Bonden's Death

Death, even that of a cat, fixes a place. Killick and Bonden came into our lives as kittens thirteen years ago, and their first service was as jolly oblivious comforters during the days after 9/11. Our last four cats, including these two, were named after characters in Patrick O'Brien's great novel series about the British Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. Jack and Sophie, the previous cats to honor those books, were named after the main character in the series and his wife.  We knew right away that the kittens were much too unruly for major roles. Bonden was a young coxswain and Killick was Captain Jack's disgruntled steward. The names never quite fit with their personalities, and strangers tended to call them Bondage and Killer, but the names stuck anyway.

We have never been sure if Killick and Bonden have liked it up here.  After we brought them to the barn for good last October, we encouraged them to watch the birds in the feeder outside the kitchen window, but it failed to amuse.  The barn apartment is quiet and much sparser than our Manhattan one, which claims a set of stairs, various closets and nooks, lots of stuff, and interesting sounds.  

I think Bonden particularly missed the city. On visits back to New York, after vomiting, shitting, and peeing throughout the ride, he always seemed to calm down and perk up when we hit the West Side Highway, where protective buildings and familiar traffic noises surrounded him.  He also had a tighter relationship with our sons than Killick had, who is more a Mama's/Papa's boy.  So I always thought Bonden was homesick, but I may be transferring.

Bonden visibly began to die only about a month ago.  He had been limping for a few days but we couldn't see anything wrong.  Then, one morning, I lifted his right front paw to see a gaping hideous bleeding wound looking like a way out for Alien 1.  Even weirder and worse, his back right paw was the same.  We rushed him to the nearest vet, about five minutes away, who was new to us. An elfish man, very vague and gentle, he gave Bonden a shot of antibiotics and sent us home with pills. 

The feet started to heal slowly over the course of the week but he was still limping and was losing weight.  I Googled "bleeding feet in cats" and found a forum with a disconcerting entry describing these symptoms and a diagnosis of lung cancer.  And that's what it was.  When we brought him back to the vet, he gave Bonden two weeks max after showing us his desolate gray and white X-ray with clouds of tumors hovering around the organs beneath his fragile bones.  We took Bonden home with some steroid pills and prepared ourselves for his loss. 

My youngest sister, who has a horse business, recommended I talk to Marlene, an animal psychic who has been helpful with her own creatures.  My sister left home at four years old when she rode her first horse, from then on living in stables every day from five in the morning until dinner, fitting in school, college, and kids in her few free minutes.  For years, she and her business partner have been teaching, training, showing and boarding horses and her house has always been an open petting zoo for cats, dogs, and the occasional rabbit.  She's the least sentimental and most competent person I know, and she swore that Marlene has weird powers and could be helpful in communicating what our cats were going through.  Marlene lives in Pennsylvania and relies on the phone lines to transmit her vibes back and forth, so my sister gave me her number with instructions;  "There's a process. You leave a message saying what you want to talk about, and her assistant will get back to you and set up the appointment and get your credit card information."  Hmmm.

I made the call and within minutes the assistant returned it.  I told him that Bonden was dying and that my sister believed Marlene could help find comfort.  He was sympathetic, but said "Unfortunately, Marlene isn't available for three weeks, " in the soothing tone of a concierge of an expensive overbooked hotel.

"Oh, I don't think he'll make it by then. But I'll keep the appointment anyway.  Maybe she'll have thoughts about his brother, and whether he's feeling sad."

He responded gently, "She's also very good at helping those who are going through the transition." And added,  We'll need your credit card information but you can cancel within 24 hours without a penalty."  

Over the next few days, Bonden deteriorated.  He continued to lose weight, and his back leg became paralyzed so he had to drag it when he walked. (This was not his wounded back leg, which had healed.  It was the other one.) But he tried to maintain his routine and gamely hauled himself down the hallway at meal times, when he and Killick regularly shared their food on a paper plate.  Bonden would eat a tiny bit, drink a lot of water, and stare into space.  I would carry him back and put him either in a nest in our closet or on our bed where he slept until the next deeply sad meal.  It was horrible to watch, but he didn't seem in pain. 

Then a few nights after the doctor's visit, we woke suddenly around midnight to a terrible shriek from the closet.  I turned on the light and saw Killick hanging around the doorway and Bonden on his feet, shaky and disoriented.

"We have to put him to sleep," I said to Michael and wept.

