elainegrey

Birthday breakfast out with my sister and dad (it's his birthday, too). L pressed dad to stop his "George Will" "make people think" facebook posts and asked him to share his authentic truth that he has family members that the ... i have no words for this, slow coup?  ... is hurting. L was in a place of Not Tolerating Right Wing People, Dad wants to save them. To try and change subject, L shifted to asking about having an estate sale of family stuff, which led Dad through one of his well trod rumination paths. He asserted we didn't know what it was like, looking forward not to a milestone of triumph but to the long decline of aging. As i wrestle with my fears -- how much yard can i care for with the exhaustion and fatigue i had last fall showing up again? Remembering how the exhaustion last fall was making me think about retirement, remembering how just a few weeks ago that seemed so silly as i fell vital again -- Pfft, Dad, you've put off facing the reality. And, i'm pretty sure he's just going to continue putting off making decisions.

My sister let him know we'd be there to make decisions for him when it was time. Which, threat? promise?

When we went back to politics, we all were blunt about our fears. Dad thinks the country is about to fall apart. He's afraid for us all: i gave him grits for his birthday. We'll need grit to get through.

Aren't we lovely people to celebrate birthdays with! It sounds terrible, but it was authentic and honest talking between us, which may not be civilized, but it was connecting.

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Happy New Year!

May we all find places of safety when the political reality is too much, may we all know compassion and kindness and joy. May our health improve. May we find success and joy and satisfaction.

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I've just declared email and post reply bankrupcy. I'll probably try do to the same in other places i feel too overwhelmed.  I guess i could sort of manage a housework bankrupcy if we were willing to have someone come in and clean, but i think Christine's a little too fragile right now. The holidays, so many family gatherings, and possibly the dramatic temperature swings bring on the elephants.

I've gotten some postal greetings and small gifts out, some shipped on Christmas Eve afternoon, others shipped yesterday at ten minutes to closing. I have thank-you notes written last January still in my card box. Sigh.

--== ∞ ==--

Reading

Gift books include the requested foraging book, Nature's Gardens by Sam Thayer; Kintsugi: Finding strength in imperfection that was paired with the requested kintsugi kit, and Sedaris' Holidays on Ice. I'm proud i did not see that many books i needed to bring home from Mom's library because no shelves. Tsundoku for life.

A Passion for Specificity sits in Kindle for both Christine and i to read.

--== ∞ ==--

Food ways

Apple-cherry pie with Vietnamese cinnamon is good. Canned cherry filling is pricy, though, so i was glad to have also found a bag of clearance apples that filled out the one can of cherry filling i bought on impulse.  I am very pleased with my growing skill at prebaking pie crusts (i buy the rolled up pre-made crust, one step at a time). I don't usually put a crust on top because usually i'm making quiche. This time i followed some advice that you should shield the crust at the beginning to keep from being burned later. This advice was a fail for me, as the egg wash glued the crust to the shield and i think i was more at risk of burning as i tried to remove it. Still, the "2025" decoration survived and the attempt at making fireworks with colored sugar wasn't ... a complete fail.

Yesterday, i finally got around to air frying some frozen battered oysters: yum!  I had them on a bed of rice and limas seasoned with a poblano cheese spread i made when i over roasted the last of my poblano peppers. That has worked well to rescue that infelicity.

Black-eyed peas and Brussels sprouts (surely the tiny brassicas count in the good luck dining?) for dinner tonight, possibly with corn bread, although that seems to be calling some elephants as Christine has gotten tangled with this concept.

Written on Sunday

I hope everyone has had a happy solstice, particularly for the northern hemisphere and the beginning of lengthening days.. For us it was our 33rd anniversary, which we observed with an installation of Michael J. Schumacher's "LIVING ROOM PIECES":

Composer Michael Schumacher, a pioneering figure in the field of spatial audio and algorithmic composition, presents Living Room Pieces, a long-form sound piece intended for the home environment. This edition of Living Room Pieces, specially crafted for Chaikin Records, comes as a custom-etched metal box housing a Raspberry Pi computer.

I'd also bought Christine some sparkly jewelry before we agreed that "LIVING ROOM PIECES" would be a memorable experience to add. I've not bought her enough sparkles over the years, while she has bought some for me. I wish i had -- but so often she's wanted something music adjacent (instruments, pedals, mixing boards). Anyhow, i think she liked them.

We had a lovely dinner and watched Dune Part 2. Christine saw it in the theater and for some reason i got a block on seeing it. Flying home from Boston i watched someone else watch the beginning and realized i would enjoy it. Yesterday was good for that.

