I'm moving ...

I'm switching to another blog site. I'm not all that unhappy with this one, but the new one is a little easier to use and has more features I like. For future blogs, click here.

Hope to see you there soon. A Dios!

CG

Hunger Moon

The calendar we use today is a fairly recent invention as far as human history is concerned. For most of our existence, we marked time by observing the seasons and the moons. Each of the twelve or thirteen moons that appeared while Earth made one full journey around the sun was named. Mostly those names derived from what was happening in the plant or animal kin-doms where a particular people lived. Systems for determining when one moon changed to another varied, too; some traditions considered a full moon the start of a lunar cycle, others the new moon and still others the first sighting of the waxing crescent moon.

In our neck of the woods we would likely be experiencing the Hunger Moon, which began about a week ago with the full moon on February 2. When our lives were closely connected with Earth's life systems, this time was often one of scarcity. Even following a good harvest, the winter stores of squash, corn and root vegetables would be running low. The little game that could be found was often scrawny from its own lack of nourishment.

The Hunger Moon. How far most of us live from that experience. Hop in the car and tootle on over to A&P: "fresh" vegetables and fruit line the produce bins; milk, eggs and cheese? no problem; beef, fish, fowl, pork? all here.

Over the past 50 years we've put the final touches on our disconnect from the Earthways of our ancestors. Personally, I think that's a great loss. (Besides, many of us would probably benefit from a "moon" or two of less food each year, and when the Sap moon appears in a few weeks, we'd all be tuned up for the fabulous taste of maple syrup.)

To everything there is a season. Perhaps, if we renew our relationship with the rhythms and systems of the sacred Earth from which we arose, it might be easier for us to recognize—and to heal—the false sense of separation that permits us to destroy the past 65,000,000 years of God's creative effort on this amazing planet.

I think that's a goal worthy of our undivided attention, our most fervent prayer, our all-out effort.

Another loss

Last night we learned that a very good friend died unexpectedly. She was way too young, and the loss of her presence on Earth is just now beginning to settle in.

Her life was hard and challenging, yet she was one of the most courageous, faithful and funny people I've known. Over the next weeks and months her passing will be marked by a rolling wake of confusion, shock and grief. She was the superior of a religious order, and her sisters will have to find their way into the future without her body or her voice.

I know that wake will eventually relax back into the great ocean of life. We will mourn for sure—and then we will all get on with the business of life. But the molecules of that ocean will never be quite the same. We have all been changed by knowing and loving her, and the mark of her being stays with us; the song of her life will dance in the air forever.

Poison in the Shadows

Today was interesting, enlightening, surprising, difficult, meaningful, hopeful — all of which came as a bit of a surprise to me. I'm attending an antiracism training.

I expected some shaking up; it upsets me when something poisonous creeps out of the shadows of my unconscious—like some horrendously bigoted, racist phrase. I learned a few such sayings at about the same time my first grade teacher was trying to get the idea of "subtract" into my head.

My mother taught me "sweatin' like a nigger on election day". Even in the context of this blog, it grieves me to admit I ever said such a thing. It was years before I really understood what it meant and how truly mean and arrogant it was.

Over the years I expunged those racist aphorisms from my speech, and by my early thirties I had a good working knowledge of what "white privilege" meant. I knew I had benefited from it all my life.

But that was head knowledge. Today I began to experience what it feels like to have sailed through life, free to get an education, compete for a good job, join any club or church I liked.

And it didn't feel good. I felt ashamed, frankly. I have been quick to judge my forebears in this country for climbing to wealth and privilege on the backs of the Native Peoples, but today I began to understand how I've kept that dynamic alive.

Cleaning out the shadowy corners is dangerous and not a little scary. It would be a lot easier to just dismiss the feelings and continue to think I'm not a racist because I don't say "those things" any more. But until the poison in the shadows is revealed, experienced and healed, I will continue to wear a face of racism.

I have no business claiming to follow Jesus until I'm willing to own up to my participation in the sin of separation, in any of its ugly guises.

Who moved the cheese? It was a group effort ...