We wanted Bonden to die at home, as Sophia and Jack had done, but our vet didn't do house calls.  He recommended a one who did, a woman whose practice is about fifteen minutes away in Germantown.  The big snowstorm was brewing and predicted to hit within 24 hours.  Bonden seemed ok in the morning, not in much discomfort, but certainly not getting better, and we didn't want his pain to become acute with three feet of snow hurling to the earth, so we made the call and the vet said she'd be there at 9:30 the next day. 

The blizzard started up that night, and when Dr. Kervorkianette was due, it was coming so hard that I hoped she might cancel, but at 9:30 sharp she showed up with her bag of death.  She turned out to be extremely pretty, young, and incredibly kind.  She made sure that Bonden was indeed as sick as we said he was and assured us that we were doing the right thing.  She took her time, even though her husband, who had driven, waited patiently in their car outside while snow built up around his windows.    She finally administered the anesthetic overdose to Bonden, who was breathing and warm and then he wasn't.  We put him in a box, which was slightly too short so we had to jostle him into it.  I couldn't get rid of the conviction this was hurting him, which made everything worse. The vet left with him without taking a check, saying we could pay her when we got his ashes.

About a week later Marlene's assistant called to tell me that there had been an opening.  I told him that we had put Bonden down, and he said with a floral kindness, "I'm so sorry.  As I said, Marlene can also communicate with those who are in transition and can help Bondeen pass over the Rainbow Bridge."

"Umm. Ok." My sister may have some weak spots.

It turned out that Marlene was pretty comforting and there were a couple of eerie moments: she described gravel in Killick's urinary tract (stones have indeed been problems for him in the past) and that he was a "doggy cat" (which is how we describe Killick).  She also said that Bonden forgave him for "bumping him" a few days ago.  The shriek?  She also said I didn't have to feel guilty, that Bonden forgave me.  For bringing him to Hudson?  Most of the 30-minute one-hundred dollar session however, involved long peaceful silences while she gathered Bonden's spirit in to comfort Killick, Michael, and me.  Michael was working at his computer, Killick was sleeping next to him, while I breathed into the phone and went into a mild meditative state.  It wasn't clear where Bonden was.

A few days later, we were talking to Dave, our good friend and landlord who owns the land on the other side of the road, which at one point joined with ours as part of a large apple farm. He also owns the structures that went with it -- the old Dutch farmhouse and the barn, where we have our apartment. On his property is an old graveyard that holds the bones of the original 18^th and 19^th century family. Dave and his wife are still weekenders, but he comes up on Thursday, earlier than she does, with his own three female cats.  We were talking about Bonden and Dave suggested we put his ashes in the old cemetery. "I plan on putting the girls there along with Hazel's ashes [his own beloved city cat long dead]. All our cats could go there.  We could make kind of stone with their names on it."

Jack and Sophie are lodged in dry form back in a bookcase in our New York apartment, nestling in tin boxes, ornately printed with pretty Victorian flowers.  Jack has been gone for nearly 15 years and Sophie for almost 10, but because they were city house cats all their lives, I hadn't had the heart to bury them in the country, which was like leaving them on Mars.  But I immediately was drawn to Dave's idea.  Bonden had died here.  No doubt so will Killick.  Sophie had helped rear the boys when they were young, and Jack had been her good companion before he died.  Here the whole ship's crew would be together, Jack, Sophie, Killick, and Bonden, ruling over their tiny piece of Britannia forever.   And even though I'm still not sure their ashes won't drift south toward the city, it seems ok.  Better than struggling over the Rainbow Bridge, anyway. 

Basket Weaving With the Natives

The reasons I chose basket weaving from the list of non-credit courses at the Columbia Greene Community College were:

·      I want a nice basket for picking my chilies and tomatoes. 

·      I can't sew, knit, or do anything requiring any hand-eye coordination, but I think I can handle the thick reedy things that go into apple basket making

·      It's cold, there's not much to do now, and the college is only a quarter mile away.

I was nearly late for the first class, and about a dozen women were already sitting around a square of white tables pushed together. The teacher, Joyce, is a heavy woman somewhere near sixty, which basically described most of us students, except for a mother and daughter team who sat next to me.  They were both thin and blonde and looked out of place among us solid oldsters

After introducing ourselves, Joyce gave us each a small square of Masonite with a cork stuck into a nail in its center. That was our tool: a tiny birthday cake that had been ironed and intended for an impoverished one-year old. She then handed out 16 flat reeds (called stakes), about half an inch in width and told us to locate the middle of each one and mark that with a pencil.  We then removed the cork and forced eight of the stakes through their marks onto the nail, spacing them evenly apart in a pie-slice shape. Joyce then directed us to a bucket, where long stringy reeds were soaking and we each took one. So far, so good.

