jobs,” one following another, none ever held simultaneously. I always had to choose. I didn’t have enough energy or focus to draw and write, or do massage and paint. It always had to be one thing at a time.

Now my job has changed again. I am a genuine homemaker. Three meals a day, eating with my husband at the kitchen table. Working together, shopping together, recreating together. Ironing. We have our alone times – me in the workout room, him in his office. Me piddling around the house, him futzing in the garage. But I haven’t yet found the space to write or read uninterrupted, except for these few day when Ron’s away on a business trip.

This cycle of non-writing has been spinning for a while, as my world has been invaded by illness and moving. Now that we’re in the mountains I’m feeling better, and the moving is close to accomplished – though several large projects are slated for these spring and summer months – and I wonder. Will the writing return? Will I cycle back, or cycle away to something other?

I’m enjoying very much my new job as caretaker for my husband and home. It’s a good fit, and I’m glad to offer him a refuge and three meals a day in return for the thirty years he’s spent working too many hours each week so he could support our family. If I can reach a point of wellness that will allow for the activity, the homemaking and writing too, I’ll be utterly content.

But it’s all an unknown right now. The cycles always are. You enter them with awareness that things are changing, but not knowing what the outcome will be, or how long you’ll spin within them.

The wind sighing in the pines, the fragrance of the forest out my back door, the glint of the setting sun on the ripples in the lake, the chattering of the geese and ducks – all these draw me into this new cycle, this new life. I don’t spend too much time wondering, but I spend a lot of time giving thanks to the God who brought us here and gave us this gift. Whatever my life ends up looking like will be of His making, and all I want to do is follow the path.

It will be a good one.


 

“Don’t you think a boot might have helped?” my sister asked. “I mean, after all, that’s the only foot you get. Taking care of it may be important. You don’t get to trade it in on a newer model!”

This string of comments were made after my declaration that I had not gone to the doctor after breaking my foot, since I could see no value in spending hours in the emergency room and getting a bill for a couple thousand dollars in exchange for a boot and a bottle of anti-inflammatories.

I’m still trying to figure out what is to blame for this extraordinary inconvenience and obstacle in my new life. I think it boils down to two parts hardwood stairway, three parts lack of concentration, and one part incompetence, with a dash of overconfidence thrown in for good measure.

The day before this dangerous brew simmered to perfection, Ron and I had walked to the top of our street – a good twenty-minute walk up the mountain – where a trail lures hikers into the wilderness of forest belonging to the Bureau of Land Management. It was one of those exploratory hikes that easily consumes hours, as every turning tempts us to see just what’s ahead. We were disciplined though, and cut ourselves short with the promise of returning in a few days to experience more. It was awfully hard to do though, especially after coming upon the largest heard of deer we’d ever seen. The dozen animals leaped away immediately they noticed us, but one buck lingered to have a better look before following in the wake of the others. You see a sight like that and all you want to do is stay around. But, there was so much to be done at home, our furnishing and all those boxes having only arrived the previous day. Little did I know a return visit wasn’t in the cards for the very near future.

Perhaps I was feeling a mite too Tigger-ish, bouncing down the stairs with an armload of stuff, not counting the steps. There are thirteen steps to the landing, then a left turn and three steps to the floor. I have known this from the first night we arrived when, in a fit of insomnia, I wandered the house in my stocking feet. Though the moon was full (one of the reasons I couldn’t sleep), the stairway was dark as pitch, the hardwood floors newly finished, and I didn’t want to fall down the stairs my first night here. What an idiot thing would that have been? To say nothing of my desire not to awaken Ron with such a mysterious sound as a body tumbling down a hardwood staircase in a house that was strange to him. Too, there was the fact that I’d never before lived in a multi-story house, and maneuvering stairs isn’t something habitual to me. The occasional trip up the stairs to the dentist’s office or theater doesn’t qualify as adequate training, I don’t think.

