Change, change, change

First, yesterday was David's last day at work - he is officially retired.  And, as he put it, "freaking happy."

Next, last Tuesday I had my five year CT scan - all clear.  From the point of view of cancer, I guess you could say I am "cured".  It's a milestone.  I feel huge relief and enormous gratitude.

Finally, I gave my employer notice that I, too, will be retiring.  My last day at work will be July 27.  Now I truly start counting down to a new beginning.

Between now and then, in mid-June a visit from Melissa, John and Austin - cousins from Tennessee - and in July, from Sam, Cachao and Cello, my boys.  

Then, and I hope always, this is what I'll look forward to seeing every morning - taken on my morning walk with Ella on Memorial Day weekend:

Peace.  Peace. Far and Near.  Soon, in our lifetimes.

Cello's 4th Birthday! And it turns out ... pneumonia!

First, and most importantly, it is Cello's 4th birthday!  How handsome and happy does this birthday boy look?!?  I wish I could be there to share cake - but I'm counting days until Sam and both Cello and Cachao come for a visit to Maine in July!  Happy Birthday Cello!

So turns out I wasn't "better."  Last Monday I felt worse, significantly, and also thought I might have a fever.  Turns out, yes, 101.1 - not off the charts but I knew how I felt.  So David took me to Pen Bay to the ER.  The nurse who did the intake seemed skeptical, or maybe I just felt defensive and stupid.  Then I saw handsome, kind and very young doctor, Dr. M.  He asked questions, heard the history I told, listened to my chest.  He said it sounded to him like I had pneumonia, although he couldn't hear it in my chest when he listened.  He sent me for chest x-rays.  Bingo.  Pneumonia.  Eventually I got a prescription for an antibiotic and came home.

The med instructions and the general discharge papers both said I could feel "improvement" in 1-2 days and feel "significantly better" in 3-4 days, and warned direly of the need to keep taking all 10 days of antibiotics.  The next day I felt terrible.  Unfortunately I'm in a particularly bad stretch at work, so I couldn't just stay in bed, but I did end up taking about half day.  By the 3rd day I did feel "some improvement."  I knew it because I woke up and wanted coffee for the first time in many days.  Since then, some down and up and down.  People I talk to - who have had or know someone who had - pneumonia tell me it can take weeks to recover fully.  The hardest parts are the periodic deep racking cough (which I think may actually be useful in breaking up the mucus in my lung - only have the pneumonia in one lung, for which I am grateful) and how battered and bruised my whole body feels from the coughing, and the extreme exhaustion, which actually comes in waves.

I had a nice long catch up with Dan one day this week.  He was wondering when I would be coming to CT.  I had to cancel the CT scan that was scheduled for May 11, and therefore, the planned trip, too.   Young Dr. M of the ER said that the pneumonia could cause "ambiguity" in the scan results, that lymph nodes in my chest would appear angry and swollen, etc.  I waited until Friday and then rescheduled for the day after Memorial Day.  Hopefully I'll be well on the recovery road by then.

Meanwhile, the world moves on, although without my paying very close attention.  I hate that.  But frankly, just finding the energy to work every day pretty much has taken all my attention, all my energy.  While my attention has been otherwise occupied those delicate light green early leaves have burst out on the trees everywhere.  The willows are positively fuzzy with greenness.  And our own tulips have colored:

I took this of Ella the same afternoon in our back yard:

Here in Mid Coast Maine, life goes on.  Here's a randomly selected sample from this week's Free Press:

• Star Gazing at Deer Foot Farm, Fri., May 15, 8 p.m., Rte. 131, Appleton. Georges River Land Trust presents Pete Kalajian of Central Maine Astronomical Society, who leads naked-eye observation. Public welcome. FMI: 594-5166.
• Alewife Walk with Naturalist, Sat., May 16, 8 a.m. Don Reimer leads it at Payson Park, Warren. All welcome. FMI: Georges River Land Trust, 594-5166.
• Sensory Awareness Walk at Cross Point Preserve, Sat., May 16, 9-10:30 a.m. All ages. Meet at trailhead parking lot on Rte. 27, 3.2 miles from Boothbay Center monument. FMI: thall@bbrlt.org.
• Home Firewood Production, Sat., May 16, 9-11 a.m., Hidden Valley Nature Center Barn, Jefferson. Learn how to process & stack next winter's wood. $12/$10 HVNC, SWLA, DLWA, PWA and SVCA members. Advance registration preferred: hvnc.org.
• Birding Paddle on Goose River, Sat., May 16, 9 a.m.-1 p.m. Meet at put-in behind Swan Lake Grocery off Rte. 141, Swanville. Bring boat, lunch, sunscreen. FMI: BelfastBayWatershed.org.
• Maine Old Cemetery Association Program, Sat., May 16. Morning program ($3) and lunch ($7) at First Congregational-Christian Church, New Gloucester, followed by field trip to New Gloucester Lower Cemetery. RSVP by May 7: 877-7675, rootslilla@gmail.com.
• "Spirituality and Religion" Public Conversation, Sat., May 16, 9 a.m.-3 p.m., Farmstead Conf. Ctr., Rte. 1, Rockport. Speakers and small-group discussions for people of all (or no) religions. $25 covers lunch. Send check by May 13: Nativity Lutheran Church, 179 Old County Rd., Rockport, 04849. FMI: 596-0519.