I've done some gift shopping, which gets my brain all twisty. I know what i like -- but will others? And who really needs stuff? And will someone think it's junk.... I dunno.

I know these are my problematic thoughts, and having watched The Simpsons episode 'O C'mon All Ye Faithful' which includes Homer having similar thoughts to mine, i am now at least able to point at the thoughts as Homer thoughts. Fixing them, not so great. But hey. I can hold them off a little now.

I did get some local food and drink for Dad: I broke down and used the Bing AI to get advice on which local mead my Dad would like based on his liking Bud Light, Pinot Grigio, and champagne/sparkling wine. Also, local BBQ sauces. Gift certificates for my siblings and their spouses.

Today to write some notes and wrap some things to ship. Late!

I have spent all morning calculating and estimating things about retirement, because i feel so tired off and on. I think it might be plausible to retire in six years. If i wait four years, i can use my employer's insurance while waiting for medicare to kick in: this is pretty valuable, i think, so i really need to wait until then. But waiting another few years and assuming certain financial things, the mortgage could be paid off. (Pause. Perplexity. Goes to recalculate, count, subtract... ah! Fix errors.)  Which is a nice way to get by with less income, because i don't think there will be a substantial decrease in any other expenses due to me stopping work. Hopefully less stress eating occurring.

Feeling appreciative of the weather change that made for getting things done in the yard Sunday and Monday evening pleasant.  Leaves are changing in hints here and there, mostly on the early trees of elm, tulip poplar, and cherry. The black cherry and elm just drop their leaves -- the tree still seems green but underneath is brown leaf fall. Tulip poplar leaves -- which have just barely started -- do spot the tree yellow, but in exchange they are almost black under the tree. Driving through the area i can see the shift in the green, hinting at colors underneath.

Mornings are darker and darker. This morning i observed a sparkling of stars against the sky, mistook Aldebaran (+0.85) for Mars (+0.6) near shining Jupiter (–2.3). Bright Capella (+0.08) stood out as well.

Stellar brightness is on an counter-intuitive scale where a smaller (negative) number is brighter.

Saturday we observed my Mom's birthday and i ran errands. i was surprisingly exhausted at the end, but the wheeled string trimmer will now start.

My bicycle is now home, with a new tire and tube on the back that will presumably be quieter and more efficient on the trainer, and a solid foam tube replacement on the front, to minimize having to pump it up. Also new grips, as the others had degraded rubber.

I made spiced apple fig jam on Sunday, steam canned it, and all the lids took! I wiped the edges this time instead of just trusting i had kept them clean, so that helped. I actually have a nice stash of canned foods for gifts this year. Did i cook the jam too long and it's going to be a solid gummy lump? I'll open our jar before i give it all away.

Work is overwhelming with context switching and never any time to follow up. Last night i worked late to prepare for an interview for a peer role today. I'm feeling very insecure about pressures on me to carry a software engineer's knowledge -- what i was cramming last night -- but that's not where my focus has been. I don't think i need to worry about not being appreciated, but yeah, i worry about expectations from our new exec directory & director management layers. They haven't shown themselves well in some other contexts.

Luigi, one of our two older ex-Tom cats, is peeing in the bedroom bathroom very frequently, matching his drinking. He's arthritic and i suspect he knows he can make it to the shower stall. This morning he didn't quite. It's a tile floor, a hard surface. Not the bed! And he is the sweetest, most companionable soul. We'll clean up pee forever if he is otherwise willing to stay with us.He joins me on the lounge in the morning, and sits between Christine and i on the couch at lunch and in the evening. Christine says he's calling her to sit outside with him now during the day. He's getting multiple treatments for the arthritis and Christine will continue pursuit of the borderline... thyroid thingy? It's the one where the cat gets radiology and then has to stay in isolation for a few weeks. Christine is indignant that he was turned down for treatment, but i don't think she's thought through the isolation that comes with the treatment.

We have a fencing contractor who has shown up to look at the work now, and seems likely to provide an estimate - -two, in fact. One might be with cheaper galvanized wire which -- sure! As long as the mesh size is small enough, we are game. If we hate it, there's [a very limited number of latex acrylic] spray paint.

For the petechiae and bruising, I go for more blood tests today, and i think my doctor will be referring me to a hematologist or dermatologist. I'm hoping for hematology because the optometrist noticed a blood vessel that had broken (nothing to worry about, you probably lifted something) so the capillary breaking isn't just the skin. On the other hand, WTF Buttercup with the waves of petechiae and bruises? Rhetorical question that. I am minimizing non direct doctor reading about this ... ah, fiddlesticks, went and did more reading. "The clinical approach to these disorders rests upon an astute clinician considering the diagnosis and identifying the specific patterns of clinical, radiologic, laboratory, and pathologic abnormalities." Stop reading!