So, on that night, I trod carefully and counted the steps. I’d been counting steps since then, except on the fateful morning of which I’m writing.

On this morning – did I mention it was Easter Sunday? – in enthusiasm and overconfidence born of numerous uneventful trips up and down the staircase, I took a misstep.

It was only a small one; I didn’t see, over the bundle I carried, that there was one more step before me to the landing. I caught myself before falling on my face and quietly congratulated myself on not turning my ankle. What a relief that was! It only took about fifteen minutes before I realized I had something on my plate a lot bigger than a sprained ankle, that the pain I had felt in my foot wasn’t just a bit of offended tissue. The balloon foot and bruise spanning from my heel to the tips of my toes were one tip-off. The pain was another.

Doggone it! There were boxes to lug downstairs! And cleaning to be done! And that counter behind the sink to be sanded and urathaned! And windows to be washed! And belongings to unpack and put away! And a garage to get sorted through! All this was essential, necessary for my peace of mind and settling into this house before Ron had to leave in a week on a business trip.

And dang it! There was a hike to go on! Bike rides to take!

I was pissed off.

And no way was I going to go to the hospital, or wear a boot that would surely see me tumbling head first down the stairs before long. So I got out my essential oils and my ice pack and oiled and iced my foot whenever I could sit still. In the meantime, I worked and got my house in order, and spent hours every day shopping with Ron at Home Depot and Office Depot and Sam’s Club and Best Buy and Citi Market. I hobbled along, for once treading more slowly than my husband.

My foot is getting better; in a week’s time I could comfortably wear shoes again and was able to walk these mountain roads. As long as I do it right, exercise actually helps my foot feel less painful. Doing it right is the challenge, and it seems almost every day I let my enthusiasm get away with me and I overdo things. Then the next day I’m hobbling again until about lunch time.

OK, so that’s the story, and I’m embarrassed to admit I broke my foot falling on the stairs. But there you have it, the whole painful truth.

 

It started out as a low hum, easily ignored in the hubbub of activity. Over the last two weeks however, the screaming has become more audible. Nothing drowns it out - not the television, not the comforting blow of the heater, not the rumble of the washer and dryer. The only way to escape it is to climb into the truck and leave the house.

And we’ve done plenty of that.

But that’s only a temporary fix, since we must always return home. The howls make this house tremble, especially at night when the walls and floors groan under the vibration of those terrible cries. From below, in the deepest, darkest room of our house, emanate calls that have become siren.

Books, art supplies, tablecloths, stationery, computer cables, paintings and drawings and photographs, purses and bags – all things deemed non essential for day to day life clamor from their cardboard tombs. They cry out for release, for verification of their significance and importance through placement on shelves within closets where they are at hand, ready to be called upon when desired. Their frustrated, nervous energy has grown to a crescendo impossible to ignore any longer.

And so today, I took myself down to the Activity Room, currently serving as the repository for all those as yet unopened boxes, and set about freeing the rest of my belongings. Note I said mine – as opposed to Ron’s.

I think there were eight boxes in all, perhaps as many as ten, and you’d think those not-so-long hidden, screaming items of mine would have shown some gratitude that I had come to release them. But it seems their pent up anger had soured them to the point of perpetual peevishness.

Don’t try and convince me they were unaware of my broken foot. Every item within those boxes on the floor, and even the ones stacked, could feel the gimp in my stride as I entered the room, I’m sure. But still, they filled their collective lungs with what air they could draw from the untaped edges of their enclosures and weighted themselves hard, caring little that the outcome would be small agonies for my back and foot. Perhaps they even collaborated in the plan to exact their revenge for my uncaring delay in bringing them out to take their rightful place in this new household.

I would have been within my rights in throwing all those belongings back into the boxes and sealing them tight, then taking them outside where their screams could compete with the neighbor’s dogs. And yet, I continued to do the work and empty the boxes, store the precious items, then flatten the cardboard cubes – finally silencing their cries. Though I sit with an ice pack and heating pad alternating between my back and my foot, I am relieved and feel satisfied.

