Inheritance

I see so much of my husband in my son. Physically they have the same body type, inherited from my late father-in-law. They have the same sense of humor and love of khaki pants, The Three Stooges, Get Smart, 50's sci-fi films and most recently, Archie comics.

They share a wanderlust.

My son's studies will most likely follow my husband's love of history, geography and politics.

My son said that he had inherited my math genes enough so that he can get his calculus after his friend shows him how to do it.

MoM smiles down.

I remember that I couldn't think of doing anything with math when I was a senior. But I just kept taking math classes in college because I could get a good grade in it.

Sunday autumn hike

It was a lovely afternoon for a hike on the Greenway, a unique multi-use park. The path circles the town wastewater treatment plant, the bus barn and soccer fields. Half of the park is reclaimed farmland. One side is bounded by the interstate highway and opposite by the Susquehanna River. There is a stand of pine trees planted along the river by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in the 1930s.
I logged 2.67 miles in over an hour and a half. I stopped to take lots of pictures. It was an easy walk with a climb of 40 feet.

If you don't have flash on your device, view the slideshow on the album: Greenway.
For more information about the Greenway, visit oneontagreenway.org.

Spontaneous fist pumps

Who knows exactly how it happened, but I'm so glad it did. In the process of trying to motivate each other, an online friend and I started to talk about our daily walks. I looked around to see what apps I might use to record them and I was very happy to find MapMyWalk/Hike/Fitness/etc.

My goal is 30 minutes a day. And I have kept that up for 100 days. As of this morning, I have 70 hours, 28 minutes, 12 seconds recorded for a distance of 158.85 miles.

I know that it's just a computer congratulating me, but it is fun to get messages like this on my 100th workout.

It also will keep track of when I do better on a route. It once sent me a message when I shaved 9 seconds off East Street Hill.

So cue the Rocky trumpet fanfare. I'm dancing with fist pumps.

Wisdom

It is good to remember that every new sewing project gets a new needle. This is true for machine sewing where you have to worry about bent needles as well as dull ones.

When hand sewing, you need to keep a sharp needle. Before they were made of steel, needles also had to be kept free of rust. Thus, you have the idiom "rusty needle" to mean something that is damaged, but still works with effort or difficulty.  

And so it is for life transitions, too. I can't venture into new realms without a fresh point of view. 

Thank you, dear readers, for sharpening my perspective.

Pruning

The pots are coming in from the porch. My geraniums did well over the summer left on their own. But now I'm faced with the difficult decision of pruning them so that they will fit better the space I have inside. That red one on the top shelf has such a lovely cluster. But if I let it grow out like that, sticking out, it would topple the pot.

Maybe I'll snip it and put it into water to root.

That's why I have so many geraniums.

StoryJam: It seemed like a good idea at the time

Last night, I told a story.

The summer after we were married, we decided to go to Mérida, on the Yucatán peninsula in Mexico, to study Spanish for a month. We lived with a family with a wonderful abuela who cooked our meals. We hung out on the zócalo where we bought hammocks. And we studied. On the weekends, we escaped the city and visited some of the Aztec sites on the way to the coast where it was cooler. 

I tried to be a good sport, but I was a very reluctant student. My Spanish had a French accent carried over from my undergraduate studies. I lasted maybe a week in my classes before quitting. My husband (P) lasted two more before we came up with the idea of escaping to the mountains of Chiapas where we could enjoy the old colonial town of San Cristóbal de las Casas. It would be our romantic getaway in an exotic place. 

I don't remember the details of our travel, but P handled it. We would take the overnight train west, up the coast then a bus into the mountains. We packed our hammocks and travel books and all. I was particularly proud of my L.L.Bean duffle suitcase with leather trim and all the zipper compartments that P had given me the Christmas before. It had a place for everything: my underwear and socks here, my reading material there, my toiletries and medicines in their own place. Our life together was a journey and this suitcase was a symbol of our intention to travel long and far. 

We bid our host family "adiós" and made it to the train station before the midnight departure. P had booked a first-class compartment for us. Our romantic getaway was about to start. 