I'm traveling at the moment; now in New York City for a two-day training. The Melrose sisters came down to the city convent yesterday for some meetings here, which usually requires a few little adjustments to our daily routines; call someone to come let Simon out and feed him, check on the cats, set the ducks up in their straw bale mansions if we won't be back in time to put them to bed before the big predators begin the nightly hunt.

This time we had a more unusual concern: I had (unwisely) begun making a wheel of cheese on Monday, forgetting that it really requires some periodic attention over a three-day period.

Uh-oh. The third day—yesterday—was the day for the cheese to soak in a brine solution for 24 hours, including a few turns so the top of the floating cheese would get the full brine-benefit to make its rind. Now what to do?

Ever creative, we put the cheese, brine and all, into a five gallon bucket with a lid on it, and hauled it down here. Of course the purpose of the lid was to keep the brine solution from sloshing out, so I put the lid on tight.

A little too tight, as it turned out. Once here I couldn't get it off, so I left the contraption in my room to attend the meetings. When I had a chance I asked Sr. Lilli Ana to give me a hand by trying to get the lid off, but our meetings didn't leave much time ... sooooo .... at 4:00 when we finished and the other sisters were ready to head home, the peripatetic cheese was still floating around unturned, the lid still jammed on the bucket.

Ah, well. I tried. The rind may not form properly. The cheese may crack. The whole shootin' match may fall apart in the car on the way back to Melrose. Or maybe everything will come out just fine and we'll have another wheel of delicious homemade cheese in three weeks. Maybe this odd trip will actually add something fabulous to the cheese that we'll want duplicate in future cheese production. We'll just have to wait and see.

That's one of the interesting lessons learned in reconnecting with food. Sometimes a lot of effort results in — a lot of effort. But sometimes all that work results in a taste (and health) treat unmatched in any corporate American grocery store. And oh, is it ever worth it.

So don't be afraid to take your cheese out for a little drive. Who knows? You may discover something entirely new and fabulous. It's worth a try.

Retreat

Today is a quiet day for me; I am "in retreat". At least once a month each sister spends one day in quiet reflection, mixed perhaps with a bit of physical labor to keep the body tuned. Today I finally covered my windows with plastic to keep the cold and wind from stealing heat from the house. A minor bit of work in service of Mother Earth.

The sky is painfully blue today, so Bob is stretched out in the afternoon patch of sunlight on the bed. I, too, am going to stretch a bit, though not to snooze and purr. I will practice a new form of meditation for awhile, a new path to keep me connected to the One.

Ah, blessed retreat ...

Bob Again

It's been too long since I've lived with a cat. I've forgotten an awful lot about how they communicate. I remember tail-swishing, the end of purring and laid-back ears as signals to lay off and back away. But Bob finds attacking me with no discernible provocation an increasingly enjoyable pastime, and I couldn't seem to figure out if he was a sad mental case or if I was completely missing his point, whatever that was.

I was missing the point.

I finally wised up enough to check out "cat behavior" results on an internet search. Duh. Cats like to play, for heaven's sake. When Bob first arrived he was content to enjoy his new, safe, rife-with-food digs. I offered a variety of toys, but he wasn't interested. Maybe mature males just don't have that playful bent, I thought, or at least Bob didn't. The toys went off to Smooch, and Bob and I settled in together.

Fine; I'm happy with a feline companion who sleeps a lot and likes to snuggle.

But when the urge to attack me appeared, and soon became more and more frequent, I began to get worried. An entirely unprovoked and nasty bite on the nose at 5 AM this morning sent me off to Google-land. Thank goodness a lot of good, well-informed folk are happy to share their wisdom. Bob isn't actually attacking me; he's just ready to play. In fact, he needs to play. Stalking and catching prey is what cats do, and they need to do it whether they are safely indoors or taking their chances in the wild.

An interesting digression: if you jerk your hand away when a cat bites it (and who wouldn't), you've just informed him that you are pretty good prey, and worthy of chasing down. If you just relax your hand (much easier said than done), and blow gently in his face, the game is off. The wind is unexpected and not much fun, and the prey won't move. Who needs that. The trick is to teach your playful little furball that a toy is good prey, your hand is not.