Before the actual weaving started, Joyce asked if any us were left-handed and one woman raised her hand. I raised mine tentatively, since, being mixed dominance, I wasn't sure yet whether this would be a left- or right-handed project. (It's a question for me with any new manual task.) Fortunately, Joyce only noticed the true leftie. She threw up her hands and announced with frustration.  "There's always one."   The sinister woman, who had a nice looking pink round face, stared down at the table while Joyce proceeded to explain unnecessarily that she would have to do everything backwards. To be fair, Joyce was suffering from a sore foot and recent attack of diverticulitis, which she mentioned before the class started, but over the course of the two classes it became clear that there wasn't much room in her life for slackers or people with awkward hands.  She might have smiled once, but if she did I missed it.

We began to weave, threading the long stringy reeds around the cork, in and out of the stakes.  It would have been zen-ish, if the reed wasn't so long and stringy and didn't circle my wrist python-like and get its tail caught under my shoe.  Nevertheless I was delighted to see a little circular mat forming from my efforts and it wasn't pockmarked or humpy. I came to the end of my reed, at which point in order to continue, I needed to add another on.  When Joyce had explained the adding on part, I thought, "This is a piece of cake."  ("Take your new reed and place it four spaces back and lie it flat over the first one. Then thread it back through the stakes to where it meets up and covers the first reed end and continue." Easy.) As she had so clearly instructed, I took my new reed and stuck it underneath a stake slot that appeared to be four spaces back and wormed it to where the first reed had stopped. Unfortunately, the new end had popped out, the part of the rim where I had threaded it was baggy, and none of it looked all nicely tucked away and neat like what Joyce had done.  I waved her over, and she explained the process once more, adding the new reed as she talked until it reached to the point to start the next clean round of weaves.

Off I went, threading through the stakes like skis through powder, pleased and a little puffed up. Then, the second reed ran out and I had to add a third.  This time, however, I believed I was pretty deft, and I placed my latest reed the requisite four spaces back, then poked it over and under the stakes until it met up with the ass end of its brother.  Addition accomplished!   Unfortunately, the lumpy track I had just laid looked suspiciously like my first attempt.  I kept my hand down this time, however, and wove on.  After a couple rounds, Joyce sidled up to me and stared down at my work. "Creative.  But not right."  Saying nothing more, she took the basket out of my hands, unraveled the reed, repaired the addition, handed it back, and I continued on.

Two friends who had joined the class together were hooting and nudging each other, being constantly amused by each other's very minor foibles.  Joyce gave them a wry look, "So we're getting mean early."  Huge chummy chuckling erupted from the other women. The class was still in its start-up phase and everyone in it except me and the mother-daughter team were already mysteriously in cahoots. I had an attack of déjà vu.

After a dozen or so more rounds, we now had something that resembled a small woven hot pad, which we were instructed to press against our knee while we wove the next few rows.  To demonstrate this. Joyce ruthlessly grabbed mine and proceeded to do the entire step, passing back to me what now looked like a Cooley hat.  She didn't inspire self-confidence.

Our next task was to reverse whole thing and weave from the outside, therefore, if done in basket heaven, producing a curved rim around the hat.  Direction is not my strong suit.  After I had completed a couple rounds I looked up and noticed that everyone's straw crowns were all pointing opposite to mine. I had the duh moment; the shape was now supposed to go against the crown, not with it, which made sense if I had actually looked at Joyce's finished basket in front me.  I didn't want her to notice my error, so I quickly started to weave the other way. With the ferocity of a weasel, I jammed the curve into what I hoped was the right shape, hoping to compensate for the original error. I wove on, and with the inevitability of death, the reed ran out.  I furtively was adding the dreaded new one when Joyce caught me.  

As she fixed it, explaining once again, with just the slightest sigh, the correct method of addition, she noticed my curve.
"Hmm," she said or, more accurately, grunted.  "You're not weaving from the outside."

"Huh, I thought I was." I mentally scratched my head.  "Maybe it's because I'm mixed dominance."

"No. That's not it." With a pretense of patience, she grabbed the thing and corrected my curve. After finishing, she handed it back, and asked, 'Are you dyslexic?"