I love you all! Thank you for continuing to share your lives with me.

Meanwhile, thanks to draaahhhhmahhh, i've invested much emotional energy in the Quaker event planning. And that means i was behind in investing executive function energy. So i took this morning off work to round up documents and send emails to confirm hosts of events and so on and so on. It took some time for me to find compassion, mainly because i was feeling a little overwhelmed in how much executive function i've been investing, but the Report That Will make Clear All The Problems And Prompt Resolution has gone missing. When requested someone was able to find a draft that supposedly had been refined before approval. "Unfortunately, I think that this is an older version than I sent.  I believe that we remove phrases such as "[redacted]" but please rely on your own memories at this point!!!" When my co-clerk gently asked if there would be substantial changes, the reply was, "I sent you what I believe is the final draft a few days ago.  If you need me to find it again, please let me know."  (I finally said, YES PLEASE SEND and it was sent and it's better.)

I imagine the persons who are currently involved did not expect to be shouldering so much, see no process by which new folks can take over, and yet are burnt out needing to return to their life. They're trying to keep the lights on but want to leave the room. Hopefully, this retreat will resolve some way forward.

And i need the resolve to just say no to anything beyond Mid-Winter because i am nearing capacity.

Scattered thoughts:

When i went out to open the door for the cats Thursday morning the sky was bright with stars and the waning moon hid in the trees. I saw a satellite moving against the night sky and caught a bright flash of a meteor.  This Friday morning the sky was even more clear. Venus, which had been muted by clouds on Thursday, blazed through the trees, and the even smaller moon blazed. I sat down and reloaded the table of satellite passes and noted a strikingly bright International Space Station was passing overhead just then. Back outside i went and watched the -3.6 m approach the moon, so bright it was rarely blocked by the pine tops. It did not pass in front of the moon from my point of view. Back inside where i noted that now a 2.7 m was passing through the big dipper, so outside i went again. I decided to stop even though more were passing overhead and instead was distracted by the information about the satellite. I did not know there was a Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport.

The wildlife cam is not too time consuming yet for record keeping. It's such a struggle to motivate myself to delete original images! I still have negatives of my photos from college, grad school, and the early oughts: i'm keeping those. My point is that the lesson to preserve the earliest, best quality image for the future is so ingrained. But who wants to peer at (so far) fairly poor wildlife camera images of deer, a squirrel,  a lens flare,  and a rabbit? I've learned how to do a little editing and compositing on my phone now, so SIGH, yes, if i had kept the possum photos i could have cropped and composed something to preserve as "evidence" but, again, is that single observation really that remarkable?  So, i am making myself delete. It's clutter and future me will appreciate the organization of the observations into a database as well as not having  a gigabyte of boring images and video to go through.

It has been interesting to discuss with Christine what images she will find remarkable. So far deer and squirrels are in the uninteresting category. This weekend i will put up the other camera and move this one to have more a view of the ground since the opossum (interesting!) and rabbit (interesting!) have mainly been in the bottom edge of the image.

I'm testing an embed of the most curious video -- a lens flare? -- below the cut.

I'm framing this coming year -- by which i mean my natal year more than 2024, but i'll try ramping up in the next two months -- as a move from surviving to thriving. My way of addressing challenges has been to put other things aside and focus on the challenge. The first few years we were here we worked madly on clearing the underbrush and overgrowth. Then Mom's stroke and COVID. And subsequently some big things at work. My "surviving" has been with comfortable margins: i don't need to be in survive mode. It's learned. I need to learn to thrive.  I'm trying to frame my expectations and think about this like a myself a transplanted perennial that persists with little change for a few years and then bursts forth growth in the apocryphally third year ("sleep, creep, leap"). I want to transplant my mindset to thrive-mode.

The first change i am making is in my centering meditation that i have been using since the mid 90s. The first focus is on grace, which had been so important because of how disappointed i would be in myself. I have not completely stopped "beating myself up" but i am far far more compassionate and understanding . When i am disappointed with objective fact (for example, still coughing, although its much better, and the work of December still has not wrapped up despite some good long focus days in December) i am not making it my fault.  I've learned to accept grace and give myself and others grace. I am overlaying that focus with a focus on vitality.