The sleeper car was the last on the train which was backed into the station and so was the first car we came to as we walked out onto the platform. There was a crowd gathered around the conductor with quite an animated discussion going on. As you know, my Spanish wasn't/isn't that good, but I did pick up a word or two. One was "sow-oo-nah", "sauna"? P was able to pick up that the A/C in the car wasn't working and it was a bit hot inside. This was a well designed modern car with windows that didn't open. There would be only the ventilation from open doors at the ends of the car. After more discussion and realizing that there was no repair help at that hour, we climbed aboard. 

Our little room had the two seats that made into a bed. In the dark of the night, it wasn't too hot, but dawn came early and I remember the first ray of the sun striking our window. It was about to get a lot warmer. 

I'm afraid that the sentiments in that compartment soon devolved into those expressed in the armed truce of the backseat of a family station wagon on a long cross country drive, "this is my space, that is your space and do not cross the line". 

Somehow we made it and were freed from the train about noon. I don't recall much about what we did then, probably walked around feeling relieved. 

It was time to board the bus. As we joined the waiting crowd, P seemed concerned that we not draw too much attention. How could we not draw attention?  I was there with my L.L.Bean suitcase towering over the crowd with their bundles wrapped in cloth and machetes in tooled leather holsters. 

"Keep quiet and take the first seat you can get." I struggled down the aisle to the next-to-last seat. P grabbed my L.L.Bean suitcase and tossed it overhead and we settled in. The bus pulled out, made it through the town and started climbing up the winding mountain road. 

After we had been on our way for a while, there was a stir going on with the men sitting behind us. There was a cry which P later translated, "What is this pink sh*t?". I looked back with horror as I realized that there was indeed pink liquid streaming down from the rack overhead. The glass bottle of PeptoBismol in one of the zippered pockets of my L.L.Bean suitcase had broken. It was dripping down the side of the bus onto this poor man's shoulder. 

We were able to pull down the suitcase and retrieve a towel so that the fellow could clean himself up. And there was the paper bag containing the chalky, pepperminty glass mess. What to do with it? The fellow indicated the open window. How could we just through it out? Littering was against our middle-class upbringing. But it seemed like the best option. Out it went to the side of the road. 

We finally arrived at our destination, found our lovely hotel, had dinner, strolled the zócalo. There we bought a couple of worry dolls, muñecas quitapenas, crafted with bits of handwoven fabric. You place them under your pillow before going to sleep and the dolls will take away your worries during the night. 

I'd like to say that the story ends with "and they lived happily ever after", but something we ate or drank that day gave us a bug and we spent a whole week sick in our hotel room wishing that we had that bottle of PeptoBismol. 

I can say that I traveled with my dear husband for many years with a pink stained L.L.Bean suitcase. And our marriage has lasted almost thirty years now.

Digging rocks

I'm not a dig-in-the-dirt gardener. I'm a pots-on-the-porch gardener. Pots of perennials have spent the summer on my porch steps and it was time to get them in the ground. This time of year, I covet patches of flowering daises. I know that they take time to establish. I've got to do this.

So I borrowed my neighbor's spade and removed the sod in four spots between my drive and front walk. My sweet neighbor offered that I needed to make the holes deeper. I explained that there appeared to be difficulty going much deeper and I didn't want to ruin the blade. I was hitting rock.

So a week passed and I went out with my hand trowel and worked on the holes. This picture is after the first two holes were big enough to take the plants.

Another week passed before I did the last two. I am a reluctant miner. There are results, however. I have small pebbles for the bottom of my pots and good sized rocks to edge the bed after I put mulch on.

I was thinking of buying bags of something for the mulch. Now I think I'll just wait until the leaves fall. Why buy mulch when it grows on trees?

Ten inches

It's ten inches now and the pattern is well established.

It's like being in a play production. I'm off-script. I know my lines, cues and blocking. I have to pay attention to what's happening around me, always vigilant.

Four more inches until the underarm.

Cleaning up bookmarks

I have deleted the email upload to my iPhone. I no longer get the endless announcements of speakers, athletic events and internet disruption. On my desktop computer, I have removed the bookmark from prominence. The list reflects my current creative, healthy activities.
I seem to be unable to remove a folder that I check too frequently. I am still on the quest for the perfect job.