One delightful cat toy later we're on our way down the road to redirected kitty enthusiasm. I think Bob will soon be an all-around happier guy. If it works, I'm sure going to be a happier nun.

When things go wrong

I spent this morning testifying in court over in New Jersey. I've done this before, and I don't enjoy it. When it was over I felt several thousand pounds lighter and my mood improved enormously.

This had to do with a man who is adept at pinching other folks' identities. Credit cards, driver's license, the works. Strangely, he never seemed to spend much on himself; he had nice clothes for important events, but mostly he looked pretty much like the average guy. He didn't own a car, or even his own place.

As far as I know, that is. I suppose when you're good at stealing other people's lives, you could have as many of your own as you wish. He is obviously intelligent, but somewhere along the line of his own life he opted to use that intelligence to harm others. I guess what he got in return was a sense of power — perhaps limitless in scope. I don't know.

It was quite strange to be testifying for the prosecution. I knew him as a clever, funny, charming guy, and he didn't filch anything of mine so I have no anger or resentment toward him. I understand some of the best crooks are charming indeed; but there I was, offering information that was going to help provide him a lengthy stay in the local federal prison — and there he was, smiling at me with that same impish charm as if he firmly believed every word of the lie his life has become.

He thought he was happy; I thought I might cry. What a waste of a human life. All that cleverness could so easily have been channeled in wonderful directions. I don't know what happened to him; I doubt anyone else does, either. Perhaps he can't explain it himself. He is so deeply immersed in his charade that no one even knows his real name.

How much sadder can a life be than to not be known for who you really are?

Free—free at last!

Thanks to the advice of an experienced "duck man", we've learned that Muscovy ducks do an amazingly fine job of coping with cold weather. Even when it's -15°.

Well go figure. Here we've been turning ourselves into pretzels, climbing in and out of the newly insulated duck houses (hey, the ducks got the first straw bale residences on the property), and now we find out all they need is non-frozen water, a bit of food and a shelter—and a simple open-sided lean-to would meet that requirement. They never did have to be confined to their fine houses when it got cold.

No wonder the ducks wanted to escape. They must have thought we were nuts.

I guess they were right, though; when we learn something new about what it means to live in harmony with the land and its wonderful creatures, our prior efforts often end up looking a little crazed. It's just like us humans to think animals need us to survive "out there".

They don't. When we take animals into our environment, we do owe them a safe and sustainable living situation, of course, but that's it. They can figure out the rest of it all by themselves.

That's a hard lesson to learn—that the Earth can take perfectly good care of itself without our help, and has been doing it for, oh, some four billion years or so. In fact, most of what we do to the Earth is detrimental, not helpful.

Maybe that's why most creatures don't have egos.

Of prophets ... and hometowns

Today's gospel (Luke 4:21-30, RCL) includes that oft-quoted passage about how anyone with a prophetic message (which is pretty much always bad news) isn't going to get a fair hearing among his/her friends and family. "No prophet is accepted in the prophet's hometown" Jesus says among his homies; and they are so angry they try to haul him off to the nearest cliff so they can throw him to his death.

Talk about not being accepted. Thankfully, Jesus — in true shamanic fashion — walks right through the middle of the angry mob, apparently unnoticed, and makes good his getaway.

On hearing this passage our minds usually drift toward empathy with Jesus' statement about inevitable rejection from our hometown crowd. But this morning, as I listened once again to this familiar passage, my attention was yanked, and then glued (I missed the rest of the gospel and a fair amount of the prayers that followed), to the whole idea of prophecy.

I have often said that we religious are (or at least should be) today's prophets; we are the ones commissioned to stand out there on the edge of things, challenging, inviting, cajoling the rest of the church and anyone else who will listen to leave that proverbial comfort zone and follow Jesus into the future.

Common understanding notwithstanding, a prophet isn't a fortune-teller, and s/he isn't the designated doom-sayer, either; there are no crystal balls involved. A prophet has the amazing ability to be obedient to today.

Come again?

