The Blog: Spellbound by our own imperfect lives...

Chicken erotica gleaned an amazing 43 hits on its first day in cyberspace as compared to a dainty 4 for the previous few posts. I knew it. Also as predicted, I signed up to sub today and I am dragging my feet whilst kicking myself in the ass, not an easy task...requires great agility and strength. At least the wind chill is not as low as forecast. My luck would have been that it was cold enough to freeze your face in five minutes but not cold enough to close school. I have not been as tired of this winter as I have been of winters passed. I'm not sure exactly why but I am giving partial credit to the light therapy. What I am weary of is wearing forty pounds of clothes and boots. Ah, winter in Minnesota. Elliot is coming to spend the night so there will be lots of action around here for a while. We're having spaghetti and meatballs for dinner, one of his favorites. Tomorrow morning, we are making pancakes. We're looking forward to his visit. Pretty soon I better get ...

I bet that subject line will get some weird hits. I was at the sink this morning when I thought I heard Regis say we should have chicken erotica this evening. What he really said was that we should have some chicken enchiladas. No chicken erotica. I didn't even dare put that in google. I'm sure the results would burn my retinas. It's noon. We have had about 6 inches of snow. Yeah, what happened to the 1-2 inches, right? The wind is supposed to blow like crazy tonight so we'll see how that goes. Monday, even the trash haulers didn't work. Guess they have a different creed than UPS and the Epileptic Foundation! It's been a long, cold, windy tunnel of a month and I don't blame them a bit. I think the UPS should take a day off when it's that cold. I really don't need all that junk mail promptly. I worked a lot in December so I said I was taking January off and I pretty much did. I am working tomorrow. Last chance. I think I have one day a week i...

Somehow I discovered an interest in stone towers, or cairns. Now, my friend, Bob, is encouraging me by sending me pictures of stones he has balanced and books about cairns and poems about cairns. I am hooked although I have yet to make one myself. I have to find a few farmers with rock piles. Here is a link to the Wikipedia site if you want to know more. And take a look at Andy Goldsworthy's work. Here is a beautiful video poem done by my friends, David Bengtson and Mike Hazard. And David's (AKA Bob) beautiful poem. Used without his permission but I don't think he'll prosecute me for copyright infringement. I gave him a coffee mug, after all! Stone Towers Today I walked the yard in every direction looking for stones large enough to stack and balance, one on top of the other, to build a stone tower, to say, I have been a guest in this house. I have left this gift of gratitude. But there were no stones. At Point Lookout, though, you’ll...

I should have gotten a screen shot of last night's Weather Bug. 50 mph gusts. But I guess 41 mph gusts are something to notice, too. I was not the nut out taking pictures of this. Regis doesn't think the sidewalks will drift over again. Ha! Look at the bunny tracks around the bunny! Cardinals have been frequent visitors to the feeder. The don't leave when we walk outside. They just go to the waiting area in the apple tree.

I think the Epileptic Foundation has the same creed as the USPS: Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds. I hesitated to haul this stuff to the curb in case they didn't come and I had to take special precautions to anchor it so it didn't blow away. I fell into a snow bank once...no explanation for that. But here they are...gathering my valuable junk! This was Wednesday. Extremely cold and windy. Same weather conditions on Thursday...about 30 degrees below zero. Then yesterday, up to 35 above zero. That is a 65 degree swing in 24 hours. Today we are back to below zero temps and high winds. The sun dogs have been beautiful this year. I guess because we have had so many viciously cold days to observe them! They are like winter rainbows. We don't have that much snow because it's been too damn cold to snow. We had a little bit of soggy stuff yesterday and there is some pr...

Yesterday I decided to take the safeguards off of comments so it was easier to leave a comment, if a guy wanted to do that. Yup, two viagra ads overnight. WTF.

You can see the pile of stuff ready for the thrift store truck. Woodrow is nervous, as is Regis, that I have gotten rid of some of his things. Not to worry...everyone else's stuff is perfectly safe. Michele and I went to our Livestrong class at the YMCA in Mankato last night. The roads going over were not so good...much better coming back. The snow was beautiful. Neither of us are night people, so until we get moving, we sit sort of quietly and think about naps. They have more equipment in that place than you can shake a stick at. A machine for everything, it seems. I could do 50 pounds on the chest press and 190 pounds on the leg press. (By comparison, one woman who should be on the world's strongest man show, could press 410 pounds with her legs. Holy crap. My balance was awful. I was always the first one to go down. I had to come home and beat the Scrabble guy by a hundred points to make up for it. Regis woke up early this morning with a stomach bug of some kind. I...