But tonight, I’m sleeping with earplugs in my ears. Ron’s boxes are still down there, unhappy to have been left unopened, and I’m in no mood to listen to them complain all night long.

 

Where does one life end and a new one begin? When?

I look at my calendar and it tells me there are fewer than three weeks left before I take my final steps away from the life I’ve known for twenty-eight years. Rooms and closets are empty, their contents either huddling in the darkness of boxes taped shut, or tossed in a pile in the garage, awaiting the Yard Sale.

Rugs are rolled up, wrapped in packing cellophane and standing in a corner. Decorations are off the walls and shelves; nails expose their naked heads, awaiting removal so their holes can be patched and painted over. Bookshelves are empty and the file cabinet has had its burden lightened by about a hundred pounds.

Treasures have been found – journals and notebooks of poetry and other writings. Experiences of joy and loss and anger and sadness and triumph, of more than half my life lived in this place, and of years before marriage – all recorded in my hand, etched in the permanence of time. Will the transfer of my life be as simple as moving these journals from the office in this home to the office in a home six hundred miles away?

Today, I am living between worlds. I’m surrounded by boxes containing those things I value – things that represent how I define myself. These boxes are a daily reminder of my life in transition, and my life divided. Because many boxes are missing. In my other house, the kitchen cupboards are filled with the majority of my goods. Almost all our books await us there, as do many of our linens and garage tools. We’ve built a large workstation in the garage, installed the washer and dryer (and used them!), painted the baseboards and doorways, installed water purification systems, repaired the snow blower, and stocked the garage with snow shovels and icemelt – all well broken in, now.

Part of me is here; part of me is there. I feel the losses of the phasing out of this life. The final meetings of friends – all those Lasts. I am still surprised when I don’t hear the dog bark at the doorbell. My fish tank has been transferred to my daughter’s home, and the empty space hits me hard with the reality of our move – hits harder than the boxes stacked in the living room. I’m putting off the day when I remove the pictures from the living room and hallway, and empty my desks. But the list of things I want to do at the last minute is a bit long, I think

In the meantime, the little squares of my calendar are filling up with appointments and dinners with friends and jobs that need to be done, loose ends that need to be tied. The remaining weeks will pass quickly, and April second – moving day – will be here before I feel ready for it. I’ll clean my empty house, climb into our packed car and drive away from this home for the final time.

Is that when my new life will begin? Or will it be the first night we sleep in sleeping bags in our empty house? Or at the first meal we eat, sitting on the folding chairs we already took up there? Maybe it will be when we begin our first project – building the lower level deck. Or when we take our first bike ride along roads that suddenly “belong” to us. I wonder when I’ll feel that I belong to that lake house and that forest. When will I feel the fit of a life so vastly different from the one I’ve known? When will all the uncomfortable changes of semi-retirement no longer be changes, but routine? A new way of life, a new standard of living, a new place with new friends – away from our children.

The boxes, the empty spaces, the naked nails – they all speak not only of a life past, but of a life ahead. They speak of the breeze in the pines in our backyard, of the smell of forest that fills my lungs with each breath I take, of the quiet and the stars and the reflection of the turning aspens in the still waters of the lake. They speak of the friends we’ve already made, who await our arrival; of adventures unimagined. They speak of another life ahead – one that will hopefully span more years than the one we leave behind – a life that will bind us to a new land, so that we no longer think of ourselves as Californians, but as Coloradoans.

Maybe it will be as simple as the moving of the journals.




 

I have rarely lurked in blogville. Almost always, if I read, I comment. There have been occasional exceptions to that self-imposed rule, but they’ve been rare.

I think though, that for a while I may lurk. Maybe it’s just the hecticness of the holidays (which I’m kind of enjoying) or maybe life is turning an unknown corner, but I am simply running out of time for regular blogging and commenting.