School bell

I had two hours to hike before I wanted to be home to make my son's lunch.

On the way up the hill, I listened to iTunes classical piano radio as the cell service lasted.    When I removed the earbuds, the noise was not what one expects in the woods. I heard the shouts of a gym class out on the field down at the bottom of the hill.

Two other times I had been close to school playgrounds and often heard the children outside. In Bennington, VT, we lived on the same block as a Catholic Church. I would hear the students as I studied my math. In Canyon, TX, when my son was born, we lived down 5th Avenue from the Junior High School. I never thought far enough ahead to realize that he would attend that school.

I keep walking.

All of a sudden, I was aware that the voices below me were gone. Then there was a school bell. And a few minutes later, there was another bell for the next class to start.

I measured my walk home with that last period before lunch. I thought back to my first memories of school bells. As a Baby-Boomer first grader, my classroom was under-utilized space in the junior high school. I was terrified to be caught out in the hallway when a bell sounded and the big kids changed class.

As I came down the hill, I merged onto the path my son would soon take and made it home in time.

This photo was mistakenly taken on that morning. I have included it as an homage to Agnès Varda's dancing lens cap.

The story behind the picture

I love this picture of my son playing Capture-the-Flag with his cousins. I didn't witness this game. It was taken by my sister on a lovely spring day in 2007.

They played on a green, grassy hill capped with flowering bushes. The kids were running and laughing, mimicking a stealth attack and rolling down the hill with feigned wounds.

The grounds were the other side of the church where we had just scattered my MoM's ashes in the memorial garden.

She had rocked and soothed him as a new born baby for hours on end. I doubt he has much memory of her. And at the end, she didn't have much memory of him.

Every wonder what happened to things you loved?

I loved my hat that I wore through Spain and France in 2008.

It flew off my head while riding a tuk-tuk in Bangkok in 2009.
I hope someone found it and is still wearing it.

Photo credit to my brother-in-law, Brian. Thanks.

A penguin with an attitude

I have no opinion, or interest, in the felineness or humanity of a particular character currently celebrating a 40th Anniversary.

Badtz Maru, a.k.a. XO, translated Wrong/Right, has always been my favorite.

I like swimming in cold water and…Well you can finish that sentence.

These are my hands

"'Oh, my hands look so old, with spots, I thought, that’s a beautiful landscape.’ It’s another aspect of being a filmmaker: my own age, my own life, becomes a landscape."

-Agnès Varda 

I am fascinated by my hands as she is with hers.

What do I see here? The knotty knuckles, the rarely removed wedding ring, the freckles and spots, the raised veins, the burn scar.

I also notice that the right had seems swollen. The pain that I was feeling in my hands was one reason I was thinking about my hands. For the last couple of days, I had over-used them, knitting and grasping my hiking stick.

And I muse about MoM's hands which I did not inherit with their slender fingers and wrists. Delicate is the word I'd use for hers, but not mine.

Forgive this "photo". I took two shots with my phone and pieced them together, so the shadows are from different sides. I tried to size the two hands so that they came out the same height. Now forgive my apology.

Oatmeal

It's after ten and I realize that I haven't had breakfast.

Then I remembered that I had started my weekly pot of steel cut oats.

It's ready.

Originally published 9/9/2014.

I must remember this moment

My husband and I sat out on the back deck with our breakfast beverages.

His was tea, mine coffee.

Our robes didn't quite protect us from the damp chill. 

The sun was breaking through the trees on our back hill.

He had to leave to get ready for work.

I finished knitting my row.

Originally published 9/6/2014.

I must remember this moment, 2

As I was taking this, I was thinking that the clip would be only good of her backside. 

After downloading, I was delighted to see the frame at 0:16. 

It was a brief look over her shoulder.

Originally published 9/7/2014.

Do you see?

I know what is there in the morning dew.
Do you see the same thing?
Do you see something I missed?

Originally published 9/4/2014.

A bump in the rib

"How's the cardigan going?" you ask.

I noticed a bump in the rib. It's quite a bit back. I knitted instead of purled, or purled instead of knitted.

It was where I had placed a marker, which passes from needle to needle, row after row. I guess I was paying more attention to the marker than the stitch.

