Sidetracked Charley

 The Other Side of Tomorrow My father spent seven weeks on a ventilator in a Kansas City, Missouri ICU dying. We all knew this was not the life he wanted. He had a living will which said so. But Missouri did not recognize living wills. He had no right to die in that state. So he was held in suspension in some place between life and death. And so were we. Our lives revolved around the ICU waiting room. With other's whose loved ones were held hostage. We waited for the bad news which could set us free. And we crocheted and knitted, and worked crossword puzzles in increasingly larger book collections of same. And I drove back and forth from work and hospital and my parent's home where I slept fitfully if at all. And the FM radio station my car radio was tuned to seemed to always play Jim Croce's Time in a Bottle. If I could save time in a bottle The first thing I that I'd like to do Is save every day 'Til eternity passes away Just to spend them with you But we cannot c...

  One of Einstein's theories is that all times exist at the same time. Ergo time travel would be just going through the right door. I see this manifested in looking for lost objects. You know, the ones you find after seemingly days of looking and there they are just where you thought they should be and know you checked at least a dozen times. New Mexico, at the best of times seems to be of a time forgot. I love that about it. We often speak of life in the real world as if it is a totally different place. And the pandemic has made us grateful for our world. We do not want to be anywhere but here. And we look at those from that other world often as aliens from another time and place. This is the easy part of this blog. Wait for it. I can bend time. Stretch it or condense it. But never when I seem to need it. Sort of like that lost item appearing where you have looked before. Suddenly there is more time. Or less. Know that phrase "I love it when a plan comes together?" I lov...

I am rather down this morning. Am still teary eyed. A friend says fall is a melancholy time. I concede that. And there is surge fatigue. I am still deep in mourning of what was and will never be again. Though I can cast that off for short spells and begin plans on how to proceed into the new normal. I am happy about a couple of the steps that direction. But there seems to be no good news without a dose of bad. Ignoring the news I petted Thicke and began a chat with a gardening friend in another country. A green witch. Talking gardening always cheers me up. As one season ends you can look forward to the promise of the next. I have all my seeds for next year. Or thought I had all my seeds for next year until I found a chocolate cherry sunflower (no not the one above) and had to locate and order the seeds. Gardening is strange in that so much energy is directed to finding what works and concentrating on those like rainbow mix carrots and Swiss Chard, but always looking for the next go...

  Fall is not a graceful time. It seems so indeterminate. One day summer, the next day winter. You never know how to dress. Layers discarded all over the house then frantically searched for later as the sun wanes and the evening chill moves in. And not a time to be lazy. There are things to still harvest and process, container gardens to clean out or move inside or plant in a bed. There are hoses to untangle from the uncut grass and coil up and store. I hang them from fence posts above the snow though one winter the snow came over the fence.  Firewood to stack inside the woodshed or under the cover of the front porch. I learned the hard way on this when early snows buried three cords of wood and froze them to the ground beneath the snow. No warm fires that winter. That was, I believe, the same winter I found out it was not wise to depend upon frequent trips to the grocery store just five miles away. Be like the ant and not the grasshopper and stock the larder and the freezer. ...

Or what comes around goes around. Sorry, but for a moment, well maybe a week I took my eye off the ball. I stopped watching the news and . . . . derailment. I have been painting the one-day-will-be-AB&B just incase the person I hired to put down the laminate flooring shows up. I need to be ready. And reading the handwriting on the wall (actually Microsoft's insistent messaging that Windows 7 and all users are doomed) I bought a new computer with the dreaded Windows ten. And then when I was not looking Blogspot totally changed how it works.  And Drumpf tested positive for Covid-19 just as he was declaring the pandemic is over. I missed several pivotal emails effecting my schedule. And the White House is now a hot spot for infection. And I now totally understand why eggs need to be the same size if you are soft boiling them. Why didn't you just explain that, Agatha? So maybe I need to pay more attention at least to the world that impacts me. The apartment repaint is almost t...