"Yes! I am."  I felt a great relief in confirming this diagnosis.  Even though I don't think I am dyslexic, Joyce would no longer think I was incompetent -- just genetically feeble.  My fellow classmates stared at me with pity, as if one of Jerry's kids had suddenly been exposed.

On we went to thicker reeds and the object began to resemble a sombrero with long woody fringe.  "We could wear this," I said, maybe a little too loudly. No one laughed. Perhaps because I'm disabled they didn't want me to think they were ridiculing me.  They are not mean girls.  

However, in spite of my impairment, I did get everything right for the remainder of the class. My hat brim curved correctly, and I began to confidently weave the sides, stake over stake, which were supposed to go straight up.  At the end of the class, few of us were done with this step and we were sent home to complete it. Needless to say, my basket bulged a bit, but I had 8 rows to go so I was hopeful I could correct it. To my right, the mother and daughter team had completed their sides, perfectly straight, supported by elegantly curved bottoms.  By then, I had concluded they were reenacters from a reconstructed Colonial village, sent here undercover in mufti to scout out talent or check competition (neither of them me).

The following week, I arrived at the second and last class with my homework completed, and I finished the basket without incident, even successfully adding on a couple new reeds.  Joyce only had to take over two of my tasks -- shoving the handle in and winding a couple grumpy lashings over the top rim.  (As I write this, I realize Joyce completed or did part of every process for my basket that required anything other than poking the reeds in and out of the stakes.)

The night would have been uneventful except for a brief conversation with Dorothy, a fellow classmate, who had been talking to some of the others about their involvement with 4-H.  

"Oh," I said eager to take part in the fellowship of the reeds, "I went to 4-H camp when I was seven."

"The one in Averill Park?"  She asked.

"Yes!  I grew up there. Did you go to that camp?" 

"Yes." 

"When?"

"A long time ago, around 1950."  "

"That was when I was there!"

 "I remember looking up at the stars at night."  She said wistfully.

 "I kept planning my escape.  I spent all my time in the infirmary." 

She returned to her weaving.

Light bulb. I was back in high school, surrounded by my old classmates, like me grown old but still incomprehensible to each other, still not laughing at the same things, not even thinking the same things about the same things we were doing.  We could go to the same basket weaving class, share the same recipes, and even share the same memories, but there was a tribal edginess between these women and me. 

My mother had been a city girl who raised us in the country and probably went a little mad.  She was weird.  We were weird.  As soon as I could I fled to the City and hid out there for fifty years among my own kind, rearing children, doping out romance, whittling a satisfying career from a few basic secretarial skills, living the life she probably would have loved.  Now I had come back, living upstate, still alienated from the women who had chosen to stay and continue their 4-H experiences.   But it was ok. I had pretty much done what I envisioned as a lonely isolated teenager sitting on a hill outside Averill Park and looking south.  Now, it was time to sit on a hill again, plant my vegetables, and, in company with the natives, figure out how to weave baskets to hold them.

In any case, I think my basket, with its subtle peanut shape, looks pretty good.  (Here's a picture of my basket at home, containing my mittens and a furry scarf, which my daughter told me looked like a wolverine.)  

A Lecture on Herbs

The local tea/chocolate shop held a lecture on herbs last week, which I went to with my friend Ann. The lecturer was a very appealing young herbalist, about mid thirties, who was her own advertisement for the various concoctions and decoctions she put together and sold.  With her wide smile, pink cheeks, and flawless skin, she was extremely pretty and healthy looking.  Her hair was a surprising silver, which she wore long and straight, with thick bangs framing her brow.  When we arrived, she was setting up a table with attractive little dark bottles and jars full of leaves and talking to one of the other attendees.   About 30 fold-up chairs had been set up and Ann and I claimed two of them.

We were still a few minutes early and the shop was still selling coffee and tea, so Ann and I went up to get some.  A wan young man, who appeared to have been pulled (gently) from a German romantic poem, was overseeing the beverages.  He produced my coffee immediately and told me to pay at the main counter, where a line was building up. A tall attractive thin woman with fuzzy blonde hair, about early sixties, was at the counter.  The customer ahead of me was paying her lecture fee and held out a credit card. 

"Oh," the clerk said, staring at it, slightly flustered. "Do you have cash?"

"No. You don't take credit cards?" 

"Well we do, but we don't like to."

"I'm sorry.  I don't have any cash." The customer was polite and apologetic. (Everyone at events involving herbs are polite and apologetic.  I think it's a law).