I could take that column of stitches down and use a crochet hook to bring it correctly back up. Except this is raised rib, there is an extra twist in each loop. I'm not sure that I want to risk a botched correction that will show more than the bump in the rib.

I contemplate this as I knit. The bump moves further down as the rib grows.

Originally published 9/2/2014.

Lanyard around my neck

I admit to having memory lapses and trying to find ways of coping.

If you have seen me over the last couple of years, chances are that you will see my keys hanging around my neck. Until I moved to Kansas, I wasn't really worried about losing keys. I always had someone around to let me in or rescue me. But when I was spending time away from my family, I knew I had to keep up with them. So I have a collection of lanyards, in the colors of the different institutions that I have passed through, now handing from the corner of my bookcase. For the most part I have been able to keep myself from being locked out. I only had to call AAA once while at Cortland.

OS electronic tools that are shared on my devices are constantly referred to as my own telephone number and address have changed frequently. I rely on the alerts from my calendar. Don't get me started on website passwords. There are just too many things to remember.

And then there are the things that I only have to remember for a short time like wifi passwords as we travel. I have to be able to remember it long enough to type it into the login screen. It is my experience that I can do this if the info is written out and not just told to me. I need to study it and see a pattern.

On our day trip last weekend, our cell coverage was lost on most of the back roads. We had left our son at home and I was anxious to make contact. When we stopped for lunch, I asked about wifi just after the greeter seated us. She came back with a book. As a non-cell phone person, she had no need to remember it herself.

It was a complicated login for me. I just couldn't seem to get it right. Finally I took a picture of the required info and sent her on her way. I was so proud that I came up with a solution, a way of coping with my difficulty.

Then the wifi-gods had a laugh at me. When I tabbed between the login screen and the picture, the login screen disappeared and I would have to start all over again.

Finally after a couple more tries, I got it right and got in.

My son gave a one word reply to my message.

Investment

I was lured into the shoe store on Saturday because they were advertising "1/2 of 1/2 off". These hiking boots didn't qualify, but I had to have them. I was drawn to the subtle lavender and mauve trimmed taupe color. Saturday was rainy, but Sunday was lovely.

I sprinted up the end of Center Street hill to the apartments that overlook our city of the hills. I was feeling good in my new boots.

I cut into the woods above the park. I took this picture where the light pooled. I was feeling good in my new boots.

An hour and a half and three-plus miles later, I sat at the memorial garden behind the high school. I could get LTE there and read the frost advisory alert. I was confident enough to know that it wouldn't get us. There's still good hiking ahead of us before the snow flies.

I was feeling good in my new boots.

And sometimes not so much

I have lab work every three months. When I saw the doctor last, I was so sure that it would be good news, but sometimes progress is slow.

All right, I've got to work on all of it, not just one thing.

Bless her for supporting me. She says she's enjoying this blog.
Shout out to Dr.H!

Markers

My husband and I were planning a day trip. It came at a good time for making progress on my cardigan.

The night before, I finished the raised ribbing. I then knit the first row laying out the patterns of the different columns to follow. You may remember that I talked about markers earlier. I'm using left-over blue yarn tied into loops. As I lay out the pattern, I place markers to separate the columns. I had previously marked only major landmarks like center back and underarm. Now I was placing them every 11 to 40 stitches.

So when we started our drive, I was prepared. I had the scanned directions and my spreadsheet chart on my device for easy reference.

The goal was not just to knit inches, but to internalize each pattern, to recognize which column as I come to it and where I was in that pattern. As I moved from pattern to pattern, I transferred the marker from needle to needle.

It was a lovely day, I always enjoy the captive time talking with my husband, watching the passing scene. And I knit, referring to the directions less and less.

This is a picture of what the cardigan looked like when I got home. Can you see the sections? It was a joyful time to realize that I could remove the markers. I had progressed sufficiently to rely on the the garment itself, I didn't need the external props.

And so I am working on the fugue of my cardigan and the fugue of my life. 

For those interested in the details of the cardigan:

Two patterns, accounting for 40% of the circumference of the cardigan, were really easy to master. The column that I call the ladder, is the easiest and most frequent column. It has only two rows that repeat and appears eight times. The pattern for the underarms is a two by two checkerboard. Both are easy to recognize in context which also makes it easy to quickly realize if you got off. 