OK, "obedience" is not saying yessir/nosir to the ones standing on the rungs above you. This lovely word comes down to us with roots in "toward" and "listen" (ob - audire). To be obedient is to "listen toward". Imagine leaning toward a speaker so you hear and understand every word. Quite a challenge when those lips are spouting something we don't want to hear, something that yanks our emotional chain, something we don't agree with and don't enjoy hearing.

A prophet has great skill in just that kind of deep listening. S/he is something of a blank slate upon which all of the information spinning around us today can be written. And what does s/he do with it?

A true prophet takes it in, and then looks at it with what I call the "35,000 foot viewpoint" — avoiding the devil-in-the-details snare so the big picture zooms into focus. S/he has the ability to look at the train we're all on, and then to figure out where that train is headed.

If you see a train speeding toward a washed-out trestle, you just have to do something. Call 911. Rehearse your CPR and crash-EMT skills. Try to get the engineer's attention. Anything.

Anything at all, because you can see an inevitable disaster looming on the horizon.

That is prophetic witness. No wonder we don't want to hear from these folks. We're sipping our martinis in the club car, looking sideways at pretty scenery sliding by the window. Don't annoy us with 911 calls and red flags.

But the prophets, who see the scenery, the passengers, and the destination of the train, are trying to get our attention. Considering that the entire Earth is our hometown, it's no wonder they're having a rough time.

Perfect Balance

I suppose this picture will hike a few eyebrows. What is a nun doing showing an, um, amorous embrace between slugs on her blog?

Raciness aside, I think this is one of the more lovely pictures we have. That is saying more than you might imagine; last summer slugs were the bane of our gardening endeavors, easily consuming as much food (and I wouldn't be surprised if it were actually more) than six humans did. We confess to dispatching a goodly number of them using the tried and true beer method. They entered eternal slug-life as happy little critters; I was sure if I listened hard enough I'd hear drinking songs and raucous laughter from the strawberry patch.

But then Sr. Helena Marie took this amazing picture, and my attitude made an abrupt about-face. How can you not like creatures that mate in the yin-yang position? Suddenly I thought strawberry shortcake came in a poor second to the artistry of these amazingly beautiful creatures — and who would ever think that about a slug?

Natural conversation

Living on the farm is teaching us firsthand what lies behind some of the sayings humans use freely. Brooding. A sitting duck. To squirrel away.

It was the red squirrels' squirreling this fall that caused Sr. Lilli Ana to predict a really, really severe winter. Those little clowns laid up a supply of pine cones that would keep all the horses on our neighbor's farm in feed for months. This is just one pile; there were a lot of 'em.

We've lived close enough to the land to respect the conversation available continuously from Mother Earth. In Colorado I used to watch the height of the skunk cabbage to predict the snowfall for the coming winter. Here we "listen" to the squirrels by noticing what they lay aside to keep them going until the riches of next spring become available. Huge piles of "squirreled away" pine cones predicts a tough winter.

But with global warming, we began to wonder if the squirrels had lost their predicting touch. October. November. December. By the middle of January we'd had one snow shower and an average temperature of about 50°. Not good.

Sr. Lilli Ana stuck with the squirrels, though. "Just wait," she kept saying. "This winter's going to be severe. Trust the squirrels."

Well, it's hard to trust a little tree imp. I'm human, you know, and we have thermometers, graphs, dew points, Doppler radar, and an overdeveloped frontal lobe that helps us believe we're the brightest and most skillful creature around.

What I forgot is that all the creatures have amazing abilities, and each one has at least one skill I can't even comprehend much less accomplish myself. Global warming has certainly stirred the climate pot in dangerous ways, and one result may well be uneven weather patterns with extreme fluctuations. But whatever is behind this strange winter, the brutal times have arrived for those who live in nature's housing. Tonight, tomorrow, Saturday ... temperatures near zero and enough wind to drive them down to fifteen below.

Those squirrels were right. Brrrrrrr ....

Out of Control

You know how it is when someone does something funny in a situation where no one should be laughing?