Teiwaz Inguz Ah, the runes that signify the end of my journey, although Mary would caution me to not move too quickly, to be patient. I told her yesterday, the process has been like wading into a slow moving river and being swept gently to another place. I heard this morning that Winston Borden , my Facebook friend, passed away last night. I remember him from Almanac and when a friend of mine suggested following his cancer journey on Facebook, I did. His was not an easy life but he was quite a philosopher and gentleman. He will be missed by those who knew him personally and by those who knew him through his cyber community. I have been at my desk for a long time this morning. There are book reviews to read: Ian Rankin (one of my favorite mystery authors) has a new book out, Saints of the Shadow Bible , and will be in Minneapolis Saturday night. Too bad it's at night and too bad it's so far away. Ah, well. I have a wonderful plan for the week. Things to bake, ...

My friends are amazed that I continue to purge. Someone at dinner last night asked if I had anything left in my house because it looks like I am even getting rid of storage tubs. And yes, I am. I have been a life long keeper of stuff. Stuff was memories and things I might need some day or things that someone else might need some day. Stuff comforted me. Now stuff is starting to strangle me. I feel like I am drowning in stuff. I have a children's book in the basement that belonged to a former brother-in-law (now almost 70) and I have kept it because his son might want it someday. What the hell. As I get rid of the stuff that doesn't mean so much to me, the stuff I really love is there! I can find it! Here is the post I wrote in November . It's mostly pictures but it's called evidence of my purging. I like to write about this because then I think about it and think about how important it has become to me. Mary says that ridding one's self of physical pos...

This is not me. It's Regis at the dog park, but it could be me because I dress like this, too. It gets restrictive by the end of winter to wear so many layers of clothes so you don't freeze either to death or freeze at least enough to be miserable. I don't usually mind the cold but this year, the temps have been consistently brutal. And the wind. I won't even get started on the wind. Napping is good medicine in this weather. Monday, after being in Mankato all morning and getting home with ice chunks where my feet should be, I wrote this, then forgot to publish it. It was so complicated I had to write down the agenda so things worked out. We dropped Gus at the Paw, I dropped Regis at the clinic, I went to pick something up at the Silhouette Shop, I got coffee at the Java Hut, I met Regis at the cardiologist's office (all good news!), Regis dropped me at the YMCA for an intake appointment for the LiveStrong program, I walked to Mary's office while Regis wen...

I have been absent from the social media most of the week. I think I descended into a mild funk on Monday and it took until yesterday to climb out of it. Yeah, that's life. One day last week, we took the elder son to Lone Star for the prime rib special. Because it was his birthday soon, they brought him a brownie Sunday. It was a whopper. I saw this license plate downtown St. Peter the other day. Only in Minnesota...well, and maybe Wisconsin. If you are unfamiliar with it, look it up on the google. It's fish preserved in lye and it looks like fish jello. I haven't ever tasted it so I can't speak to that but the smell is off-putting to say the least. It takes a lot of butter to mask that smell. I'm subbing at the high school today and it's cold enough in here to hang a side of beef. I worked a lot in December so I intended to take January off but I changed my mind. I have very busy days, contrary to what some of you must think about retired...

This was my rune for today. When I read about it in my book, I decided it is very meaningful for me. Here is what I found on this website : Inguz a Viking rune is what you see in the picture. Pronunciation: Ing-gooz, ING-wahz. Runes come from the Nordic area where the ancient Vikings once lived, worked, and fought. Though they were relatively savage in their outings, the Vikings were people in touch with Earth and the many forces that coexisted with them. They have a whole lore that includes many popular god figures such as Thor, the son of Odin. Thor carried a mighty hammer and many of us know him from comic books. The father of Thor, Odin, was the creator of the Runes and is the most important holy figure of the Viking people. Odin hung upside down from a tree limb for a chance of higher knowledge and right before he came down from the tree limb, he was bestowed with the new system called the Runes. These symbols were used for writing and magic by the high priests. Inguz is ...

I wanted some post-cancer photos where I didn't look so corpse-like so we set up a photo shoot last night. I took some of Regis, he took some of me, and we took some together with the tripod. And of course, we took some of the pets. I have new profile photos on all my social media sites. Oh, boy. I am now an integrated person. It's been a grand weekend. We are taking Gus for a walk this afternoon on Nicollet Avenue which means he can off the leash and running into the fields. We have heard vicious dog stories (in a neighborhood and at the dog park) so we are taking a walking stick and a can of mace. Regis ought to wield both because I am worthless in an emergency. I meant to go to yoga today but I was moving a little slowly and thought, hey it's Sunday. I am not rushing out the door in the light of dawn. I need a more relaxed pace today. I only need to do two things today...finish my Christmas cards and finish the grocery list. Neither of those sho...