Monumental

Today is N’s 24th b’day and K’s and my 28th anniversary.

Feels very monumental.

And, as is seasonally appropriate, I’m feeling grateful, for family and friends and connections and health — for two great kids embarking on adventurous lives; for 28 years with K; for Lucy and all her predecessors; for family and friends; for the fact that it’s not over yet.

My Vermont friend and her son came over for dinner last night. I made a big pot of this soup, which was so delicious and filling. All afternoon I cooked, while M sat, tucked into the comfy chair, writing a paper. A and her son arrived on bicycles from the city. I had a long talk with A on the porch in the cold air while K walked to the wine store. I’m so glad to have connected with her again.

It’s good.

Friday!

We have made it to Friday.

Time for me to head home. I’m really hungry — it may be necessary to order to food from someplace else, like a place where they’ve been thinking about dinner all day long.

M is coming home tomorrow, but late enough so that I have time to move all the bedding N sent home from Maine off M’s bed. Also late enough so that I don’t have to get up at the crack of dawn to do that, either.

Thank goodness.

It is possibly beginning to feel a bit festive. I even remembered to order the turkey this morning — I hadn’t, because Thanksgiving somehow felt so far away.

Huh. I think it may be creeping up on us.

Thursday

Crabby McCrabbypants, here.

Can’t explain it, but sometimes that’s just the way it is.

Bah.

That is all.

Rain!

It’s raining!

(Let’s ignore that weird foam in the creek — who knows what it is, but it hasn’t rained since September, so it really could be anything.)

It rained all night and it’s rained most of today. It’s a pain in the neck and it’s lovely.

I would like to go home and bundle up on the couch. Turns out I have to give the new library copy of the Goldfinch back to someone else — apparently she had dibs, which I don’t think is quite fair, but nevermind! I will read as far as I can tonight and then read the rest on my kindle. I’m having an aversion to my kindle, for some reason. But that’s just silly.

I had lunch with a friend, and then coffee with people I’d like to know better. I have entirely satisfactory red rain boots. In an hour I’m heading home.

Not so bad for a Wednesday.

Tuesday

Fall! I love fall!

It’s supposed to rain, but I don’t believe it. It’s a little chilly, though.

It’s lovely to have the conference behind me. I’m catching up and life is kind of normal. I like normal.

Think I’ll take a novel to lunch with me — just starting The Goldfinch.

Nice.

That building has a lovely big fireplace inside, in the room with the windows. It used to be the student union, back in the day — back in the day when my father, who died 50 years ago this month, went to school here. It is funny to think about what the campus was like when he was here. Certainly smaller.

Monday

Excellent weekend. Laundry finished, waffles, walks with friends, dinners out.

Highlights:

• Dinner out with my brother and his boyfriend during which we made plans for Thanksgiving.
• Sunday visit from a friend from Vermont. She moved away in 1989 and we are still friends — really friends. How lovely to remember that. And now that we are all a bit freer, there are possibilities, like travel!
• Dinner out with K and friend at another friend’s restaurant, which appears, after 2 years, to be a success. He seems happy, and that’s great.

Tornados whirled through the midwest, and M was advised to get into a bathtub wearing a bicycle helmet. As she has neither, she contemplated hiding in her shower in her (horse)riding gear. I think she did not. And luckily for us, the tornadoes went elsewhere.

I keep hearing a bunch of nonsense about how no one is majoring in liberal arts subjects anymore. Really? Both of our kids went to liberal arts schools; one majored in Russian and one in Studio Art — I just want to point out that we’re doing our part to save humanity. You’re welcome.

Well, then

I have no news. Really. Which is not unpleasant.

I went to the nursery. The front steps are once again covered with plants, which I’ve got to get into the ground. Meanwhile, it’s snowing in Ohio, where M is, although it is summer in Bolivia, where N is.

Here are places I want to go —

• the Lost Coast of California
• the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge (zoom out just to see how weird it looks), and I want to stay here.
• Lassen Volcanic National Park — we used to go here when the kids were small.
• Sequoia/Kings Canyon.

That’s all I’ve got.

Recovery!

I’m getting better. I’m at the point where there’s no point in eating because everything tastes like cardboard. I’ll lose five pounds, which I will promptly regain when I can taste again and realize that I’m starving. I’m also at the point where the membrane separating me from the world is very thin and I’m likely to take the slightest bump as a grave offense. I know this, though, which should help. Maybe.

I’ve been watching Buffy, since when will there be a better opportunity to indulge in hours of television. I don’t absolutely love it. Is it Buffy herself? She is admirable — she’s tough. I think I used to dislike the fact that she was so fashion conscious, but that doesn’t really bother me any more.  The person who told me to watch it said that it was “emotionally honest,” and I guess that’s right — the episode in which nightmares come true, for one.  It was kind of a nice twist that Buffy’s nightmare coming true was what enabled her to defeat the nightmare and thus keep everyone’s nightmare from coming true. Is it the music? The lighting? The strange California high school scene?  Although, to be honest, the high school could mostly be anywhere. And I do like that the library is the center of everything. Is it poor Willow’s eyebrows?

Anyway. 

I’m back to work today. I’m thinking about work, too, probably as a consequence of the membrane issue above (not that there were any bumps — just that the outside world seems closer than usual), and also the fact that the conference went so well, and also the fact that, with two kids nearly out of college, I am a bit freer than I was. I don’t have an infinite number of years of work left — might be worth thinking about where I want to get to, eventually, and what I might want to do now to get there . . .

Happy Friday!

 

Sick!

Okay, not a very impressive heap of tissues because I just threw them away.

But let me assure you there is some impressive tissue-usage going on. I never get sick! So I’m eating coldeez and drinking tea and lolling on the couch and expecting to be better tomorrow.

I keep thinking, “oh great! I can clean out the closet, or do — something” — and then I remember, I’m sick!

Think I might take a nap soon.

Blergh.

It was a lovely weekend — we had dinner out on Saturday with friends and nothing else.

I put away summer clothes and found my winter clothes. Lucy curled up on my down vest. I roasted the beets and baked the sweet potatoes that have been waiting in the refrigerator, and made the kale salad, and assembled the ingredients for the butternut/chicken stew that we eat this time of year. I finished up some planting in the yard. I heard from both N and M. We started to think about Thanksgiving and invited my brother and his boyfriend and M’s friend A.

Time to drag out the knitting and the flannel sheets, and to build a fire and come inside from the cold.

I love fall.