Standing at the Trailhead of Winter

Happy New Year!  While Christmas day was wonderful this year, and I will forever (at least I hope) remember sitting here with my three kiddoes and their partners talking the afternoon and evening away, I couldn't get the tree and other decorations down fast enough. I just wasn't feeling the whole keep the decorations up until New Year's this time around. So all the holiday accouterments were put away days ago, and some went into the thrift store box. I decided to do another deep cleaning, part of which is letting go of things that no longer give me joy. Yesterday, as a challenge to myself, I left the computer off all day. I didn't check in to anything on my phone, either. Instead, I spent time on the porch with the boys, listened to a couple of podcasts that really got me thinking, and I read, finishing up another excellent book: The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne by Brian Moore. Highly recommend it if you're looking for something to read. And today, because it st...

Well, the good news is the new furnace is much more efficient than the old. After a full month of having it run, a comparison of this November over last November shows less natural gas usage, like 18% less usage. And this is with running the fireplace, too. Last November I didn't have the fireplace installed, so it was just the furnace heating the house. Through this November, I used the fireplace quite a bit, so both it and the furnace were consuming natural gas. The fact the two still used less natural gas over the old furnace makes me incredibly happy. I feel like my quest to leave a smaller footprint is happening. The bad news is the price of natural gas this November is double the price of natural gas last November. When I saw the change, I was speechless. Twice as much. Seriously. This country is going absolutely insane. After lamenting all of this to a close friend yesterday, she said, "Well, I know you don't eat bacon, but it's now $13 a package, and that's...

My lovely summer is coming to an end. Nearly time to return to work, well, as much as we can return to work, which means being online for the fall semester. From my cozy house out in a little town. And I can't say that I'm sad I won't be returning to campus. I do miss my friends. A lot. But I truly love being out here, awakening to the orchestra that is birdsong outside my bedroom window, sitting on the front porch every morning and evening, wandering through the garden that surrounds the house and finding beautiful little surprises from one day to the next. And while I didn't get the deck on the back of the house (lumber shortage due to the pandemic) or the garage door opener installed (not in a hurry to get this done), those will happen. Just not right now.  Mostly I've just been enjoying being here. The quiet when I wake up during the night is wonderful. The owls calling back and forth make me not want to fall back to sleep. So far, because the temps have stayed ...

The last few weeks I've been chillin'. Mostly just hanging around the house with Ado, enjoying being back in the space the kids and I called home when I decided to move out of my husband's place. The space with the living room windows overlooking the back yard and deck. The space where my three kids and I took a year to figure out where each of us was headed. Lovely Beautiful Daughter decided to go out on her own, and for the last nearly four weeks she's been in Taiwan on a teacher training exchange through the university. Funny Delightful Son moved to live on campus at the university he transferred to after finishing his community college courses. I miss them both, and when I moved back into this space, I could hear echos of them throughout the rooms. The first few days were kind of tough with them not being here, too. But Angel Baby is here with me. He has the entire upstairs all to himself. Three nice-sized rooms, each serving a different purpose. One room is his c...

I put a post-it note on my monitor to remind me to listen to the Purdue men's basketball game at 1 today. At 3:30, I looked up from the book I was reading to see I'd totally missed the game. This is like the fourth game I've wanted to listen to but missed because I simply forget. Hence the post-it. Lot of good it did. I must not be all that interested in actually listening to the games or I'd figure out a way to make sure I remember. I almost missed taking Ado to the vet yesterday, for his spa day, because I'd totally forgotten about his appointment. I didn't have to get up for work, so at 6 am I rolled over and went back to sleep for over an hour. When I finally dragged myself into the living room, I noticed my phone's calendar had kicked in, trying to remind me of Ado's bath and nail clipping appointment. Maybe my forgetfulness was because of the first week back in the classroom fatigue. Maybe it was because of having a gnarly headache four out of th...

Just ten days left of my summer. Ten. Sad face. Tears sliding down my cheeks face. Actually, I'm okay with the summer coming to a close. The two months of working from home were glorious, but it'll be good to get back on campus. The bummer part about going into this fall semester is one of my good friends leaving. He was offered a beautiful deal with a two-year college in Michigan, one he couldn't pass up. It'll definitely be strange without him across the hall from me (though there is whispering of turning his office into a gaming room, complete with mini fridge and microwave). His leaving opened up the opportunity for me to step back into teaching the Honors seminar course. That along with teaching English 102 in hybrid format and coordinating the writing center will be my load. I'm looking forward to all of it, especially the hybrid classes. I've been waiting and waiting for the hybrid classes to get the green light, and they finally did. For the ne...