Life – or mine, anyway – seems always to be changing. The lovely rut I snuggle into at any given time is never likely to continue for long. I generally like having my routine set, a reliable measure for my days. I am a rut liver.

But I get restless. And when I’m restless I can’t sit still, physically or mentally; then the wheels of my life churn their way up my rut’s embankment and before I know it, I’m roaming wild and aimless until a whole new set of grooves are worn.

Or demands of life and family and health serve to derail me and send me spinning for a while.

Right now, I’m tossed about by both.

My entries will likely be sporadic for a while, but I’ll do some reading every day. If you don’t hear from me in your comment boxes, know that I’m enjoying your blogs – I want to keep up with all that’s happening in your worlds. They’re so fascinating and I’m a lucky pup to get to connect with them.



 

I took several years of Journalism when I was in high school. This by no means makes me an expert on writing news stories, but it taught me a thing or two, and when I read news articles and headlines I sometimes shake my head and think, “I would have never gotten away with that.”

One of the things I hate is a news story that blends a factual or pseudo factual presentation of information with biased opinion – a mix of journalism and editorial. I stumbled across one such article last night when I finally got connected to the internet.

The piece was titled Organic Foods: Are They Really Healthier? – a title that gives away the author’s bias right off the bat.

The fellow does offer one important fact – the official USDA definition of Organic:

"Organic meat, poultry, eggs, and dairy products come from animals that are given no antibiotics or growth hormones. Organic food is produced without using most conventional pesticides; petroleum-based fertilizers or sewage sludge-based fertilizers; bio-engineering; or ionizing radiation. Before a product can be labeled "organic," a government-approved certifier inspects the farm where the food is grown to make sure the farmer is following all the rules needed to meet USDA organic standards." Producers who meet USDA standards can display a certification seal on the packages containing their products.


But then he goes on to make some ridiculous statements, coloring them with authority by virtue of the fact that he wrote them.

The best he can come up with to support his own idea that organic food is a waste (“I have never understood the logic of spending extra money to buy organic foods”) is a survey done by Consumer Reports that showed no measurable difference in color, texture and flavor between conventionally and organically grown foods. I wish the scientists had this information, it would save them a lot of time and effort.

The author then says that studies done have found no meaningful difference in nutritional content, either. I’d like to know what studies he’s looked at, and how many. Because over the six years that I’ve been studying I’ve seen many that state just the opposite. Anyway, it defies logic to think that food grown in soil enriched with compost and organic amendments is equal in nutritional value to food grown in depleted soil drenched in chemical fertilizers.

But I think what bothers me most about this article is that it fails to address the value of what isn’t in organic foods: the absence of hormones and antibiotics, pesticides and fertilizers. (Just a side note here: washing food will eliminate the chemicals on the surface, but the vegetables have drawn those harmful molecules from the soil and they lay hidden within the matrix of nutrition otherwise known as – broccoli – or whatever else you’re eating.)

The hormones fed to poultry and cattle wreak havoc with our own delicate hormonal balance; the antibiotics decimate our internal colony of bioflora that we need for our immune support, to say nothing of the immunities we build, rendering impotent the antibiotics used for treating bacterial infections. The pesticide-laden feed deposits toxins in the tissues and milk of the animals, which we then consume.

This is stuff I’ve seen reported on the five o’clock news, for crying out loud – it’s that widely accepted now. Despite the fact that we’ll never hear news reports about the role the hormones, antibiotics, pesticides and insecticides play in human disease (Monsanto brings out the BIG GUNS when such topics threaten), the studies have been done.

But I guess the scientists have been wasting their time. After all, Consumer Reports says there’s no difference in color, texture or taste! What else can possibly matter???

* * * * * *

The bummer is that good organic food can be hard to come by. Even where I live, in an agricultural area, I have to make a thirty minute drive to find a store carrying fresh organics.

The good thing is that organic vegetables are finally about as much money as conventionally grown ones; the bad news is that organic meat and dairy is still pretty expensive.