And then there are the two patterns that are more complicated requiring a third needle which holds stitches to the front or back of the work. The honeycomb repeats every eight rows. It is positioned center front and back. As a focal point, it really must be right. Then the fishernet meanders for 20 rows before repeating. This pattern won't be noticed by many people, but the knitters will be drawn to it. This is the pattern that proves your skill to your peers.

And to tell the truth, I did spend the next morning redoing the fishernet sections. But that's another post. 

My yellow postcard

Late summer is a time of yellow, maize, gold, straw and yes, amarillo.
I saw them all on my drive yesterday.

If you can't view the slideshow, try clicking Yellow.

When to let go?

MoM called them her babies. With no children left at home and no students to teach, she turned her nurturing to plants, mostly African violets and jade. Many people have trouble growing these because they overwater, but not MoM. The plants flourished under her growing dementia.

I have taken to adopting orphan plants. I am drawn to those on the $1 shelf, whose blooms have dropped and leaves are no longer hot house perfect.

You never know what you'll get. These two plants are a case in point. Both were struggling in the spring. I thought I'd lose the one on the right. After the leaves were almost dead, I noticed the green sprouts showing. When I returned from our trip this summer, the one on the left was gone. I have continued to water it, hoping that it would recover.

When to let go?

The stone foot bridge

I went hiking at the park today without my iPhone earbuds. I wanted to think about words to go with a picture I had taken earlier. It was a glorious morning. I was deep in thought and missed a fork in the path.

Instead of climbing up to the top of the hill and looking down, I stayed down and ended up going over this stone foot bridge, WPA vintage.

Works Progress Administration (later Works Projects Administration) was part of the New Deal response to the Great Depression unemployment. It created 8 million jobs between 1935 and 1943. Almost every community in the U.S. had a new park, bridge or school. (Thanks Wikipedia!)

It has become almost a scavenger hunt for me to find WPA projects in towns we've been through. You can spot them because they often use local rocks and cement for materials.

As I looked back on this bridge, I wonder about the creative process. Whose idea was it? How did they know it would stand? Who dug and sorted the rocks? Who was the first to walk over it?

How many family members relied on the wages of those working on this bridge?

Did they have any idea that it would be crossed by me 80 years later?

Benefits and gas money

I joked that I would work for benefits and gas money. I have for the last two years.

The academic calendar flips to a new year. I am moving out of the system. Today is my last day of coverage.

I get very nervous when I get letters in the mail that state, "Please read the information contained in this notice very carefully", bracketed by five asterisks.

Rationally, I know that I can easily get covered under my husband's plan. It's in place. We are transitioning on a plan for coverage in retirement. I won't have to worry about medical coverage ever again.

So maybe it isn't the insecurity of coverage that gives me pause.

Cue: Teardrop.
It's that I wasn't of sufficient value to the department, to be paid benefits and gas money.
Internal rage wells.
I'm worth more than that.

Yes, it's going to take many mornings of oatmeal, many miles walking, many rows of knitting to let go of the anger.

Progress?

I went for my son's school supplies, BOGO.
I was able to get some end-of-the-season 75% off garden supplies.
Somehow I was able to sneak out without any Russell Stover popping into my bag.

Last first day.

We all are coping with uncertainty.

All three of us want time to stop. And yet we don't. 

I wish I could sleep like that

My son came downstairs yesterday morning laughing because he couldn't put his cell phone into his sleep pants. The pockets were hanging from his hips like deflated balloons.

It had been a warm night and he had stripped down to sleep. During the night, as it cooled down, he pulled back on his sleep pants, inside out.

He went right back to sleep with no memory of wakening.

Labor Day

Labor Day is celebrated to honor the contributions of workers. In 1965, the state of Michigan enacted legislation that enabled public school employees to organize. I don't have a timeline, but I have memories of MoM supporting the local efforts to unionize and collectively bargain. As a child, I didn't realize what courage it would take for my mother to canvas door-to-door for support of a teachers' strike. She found it and did it.

Wait a minute, let me think. Where is it? Found it.

There it is: a silver platter offering the union's best wishes on her retirement.