Each day this week the heat has closed in around 90 degrees. I have a stack of paperback books on my desk, and the humidity curls back the cover of the top book. I shift it to go underneath the second book so the cover will flatten out. I end up shifting each top book every so often throughout the day. They all end up taking a turn at having their cover curl. I finished reading The Road  by Cormac McCarthy and The Last Coyote  by Michael Connelly this week. The first is quite a fast read, and I'm not sure why I've not read it before now. I've seen the movie, but I just never thought about reading the book until a colleague brought it up recently. I truly enjoyed it -- well, not the subject matter so much, or the ending -- but rather the way McCarthy fashions phrases, offers an objective viewpoint. I found myself rereading paragraphs, sentences, phrases as I was taken by the image, the metaphor, the feel created through the words. The second book is a Harry Bosch crime n...

I recently finished reading The Yamas and Niyamas by Deborah Adele. I can't remember another book I wrote in as much as I wrote in this book. I felt like the ideas were reaching out and grabbing me by the collar, telling me, "Hey, we're talking to you." I now carry the book with me wherever I go. I specifically bought a bag big enough to put the book and a notebook in, so I can pull the book out and read it again, or pull the notebook out and write something that strikes me. This book came along in my yoga journey at the just-right time. It will go with me on my long cycling rides. I will use it to guide me as I move through my days. A part of my yoga journey has included meditation. I took a meditation class at the studio I attend, and I loved each week we met, learned more about meditation. I'm now reading Mindfulness in Plain English by Bhante Gunaratana, and this evening, as I mused over something about myself that I am unhappy about, my thoughts turned t...

It's like a collective holding of the breath right now. The sky has turned dark gray with snow clouds, and the weather service has issued two warnings: snow accumulation and wind chill. Looks like anywhere from 6-8 inches of the white stuff and bitterly cold winds are creeping our way. I'm all set. Got my next book underway ( Driftless by David Rhodes--loving it!), got plenty of eats in the house, and got quilts at my fingertips just in case the house gets chillier than it already is. Yesterday we had frozen pipes going into the washer, but thankfully Hubby was able to get those taken care of with no disaster happening (like the unfortunate soul who burned his house down trying to thaw out pipes by using a blow torch). I'm just hoping we get past tomorrow's arctic blast with pipes intact. Burst pipes are no fun. I'm truly thankful we dodged the bullet yesterday. Today, I peeked into my hoop house, thinking no way was there going to be anything growing, but surpri...

I'm already feeling anxiety of summer coming to an end and having to return to work in two weeks. I guess this means I've had a wonderful summer. I don't want my days with nothing scheduled as "Have to Do" to end. Putzing around in my gardens, making cucumber relish, playing with my new welder, saying, "Nahhh, I don't want to do the laundry right now" and instead settling into my hammock to read have become the way of life for me the last two months. Letting go of this is going to be incredibly difficult. My heart is already weeping over the realization of an ending approaching. On a happier note, I fashioned my first welded sculpture. The weld isn't spectacular, but it is solid. Overall, I'm very happy with the finished product. When I let up on the welding torch trigger and realized the flowers were actually going to stay in place, I wanted to pump my fist in the air and do a happy dance. Instead, I filled out an Artist Application to hav...

Now that Lent is over, along with my giving up spending so much time online and wasting vast amounts of breathing on watching mindless TV, I need to assess how I actually did with my "sacrifices." In the end, the result is mixed. The internet wasn't difficult to limit. I allowed myself to write twice a week on the blog, visit MyFitnessPal to record my meals and exercise (which has been invaluable for helping me finally break the plateau of 148 pounds), and record my daily mileage on DailyMile. I checked in with Facebook here and there, posting after my sprint tri's and liking some of my friends' posts, but I found I wasn't really missing Facebook at all, so I'm thinking I might keep that particular site to a minimum all the way around. If I need to get in touch with any friends, I can call them or text them from my cell. Other than that, the internet wasn't a huge part of my life during Lent. I do admit I missed blogging. For me, blogging is more abo...