It’s definitely worth it to buy organic food whenever possible.

And now the lecture’s over

 

I’ve never really been a fan of haute couture, but I sometimes find the designs displayed on catwalks appealing. Sometimes they are outright ugly, sometimes merely interesting. I don’t go out of my way to look for ready-to-wear designer labels – I buy what I like and can afford, regardless of the designer.

So I nearly clicked past a program about Yves Saint Laurent. I’m glad I didn’t.

I discovered he’s an interesting artist – one who knew from a very early age what he was destined to be. When he was only three years old he pitched a fit because he didn’t like the dress his aunt had put on for an outing. By the age of sixteen he was in Paris, having won a design competition. He arrived with a complete dress collection that was impressive enough to earn him a position as the assistant to Christian Dior. Can you imagine a sixteen year old young man today, breaking into such a field – and at the top?

The rest, as they say, is history. When Dior died, Laurent found himself the heir to the design giant’s house. The young man was twenty-one years old.

I’m always impressed by people who know at a young age what direction to take their lives, who focus their attentions, set their goals and get it done. I’m forty-eight and still don’t really know what I want to be doing, now that child rearing is finished. The downside to a case like YSL’s is that when he was thirty, he acknowledged he’d lost his childhood, and it was too late to get it back. He’d worked virtually all his life.

Did you know a YSL collection consists of 1,000 outfits, takes two weeks to sketch, six weeks to stitch, requires 700 workers and 200 models? And that over the course of forty years, he’d done eighty collections? Of course you did!

It may be that we woman can thank this designer for our freedom to wear pants. He was the one to make androgynous wear sexy and appealing – and accepted. He’s credited for breaking fashion out of its limits by designing clothing that was playful, less constrained and less traditional. He was the first to design for “attitude.” His purses had shoulder straps because of the way they swung when a woman’s body moved, creating an attitude. He positioned pockets so a woman’s attitude would come across when she put her hands in them. He wanted to give women the same kind of confidence he’d noticed in men, and thought he could do it through clothing design.

The things you learn.

All this I found interesting, but one fascinating thing to me was the man’s demeanor. From the earliest years to the present, it hasn’t changed. He is shy before the cameras; he speaks well, but comes across as if he wished he could fade to invisibility. There is no panache, no presence, no confidence. You almost have to search for him on screen during his interviews. I thought, “wow, the guy’s boring!”

Then, his partner confirmed my impressions when he said Yves, as a narcissistic megalomaniac, could never really find anyone else in the world but himself – that he goes through life hand-in-hand with his double, but his double bores him to death.

The artist sat through the entire 2001 interview looking at the ground off to his right, only occasionally lifting his eyes to the interviewer. When he began speaking of the creative process, he diminished further, separating his sentences by such long silences I wondered if he’d simply vanish into thought.

His perspective on his own process of creation also fascinated me. He spoke of how he never knows when he sits down to sketch what will come off the end of his pencil, how he never starts with a vision – it always happens in the moment - and how that surge of thought amazes him, even after all these years.

He admits to being an unhappy man. “I’m very self-critical. I torture myself, I hurt myself. I’m always afraid.” He attributes his creative ability to his “extreme sensitivity,” the same sensitivity that he says eats away at him.

“There is no creation without pain,” he says. “The process is painful. It’s only happy at the end.”

And on that depressing note, he got up from his chair and left the room, a streamer of cigarette smoke filling the space he’d finally emptied.

 

It started Tuesday afternoon. A slight soreness in my lower left bicuspid. Just a little owieness when the tooth felt the pressure of rubbing against my upper teeth while I was chewing.

I didn’t think much of it because I take good care of my teeth and get them cleaned every six months – have done for twenty-five years. I’d had X-Rays less than a year ago so I knew I didn’t have any kind of cavity growing. I figured the pain would go away on its own.

It didn’t.