Today during our daily conference, where we discuss the nits and lice of daily life — who needs the car, shopping needs for the day, house repairs needed and so on — one of the sisters jumped back and clapped her hands together loudly, then resumed talking as if nothing unusual had happened. Startled, the rest of us reacted. "Wow. That's quite a tic you've developed there ..." was probably the best one. We all laughed.

But somewhere deep inside each of us, the funny bone had been tickled. Snickering evolved into guffaws. This was really, really funny. Of course there was a reasonable explanation: the sister was trying to dispatch a bothersome gnat, buzzing around her head. Not all that strange, really.

But funny.

We resumed our meeting, and the day went on. I turned a newly made cheese every hour. A phone appointment occurred. A dog coat was constructed to protect Simon from the frigid weather to come. The duck houses were gussied up with tarps, straw bales and new hasps and hinges so the -12° temperatures to come wouldn't harm those fragile feet and caruncles. Plans were completed for the trip to upstate New York and the NOFA conference.

At 5:30 we headed out to the chapel for Evening Prayer. There we were, beginning one of the most solemn and lovely offices in the daily round of prayer. "Now that we have come to the setting of the sun, and our eyes behold the Vesper light ... " Solemn. Beautiful. Serious.

Until the first snort of laughter exploded.

I don't know what triggered the connection to that gnat-killing hand-clap, but there it was. And all of us were laughing and crying at the same time, unable to stop.

As far as I can tell, this was the first time in the seventeen years I've spent in this Community that we thought we might have to memorialize an office due to hysterics. We just couldn't stop. We tried everything: saying rather than singing; laughing uncontrollably for awhile, to see if we could get ourselves under control. It got better, but it never disappeared entirely, even when we sang the final respond for a double feast. Poor Paul; not an entirely respectful honoring of his conversion.

We meant him no harm, of course; we tried our best to reign in the snickering. But sometimes you just have to let laughter have its way. Time will fix it eventually.

Our apologies for this unorthodox celebration of your life, dear Paul. We hope that you, too, had an occasionally quirky sense of humor that carried you away from your speaking goal on the wings of silliness. Or at least some tolerance for those of us who do.

Winter woe, springtime promise

The ducks are out again today, and we're all glad about it. For the past two days they've had to stay in their houses, protected from the bitter cold. That means that two of us haul five-gallon buckets of water down to the duck houses, along with two dishes of duck feed and the empty water pans. While one of us sets up the food and water in each house and collects the eggs, the other keeps the ducks from escaping.

That is not quite as easy as it may sound. A twelve-pound duck with talons who wants to fly out of the house can pretty well do it. Imagine an un-neutered feral tom cat with wings and you'll get the idea. The whole procedure is reversed at night. We have to re-hay the houses then, too; if we don't, the ducks' fragile feet could suffer from spending the night on wet (and probably frozen) hay—the inevitable result of their feather and nose hygiene, and the very disaster we're trying to prevent by keeping them locked up.

Duck house-arrest happened quite a bit last winter, but this is the first time this season. Strange. I guess that's good for the ducks, because they certainly prefer to be roaming free, noshing on whatever tasty greens they find and soil-dwellers they can dig up. For the ducks, being cooped up, literally, is miserable—to say nothing of stinky. The sisters aren't too happy with added labor the confinement requires either.

On the other hand, those cold, cold days are necessary to maintain the health of the whole environment around here. Maple tree sap needs to "rest" in the roots for long periods of time to be fortified with nutrients from the soil. Good for the tree, good for making maple syrup. The cold maintains a balance among the tiny critters, like virii, bacteria, deer ticks, slugs, beetles and ground bees. Cold triggers hibernation in some of the local animal community. Cold sends the geese south each year. Cold keeps some of the more "challenging" plants, like poison ivy, from growing dangerously large and powerful. Cold is our friend.

So, I'm sorry Basil, Henrietta, Clementine, Petra and Macrina, that you have to suffer days of confinement. But the payback comes this spring, when you'll each have two strong, healthy feet and those amazingly strange facial decorations (caruncles). That's when you'll really have a great time, rooting around in the mud and finding the most delicious tender greens. Hang in there. It's coming ...

