Pumpkin #3, Hot Off The Press

Just finished this one...

Pumpkin #2

Another fine fall morning in the Willamette Valley.  One of those rare days when we are not wallowing in fog until late afternoon when the sun finally breaks through.

I think I may need to get out on the road alone for a little mental health time today.

A lot of my emotional energy has been invested in bringing my niece out here and getting her settled in.  Yesterday, we checked another thing off the list: We got her a vehicle.  Now she isn't trapped in Junction, at the mercy of whoever has a car and can come and retrieve her for shopping and errands.
Though, to be fair, she's hardly had any peace since we arrived here with all her stuff in a UHaul truck a month ago.  When we haven't been dragging her one place or another, we've been drafting her for Cafe de la Rue work.  

Now that she has transportation, we'll have to start addressing her health issues.  There will be paperwork and OHP and Social Security to mess with.  Oh joy.  But we have to keep moving in a positive direction.  Can't stall out now.  

Today's pumpkin picture, taken in Chelan County, Washington last November:

Not all pumpkins are orange!  :)

First Day of the Rest...

Today is a good day.

I scored an all-time high on my Windows 7 mahjong game.

My inexplicably fucked-up right knee is sufficiently healed to allow me to do my puny 1-mile Leslie Sanson walk-at-home work-out (and, once again, I'm determined to build on this to a more respectable daily work-out...)

Big yellow-legs (the Cooper's hawk) visited my yard, posed prettily on the fence, and didn't catch anything (this time...)

I was treated to a several-minute concert put on by hordes of geese flying out to their feeding grounds this morning...made all the more special and ethereal by the low-hanging fog that separated me from the vocalists. 

So.

It's a week until Halloween.  Time to start posting those daily pumpkin pictures.  Or, at least, photos relevant to the season.  And maybe I'll add a word or two--inspirational or otherwise.  

Here's the first...combining two of my life's loves: Cats and Autumn celebrations!

Happy Fall!

Peace and Quiet

It’s a beautiful fall morning in my back yard.  The temperature is more sweater than coat weather.  There’s a bit of overcast that thins enough in places for the morning light to shine through and illuminate the rich fall colors of leaves and fading flowers.  Geese sailing across the sky in long, undulating skeins bark and yip as they float over the yard, heading east, for some reason this morning…perhaps that is where their favorite feeding grounds are located this week.

My “new” yard is pleasant enough.  I do miss marking the day I hear the first crane calls wafting over from Sauvie…  But there is plenty here in the outskirts of Eugene to satisfy my wild soul.  Geese of all shapes and sizes abound around here in the winter…much to the chagrin of farmers( and suburbanites who might  like to enjoy a poop-free walk in any of the local parks.)  And Finley Wildlife Refuge is only about a half-hour away…

As I sat outside with my coffee this morning, it occurred to me that there is one sound I DO NOT hear, here in my cozy little yard…and that I DO NOT MISS.  That would be the sound of the blunderbusses blasting into flocks of “game” birds over on the island, from five minutes before it’s really legally light enough to shoot, until well into the early afternoon. 

I’m sure there’s plenty of bird-murder going on in this area as well, but at least I don’t have to hear and cringe and frown at it while I’m sitting in my own back yard.

Something to be thankful for on this fine Autumn morning.    

October 16th

I once thought I didn’t have any expectations about marriage.  Going into it, I thought that the two of us were so naïve that we just…got married because we were in love, and that’s what people did when they were in love.  We didn’t really think about The Future, didn’t have an agenda.  Over the years, I’ve come to see that is…bullshit. 

Because of course we had expectations.  Mine were, at the very least, to have one person in the world who loved me in spite of my flaws; and to have a partner beside whom I would negotiate life, sharing the joys and the burdens.  I don’t know that I could have articulated that expectation 43 years ago…but its existence has become obvious.  Driven home by the fact that this is not what our marriage has turned out to be.

Not even close.

And I have no idea what HIS unspoken, unknown-at-the-time expectations were.  No doubt, much of them had to do with sex.  (He was only 20 when we married…)  He once told me, in the midst of one of our heavier arguments, that “this is not what I signed up for.”  So, evidently, his expectations have not been met, either.

Even so, we have endured.

We like each other well enough.  We’re comfortable together.  Our relationship, after nearly half a century, is as much habit as anything else.  We’re concerned for each others’ welfare…we have good times together.

We don’t fight as much as we used to.         

I was just about to write, “But that’s not enough.”

But apparently, it IS enough.  I mean, I don’t think either of us would be happier if we weren’t in this marriage…if we didn’t have what we do have.  That it is what it is will always make me sigh and shake my head.  But if I’ve learned anything in the six decades I’ve lived on this planet, it’s that not everything can be or will be exactly as we would like.  And believing otherwise leads to a life of anger, frustration…a whole Pandora’s box of negative emotion.

Sometimes, you just have to accept what IS and make the best of it.

So…

Happy Anniversary, us!   

My Favorite Color is....

It’s a beautiful first day of October here in Eugene.  The sun is shining, the air is crisp…it really feels like fall.  And, as we all know,

There hasn’t been a lot of rest for me since our big festival in August.  There just seems to be one important thing after another to address.  Working on the house, messing with the yard, doing another event, fixing the bus, a train ride to Wisconsin and a five-day return trip in a 15' U-Haul truck, to retrieve my niece…  

Looks like the concept of a life without sharing space with a family member in need is not going to apply to our “golden years” in Eugene.  But, you know, I’m okay with that.  Because family is EVERYTHING.  Take it from one who just returned from an 18-year exile away from the heart of the family.  And, even there, I was pressed into service for a family member in need…as it turned out, the needy family member was the one most responsible for my exile in the first place.  The Universe WILL turn logic upside down to get us to understand the things It wants us to understand…

I don’t want to address the goings-on in the US political arena just now.  Suffice it to say that it almost looks like we’re on the road to purging the evil from the White House.  But we have made starts and stops (mostly stops) in this direction several times in the past three years…so I don’t want to jinx it by being too positive about our ability to really make it happen this time.  Fingers, toes, eyes, every hair on my head, CROSSED that we have made the right steps in the right direction this time around.

So…anyway…Happy October!!!

16

It has been such a weird, mostly silent year...  And a busy month.

So I almost forgot to note the anniversary of this, my own little space on the interweb.

16 years.

Really?  Wow.

Another Month, Another 30 Days of Desperation

I had a bit of a revelation, today, about why it has been so god-awful hard for me to write lately. 

I mean, June, July and half of August were nutsy busy, and I really didn’t have the time to spare.  But Festival was almost a month ago, now.  Yet...when I make up my mind it’s time to write something, I just stare at the screen for a couple of ticks…and call up a game of solitaire.

The thing is, there doesn’t seem to be any point.  The situation in the country is so obscene, so unfathomable, so dire…and nothing  makes any difference.  I could write my fingers to the bone, fire off a million well-reasoned essays detailing the unbelievable transgressions of the Mango Mussolini and the inexplicably complicit GOP; conjure up exhortations to “the resistance” to try harder, make more noise, do more justice, until my brain smoked out…and it wouldn’t make one. bit. of. difference.

The madness that is manifested in Trump has grabbed this country by the throat, and is not going to loosen its grip until SOMETHING dies. 

All we can hope is that it won’t be the United States of America that exsanguinates through that mortal wound.

I don’t think I’m the only person in the country who wakes up in the morning and first thing, fires up the tablet to check the internet…to see if by some miracle Trump has died or been arrested overnight. 

And I hate that this fiasco has made me into that person.      

   

NOT Winning. It’s Not a Game

El Paso; Third Mass Shooting in a Week