By Thursday, I was in horrible pain and all I ate of Thanksgiving dinner was stuffing and mashed potatoes with gravy. In the afternoon, I called the dentist’s office to find out how early they come into work on Fridays. To my dismay I learned, thanks to the nicely recorded message, that the office is CLOSED on Fridays!!!

So, I hoped I’d be better in the morning.

I wasn’t.

I finally got up the courage to page the dentist (is a toothache considered an emergency?). He called me back and we ended up having a very nice chat. The funny thing is, I’d never before seen or talked to this dentist. I go into his office to see the hygienist, and once a year the partner in the business – the dentist who is “second chair” – has been the one to review my X-Rays and talk to me. Not that there’s ever anything to talk about.

So what in the heck is the deal with this tooth?

Anyway, the dentist answered all my questions – I always have many – and asked intelligent questions. He told me that I could either take some antibiotics and come see him on Monday, or I could just make an appointment to see the root canal specialists that he’d be referring me to, anyway.

I didn’t want to take antibiotics.

I really didn’t want a root canal either, and I told him so.

“Oh, don’t I know it,” he replied. “No one wakes up the day after Thanksgiving and says to themselves, ‘I think I’d like to have a root canal today!’” That was good for a laugh.

I called the specialists and bless them, they gave me an emergency appointment. I did not grouch about the fact that I had to wait an hour before being seated in the leather chair and getting the delicate drool bib chained around my neck. I suffered in silence.

The assistant took an X-Ray and my blood pressure and asked a bunch of questions, then the doctor came in. He was a hottie, I tell you, but a CHILD. Well, not literally, but honestly, I feel older as professionals (and helicopter pilots) get younger and younger than me

He told me I had an abscess, thanks to a long forgotten filling in that tooth, which had provided nasty bacteria access to the root. I could see the grey shadow in the X-Ray just there, at the base of the tooth root. I could take an antibiotic and schedule an appointment for “the treatment.”

I did not want to take an antibiotic. And I explained why (it all has to do with not giving my Epstein Barr an open door to march through). He toddled out of the room and returned with the good news that though he had to be done for the day, there had been a cancellation and the other child-doctor could give me “the treatment” right then. That way, I wouldn’t have to take the antibiotics.

Needless to say, I got “the treatment.” Dang, these guys are good. The Novocain works fast (and goes away in just a couple of hours) and he used precision drills and measuring devices and suctioning things. I got a little worried when he stuck a glue gun in my mouth; however, he promised me it wasn’t stick glue, but liquid sealant he’d plunged in my tooth. He was done in half an hour.

I could chew again, but my face and jaw were still in horrible pain for two days, and I had to get up to take Advil in the middle of last night. Not something I ever want to go through again, but unfortunately, with a mouthful of fillings, it’s a real possibility. I wish my parents had set a good example and made a bigger deal about oral hygiene when we were younger. Going to the dentist was a regular activity for all of us, including my parents. We kids got fillings, Mother and Daddy got root canals and crowns and extractions. Then, as a reward for enduring the dentist, Mother drove us over to Sears and bought us Scotchmallows to eat after the Novocain wore off. These were caramel coated marshmallows that were beyond delicious, despite the lack of chocolate. Just the thing to eat prior to a cursory pre-bed tooth brushing!

You’d think the terror felt while sitting in the waiting room reading Highlights magazine and smelling disinfectant and hearing the drills whine in my mother’s mouth and the humiliation of the dentist’s scolding and the pain of the shots and drilling (dentists were not trained in gentle, pain-free techniques, as they are today) and the discomfort of the Novocain wearing off and the soreness the next day would be enough to motivate me to brush and floss regularly, and with care. Not so. I think the promise of Scotchmallows overcame all else!

Anyhow, I thanked the doctor who gave me “the treatment” and told him I hoped never to see him again.

He said he gets that a lot.