This page - https://positivepsychology.com/what-are-your-strengths/ - has a "wheel of character strengths" that has six major classifications. It includes "Courage" at that top level, with Bravery, Perseverance, Honesty, and Zest as individual strengths. I took the https://www.viacharacter.org/ survey to "find my strengths" and   my "top" five strengths as defined fell into "transcendence" (two strengths, but the strongest)  and "wisdom" (three strengths). "Honesty" from the "courage" section shows up as #6, but "Bravery", "Zest", and "Perseverance" are at the bottom. The "Perseverance" strength is entangled with ADHD. I suspect the survey instrument likely does not address neurodivergent perseverance. (The cowboy song of "Purt Near Perkins" comes to mind this moment, as a  change of heart about completion of things - https://www.jeffstreebyauthorizedsite.com/6-classic-works.html .) ZEST though, that's what i want to chase. And maybe it takes bravery to chase it. I think hangups around perseverance may, indeed, be part of the issue. "I can't do zesty thing because must finish thing" -- but so often the finishing of a thing is ... unreasonable? It's too big a thing? I dunno.  Anyhow: exploration there.

In oops news: I associate elements with my age to label each year. This coming birthday i will be 56, which is barium. Barium is in a gem stone called benitoite, and i've considered getting a necklace that has a vial of some sort that has tiny tumbled benitoite stones inside. (Larger stones are pricey!)  But Sunday afternoon my mind skipped and i decided the element must be bismuth and -- lo! -- there are pretty things made with crystallized bismuth. So i bought a necklace and earrings and -- nope, different than barium. 27 years until bismuth.

Random: What the bleep is "magic spoon" cereal that the "deep discount price" is $6.97 for a 9.7 oz box??? Ah "keto friendly" "sweet" cereal. Wow.

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Good Yule, god Jul, and merry Christmas and a festive turning of the season.

I offer you virtual mulled cider (i didn't really make it this year, but it would be sweetened with molasses, and you'd be welcome to add Grand Marnier or spiced rum if you like), and a slice of sweet bread or a hearty gluten free buckwheat loaf studded with figs.

I have all my gifts wrapped and many ready to take to my sister's house tonight. It is the year of the Blackwing pencil accessorized with matching aluminum pencil caps, plastic sharpener, and aluminum pencil holder (for when you are down to a stub).  I did a sketch with one that i kept for myself. I got the "pearl" lead which is "balanced" and... yup, it's a pencil. Christine is a pencil aficionado so she's delighted with the ones for her.

A stationary note: i have a little A6 journal by my desk which i am using for an odd little dopamine hit at work. I've marked out shapes for every 30  or 15 min of the work day, and then i color them in with different patterns (nominally to indicate what i worked on) during the day. Complete whimsy, not to mean anything, but satisfies a tiny creative yearning for color and tactile creation. I'm not quite halfway through the book and i find myself worried about where the next one will come from. Is it time to order more? I guess its working if i worry about a dopamine fix.

I have made cookies with dried figs from 2022, finishing those. https://www.savingdessert.com/italian-fig-cookies-cucidati/ I've not iced them yet, but i'm pondering making the lemon icing and then dusting with home grown poppy seed and lemon zest.

Written on Friday, Dec 22

Happy Solstice (a bit after). I'm hoping for health top return and for lots of yard work before the sun returns in full force.

Last night the moon shone so bright, i could see shadows. Jupiter dazzled close by. Coming home from the restaurant Kanki i gazed at the moon through the car's sun roof. When we passed by street lights i could see our entwined hands reflected in the glass. Moon, hands, moon, hands, as we drove the bypass around Chapel Hill. We had a party to celebrate our engagement 33 years and a few days ago at the Kanki in Raleigh. My family was living in Florida at the time and many of the people i had known had moved away (including me - -i was living in Philly), so most of the people were from Christine's radio life. I barely remember the event.

We now have matching  winter nightgowns from Lands End in a starry print with a cow jumping over the moon. Also not in my memory or in Christine's was the little rhyme about that.

This morning Arcturus shone through the clouds, but Venus was dimmed.

Today a plumber comes. I am 50% sure i could fix what's wrong with the toilet but it would be really nice to have it back soon. After the very long saga of the light above the stove, buying the wrong bulb and the jammed screw, I am ok with paying someone else deal with the clay coated tank and resolve the issue promptly. I suspect the company Christine picked is backed by private equity[1], with their shiny fleet of well branded vans and their excellent customer service. It's not just some single plumber with their cousin tasked to answer phones. I have mixed feelings about it -- about private equity buying up little independent companies like this -- but the professionalism is nice.

[1] https://www.themiddlemarket.com/news-analysis/why-private-equity-is-chasing-plumbers-and-lumber-yards