From the ridiculous to the sublime, I guess.  Later today, I am hoping to have the energy to drive to Rockport and join the rest of my ukulele ensemble to pay 3 songs at some private school fundraiser.  They asked our teacher if he would be willing to do it and he asked us.  The last time we were ALL together to practice was a couple weeks ago so I hope we don't suck too bad.  But, hey, it's free entertainment and its UKULELES!!  Ukuleles make you smile!

Peace (and many more happy birthdays to the Cello Man!)

Spring, a morning visit and another rant

Spring arrives, sooner or later, usually later, even in Mid Coast Maine.  Signs?  First, crocuses.

Those are from a morning walk with Ella last week.  At our house, the tulips have burst through the sodden ground, but they haven't bloomed yet.

Second, windjammers are being pulled from the water into dry dock to be spruced up for summer.  Down at Ulner's Point, three so far, including this one:

We had an early morning visitor to our deck twice last week.  Ella was very excited and really wanted to go out and "greet" her one-on-one.  

She left our house and found her way to our neighbor's back porch. Then plucked up insects from her front yard.  David said he saw this chicken stare down a cat, who backed away.  Not your run of the mill bird.

I've been under the weather for what seems like a long time but actually has been about a week or so.  Some congestion from a cold I had and thought I had whipped came back in my chest and I haven't been able to kick it.  It's left me feeling ... I guess I would say ... about 75%.  Saps my energy.  Saps mental clarity - well, that might be an exaggeration since that implies I HAD mental clarity to be sapped, but I guess I mean, it's made working difficult because it's made concentrating difficult.  (I actually feel ever so slightly better today, so anyone reading this, anyone who cares, keep those appendages crossed for me....)

 * * * * * *

The world endlessly devolves toward chaos.  How can I write the name "Freddie Gray" after having written the names of so many other young black men in this blog over the past months?  Like the crocuses and daffodils and other signs of spring, Baltimore bursts into protest.  "But, wait," I hear someone saying, "aren't you going to condemn the  'riots'?  Everyone has sympathy for the poor, for the discriminated against,  but 'rioting' is wrong!"  So goes the ubiquitous condemnation, including by our Afro-American president.  After all, if you somehow condone burning down a CVS, you might eventually think it's okay to burn down Wall Street!  Imagine that!  No, no!  This is America and private property is sacred.  (Let's not ask how long ago the young people doing the "rioting" themselves were considered to be "private property" in this great democracy of ours.)  

I think we white people, most especially we middle class white people, need to wake up.  Is it not obvious that in large part we have done as well as we have over the past several decades - since Ronald Reagan's "trickle down economics" - on the backs of the mass incarceration and related deepening impoverishment and exclusion of Black and Brown people from "normal" society?  I know all we white people would like to believe the myth that we have "earned" everything we have, that we "work hard" and so if our little piece of the pie has grown a little, we deserve it (and, logically, those who don't have a piece of the pie, not even a crumb, they must NOT have earned it, they must NOT deserve it!)  

What is it about a white person that keeps him or her from looking at a Freddie Gray or any of the young black men and women in the streets of Baltimore this week and asking the question, "What if that were me?  What if that were my child?  What if I lived in West Baltimore?  If my child grew up on those streets?   Are we all so smug, so entrenched in our own narrow self-regard that we think it wouldn't matter, that we would rise about it through "hard work" and "earning" it?  That even if we lived in a neighborhood with 50% unemployment, house after house abandoned and boarded up, where the stores have no fresh food and what they have is priced exorbitantly, where the infant mortality rate is higher than in most third world countries, where our brothers, our sons, our husbands are in prison or on parole or being illegally arrested and ending up dead - oh, no, not us, we wouldn't "riot" then?  Rioting is wrong.  We would peacefully protest.  We would "vote" in change.  

Right....  okay, enough ranting.  For now.  Not promising anything about next post.

* * * * * * *

I have a new concept to share, at least I think it's a new concept - yart!  Yart is the term David and I have given to "yard art".  You know what it is.  You've seen it.  It may be religious in nature.  It may be folksy.  It's not unique to Maine but it is very widespread up here.   I plan to start sharing photos of yart here.  And here's the first - and a very very widespread work of yart up here and particular pet peeve of mine:  the miniature faux well:

These miniature faux wells are plopped down all over town, all over Maine.  It's as if someone drove through with an 18-wheeler loaded down with miniature fake wells 10 or 15 years ago and hundreds of people thought, "Oh, how precious!" and plunked one down on their lawn.  Note also the second piece of yart behind the fake well - a multi-tiered fake art deco bird bath. (By the way, do you think one could legitimately abbreviate fake art deco as fart deco?)  

In time perhaps I'll branch out into gart - that obviously would be "garden art" - you know, the garden gnome, the granite turtle, ceramic deer...

What a world we live in - well, some of us live in.  

Not Freddie Gray.

Peace.