 

My husband is one of those rare creatures who enjoys being out and shopping in the hustle and bustle of a Christmas crowd. In fact, he purposefully leaves his holiday shopping for Christmas Eve. He loves being out among the last minute shoppers, interacting with others and spreading a smile to those who are tense and frantic. He comes home each year with heartwarming stories of encounters he’s had with total strangers. It always surprises me that for the most part he doesn’t run into impatience and irritability from last minute shoppers, but rather ends up receiving as well as giving acts of kindness.

Kindness is, sad to say, not a hallmark of the holiday season, as Tor can attest. We hear too many stories of the chaos and me-first behavior of those frantic to buy each year’s hot item, whether it’s a doll or a playstation. The pushing and shoving, the threats, the violence – it all puts a definite damper on the season.

But it’s one of those things I just don’t get. How difficult is it, after all, to smile and wait an extra few minutes in line, or to exchange a few friendly words? Is it really going to be the end of the world if we don’t manage to purchase that ONE thing, and does it help in any way to take our frustrations out on those around us? Does it actually make people feel better to be rude and angry, rather than kind?

The scientific answer to that question (and there is one!) is NO.

There are hundreds of reasons to go out of our way to show kindness to others. I don’t doubt any of us has failed to experience the feeling of well being that accompanies an act of kindness. The feeling isn’t one of grandiose self-satisfaction, but a deeper emotion of pleasure from having made a contribution of goodness to someone else’s world, if even in a tiny way. I sometimes feel it viscerally, but not in my gut. I feel the emotion in my chest and throat – it doesn’t ground me, it lightens me.

Every act of kindness involves some sacrifice, though we may not be aware of it. I mean, how much sacrifice is involved in holding open the heavy department store door so the person behind us can walk through easily? The sacrifice involved isn’t great, but it’s there – we have to exit our own world, leave the thoughts buzzing through our own head, and look outside ourselves for just a moment. Each little helpful act is a shred of altruism sprinkled into the world; a bit of glitter that reflects light on the recipient and the giver alike – and isn’t it nice to be sprinkled by someone else, as well as to do the scattering?

It may not come as a surprise that it turns out performing acts of kindness actually contributes to our health. It has been shown to diminish the effects of diseases and disorders – serious and minor, physical and psychological.

Helping others has these benefits:

Reverses feelings of depression, hostility, isolation and helplessness

Enhances feelings of joy, self-worth, emotional resilience and optimism

Decreases the awareness and the intensity of physical pain

Supports the immune system


And here’s another thing: Kindness is Catching. I believe one of the reasons Ron always comes home with tales of the kindness he encounters on Christmas Eve is because he’s spreading it himself. Showing kindness without expecting anything in return is an act that elicits a reciprocal response, and it’s the nature of kindness to reciprocate in a different direction, so the goodness is multiplied and sown out, not merely bounced back and forth. My guess is that Ron is a pebble in the pond of Christmas Eve shoppers and at the end of the day his joyful spirit has been spread to hundreds of strangers.

Giving up our place in line to the man with only one item, or the mother with a fussy child; paying for a stranger’s cup of coffee or lunch; yielding the right of way at an intersection or in a parking lot; contributing canned goods or toys or money to charitable organizations; holding open a door or carrying bags or simply smiling and engaging in friendly conversation – these are the types of random acts of kindness I’d venture to say most of us wave as beacons all year long.

But I’m aware there are plenty of times when I – being human – take the low road, when I’m caught up in the pressures of my own life and fail to realize that my issues are not any more important or pressing or difficult to handle than another’s. When you better get out of my way or get ploughed over, and if you do something stupid or that infringes on my space, I’ll say some not so nice things about you under my breath; when I’ll rush to beat you to the elevator or the parking space and I’ll be totally unaware I let the door swing closed on top of you.

I will say though, when the moment comes that I look past myself, when I realize I have a choice to make, and I choose to let go of my baggage long enough to act kindly toward someone else, or even just think a kind thought, I end up happier for the rest of the day.

So much less expensive than psychotherapy