A Word About Bob

I think I mentioned awhile back that another drop-off critter had joined our ranks: a (mostly) snuggly black cat. Buzz Lightyear is his official name; but over the months since his arrival his true nature has been revealed, and it is clear that he is a Bob.

Bob was a fine companion during my recent illness, spending most of his days purring loudly as he wrapped himself around my sore throat, cuddled on my chest under the quilt, or sat on my head so he could claim most of the pillow. I found the comfort of his warmth worth a few cat-hairs in the mouth. He purred a lot, and was extremely nice to me, even when I repeatedly rolled over on him in my sleep.

Now that I'm back to normal, so is Bob. He doesn't like it when I work at the computer; he sits on the tablet, makes phone calls with his feet, knocks my pen on the floor and swats it under the cabinet, rubs his face all over the keyboard (always dangerous to the work in progress), and stands in front of the monitor. He has a limited tolerance for the petting he begs for. He uses the latest rows of my knitting project to clean out the litter from his paws. Occasionally he yowls at a decibel level that sounds like he's being declawed without benefit of anesthesia, but all he's saying is "It's time for cookies, woman!" His main mode of communication, though, involves teeth and claws and usually draws blood. Mine.

I think Bob misses being outdoors, now that time has erased the memories of starving, running from coyotes and raccoons, and yearning to sleep peacefully (and safely) in a human lap for an hour or so. Mercifully, all he remembers now are the birds, the warm sun, the thrill of the hunt.

We struggle to understand each other, and are both grateful for those moments when we seem to have figured out what the other wants and is willing to give. So I try to be tolerant of his crabby moods; I work hard at "reading" him, which is of course impossible. I try anyway, because I love him, and to the best of cat possibility, he loves me.

And when you love something, you learn to cut it a lot of slack. After all, they do the same for you when you need it most.

Learning Another Lesson

I'm not too adept at sickness, having been disgustingly healthy most of my life. Things go downhill fast when I feel mostly good but just flat out starchless; my patience (never my strong suit) goes right out the window. Talk about crabby. Good thing I wasn't around my sisters more. Crabby drooped downhill to depression as the weeks (six, count 'em) wore on.

I've been told, by many fellow pneumonia sufferers, that staying down is critical to getting better. They tell me, if I were to try to get back to my normal life before it's really time to do so, I would suffer a relapse which would be, of course, much worse than its predecessor. Hunh. Pretty effective threat.

I should probably note that this advice comes from a perspective of some distance for each teller. Like childbirth, I suspect they have forgotten something of the agony and looniness that set in with the long days of cotton-brained, isolated, frustrating boredom. I suspect this because I've now been vertical (except for a pretty good night's sleep) since mid-day yesterday, and I'm already beginning to look backward at this experience with more perspective and less hopelessness. It wasn't all that bad after all, was it?

Wellll ... maybe, maybe not. Not enough perspective yet.

But I feel that inner rising, the bubbling to the surface of optimism, that heralds a return to health and active engagement. Everything I look at or think about is interesting again. Even the foggy, gray day is beautiful once more, the bright red of cardinals and woodpeckers a surprise visual blast of beauty that makes my heart sing—the taste of newly-made cheese a delight on my tongue, cleaning two fresh duck eggs a satisfying use of five morning minutes—in a day in which I am so grateful to be alive, to see and smell and hear and ponder and laugh and love.

Now that I think of it, those long days of feeling only minimally "alive" may have been something of a pseudo-burial; an enforced resting time during which my ability to appreciate was reawakened and focused in ways my "regular" life couldn't allow. I wrote this to a relative this morning: "Isn't it amazing how something awful, like the death of a parent, opens doors that were firmly sealed shut until the awful thing happened? Convinces me yet again that there is a Cosmic Wisdom waaaay beyond our understanding."

It is amazing. Thank you, Cosmic Wise One, for helping me sink into a place where my [st]illness unearthed a key to new life.

Duckie Update

I just realized that we had another duck re-arrangement in the past few months that I missed sharing with you duck fans out there.

Sadly, Terry (Teresa of Avila) died this fall. Somehow she picked up a bacteria that caused a severe infection in her heart. Apparently ducks appear perfectly fine, as did Terry, until they are at death's door. I know people like that — stoic to the literal end. I'm not convinced this is a great idea.

Anyway, Terry was fine until the evening we tried to put her into the duck house for the night and she didn't want to move from under the bush. One of the sisters thought she might have an injured leg, as she seemed unable to get up. She picked her up, called me and we headed off for the vet. Though the doc saw her quickly, she had just died in sister' arms when the vet entered the examining room.

The vet said she had been very ill for months, but ducks just do that stoic thing. There was nothing that could have been done with the amount of bodily damage Terry had suffered by the time she began to show signs of trouble.

We've kept a close eye on the rest of the flock, but so far everyone seems to be just fine. Luckily, this seems to have been an isolated infection. I do think the loss was hard on the little duck family, though. Everyone has been a little more subdued; the egg production slacked off, Petra has been in brood mode for months ... death is a difficult part of life for just about everyone. So we do what we can, we continue to love each other, we celebrated her little duck life, and we appreciate every day, every egg, every funny little waddle that our precious duck family shares with us.

The times, are they a-changin'?

I'm sitting here in a semi-dark room (and yes, I'm still in my jammies, though I have plans to change that), it's nearly noon and I'm eyeing the bed with thoughts of another nap drifting through my head. I'm still thinking I may never feel normal again.

When I'm healthy and begin to recognize that I'm in a rut, my usual remedy is to clean my room and rearrange all the furniture. The sisters laugh about this, usually accompanied by a significant eyeball roll; but for some reason a change of scenery does wonders for my attitude. That works fine when I'm feeling healthy and full of pep. But unearthing the broom and a dust rag is just more than I can accomplish right now. Hmmmm ...

OK, I do have enough energy to sit here at the computer, at least for an hour or two. The least demanding renovation I can think of is the web site and this blog. Soooo ... voila, new looks on both.

Now I'm heading back to bed to wait for that wonderful, energetic surge that comes with change to arrive. Surely it will happen soon.

The Winter Blahs

OK, I know it's been months since I blogged last. I've been hearing about it. But really, I have some great excuses. The best one is that I managed to be "serially sick": first the flu, which swallowed up almost three weeks, followed by bronchitis and pneumonia, which is still lurking meanly in my lungs. Then my computer got even sicker than I did, so I finally had to surrender to getting a new one; I'm still trying to get it on its feet. As I'm sure you can tell, this is to make you all feel sorry for me and not get on my case about not blogging.

And no, I'm not oblivious to the fact that six weeks of feeling only slightly more energetic than the winter mud outside my window doesn't explain why I didn't blog in September, October or November last year. Guess I had an early case of the winter blahs.

You know what I mean. The garden has transformed from a wild green food jungle to a few droopy brussels sprouts and kale, surrounded by mounds of earth-toned mulch. The trees are bare sticks, through which I can see all the way to the top of our hill and across the lower valley to the depressing subdivisions to the west. There's not enough sunlight each day to keep anyone happy for long. And this year the weather stayed way too warm, which may mean the 2007 maple sugaring season won't happen at all. Now that's really depressing.

I'm sure I'd be less gloomy if I felt better, instead of sitting here in my PJs, thinking I should probably take a little nap before I finish this, waiting for GoToMyPC to drag more files from the dead computer to the new one. Here's what I think is going on: I'm just like the parsnips, carrots, turnips, Daikons and their other hearty winter friends, who are snuggled in the ground, getting sweeter every day. They're not growing, not sending up any green leaves to capture a few rays of yummy sunlight ... they're just lying there, waiting, allowing the Earth to work its winter magic in their still bodies.

I'm not so sure "getting sweeter" is precisely what's happening to me, but surely all my recent down time is allowing my body to garner its resources in service of my health. I may not feel it yet, but one of these days I'm going to wake up and feel more like my old, energetic, cheerful self than I do now. And when that happens, I'll probably notice that the sun is already up longer every day, that the maple trees have survived the scary warm spell, that I'm thrilled to have fresh turnips and potatoes and carrots for dinner.

It's worth the wait.