The clerk gingerly held the card between her thumb and index finger and, as if she was taking it to a forensics team, wandered toward the end of the counter, put it down, and picked up a small booklet.  After scanning text that was too complex to allow independent action, she approached the other clerk. During a long discussion, apparently on the level of advanced calculus, both clerks would occasionally glance with suspicion at the customer, still waiting politely and apologetically. After listening closely, indicated by a series of perplexed frowns, our clerk rummaged through some drawers until she pulled out an antique mechanical device that only my octogenarian dentist still uses.  After several attempts at scraping it across the card, she was able to emboss the payment on the credit form. Not quite done, however, she then very slowly, with an elegant Jane Austen hand, wrote out a receipt on a carbon-layered tablet, stapled one layer together with the credit card record, and handed both  over to the customer with a quiet shrug of triumph.  The customer took it with effuse apologies for the bother and then politely asked if she could have her card back.  I paid for my coffee with cash. 

Nearly ten minutes had gone by.  I sat down and waited for Ann to get her iced coffee.  I saw that she was leaning against the counter, the young Werther talking earnestly to a couple who had been behind to her. No sign of coffee or ice.

The managers seemed in no hurry to get started.  The shop was still open for other customers, who were milling about studying tea pots, tea equipment, exquisite dark chocolate truffles, and old fashioned bins with gold stamped lettering for exotic teas. Only drug lords would have enough cash to buy anything in that store, except for my coffee and perhaps the pastel bulky cakes and pastries, slathered with creamy icing and fillings calling to us from their glass cases.  They had tempted me in the past. However, every one I bought was flavored to a nearly toxic level with almond paste, so I was now immune to their sugary charms.

Ann finally came back both amused mildly exasperated. While her tea was apparently undergoing cold fusion, she listened to the conversation between Casper the Friendly Ghost and the couple behind her.  The man announced that they were "off caffeine" and then provided his recipe for chai in great detail, which involved warm milk, several spices and many steps.  After an enthusiastic exchange involving nuances to the chai mix, the clerk wandered off and came back with Ann's tea.  Then, of course, she had to pay for it at the other counter, where a long line of hopeful credit card holders still waited. 

At the start, the herbalist asked each of us what herbs or spices interested us. Most of the small audience, including Ann, wanted information on spices, especially turmeric, ginger, ginseng. The partner of the chai guy, a tall, square firm woman with dark intense eyes, was a tarot card reader and was interested in herbs for her "dream work."   I told the lecturer that I wanted to find more about what grew on our property, especially elderberry and St. Johns Wort.  

She began her talk by distributing spoons, which we used over the course of her talk to sample some of her syrups, which she said were now being sold at the teashop.  The two co-owners, one of whom I realized was my clerk, were learning against the counter behind the lecturer, and waved to us.  The non-clerk pointed to the back of the shop and said. "We'll stay open after her lecture in case anyone wants to purchase some of her products, which you'll just love."

The tinctures and syrups were preserved in grain alcohol, and, by my seventh or eighth spoonful, its combinations of shoots, roots, and leaves were creating an odd buzzy sensation.  Not unpleasant but a little scary.  She encouraged questions, and I became uninhibited enough to ask what she thought about wheat grass.  After telling the group how I used to take shots with a chaser of carrot and ginger juice on my way to work, but that it was so horrible I gave up,  asked the speaker if it actually had any benefits.  She responded that didn't know much about wheat grass, but a woman in front of me boasted. 'I still take it.  If you combine it with orange juice it's really very good."  
"Yuck,' I said.  
She wheeled around, glared at me, and said with the passion of a zealot. "You should just try it."  
This was about as outwardly angry as this mob got, but one shouldn't underestimate the underlying righteous fury of women attending a lecture on herbs in a teashop.

The lecture was interesting, informative, and, convinced me that all I needed was nettle and elderberry to live indefinitely.  At the end of the talk, our speaker mentioned again that the store was now selling her products, and my friend Ann was interested in the two she had been most heavily promoting. These presumably produced enough energy and immunity to live through a nuclear attack.  Michael and I were due at a friend's for  dinner, so I left her there  

Ann told me later that it took her 45 minutes before she managed to buy the syrups.  After waiting in line with other eager buyers, she learned that the storeowners had not actually stocked these two potions yet, even though they were the herbalist's most popular products.  They had managed to put some of the less appealing herbs on their shelves.  Ann sought out the lecturer herself, who was still hanging around talking to acolytes, and asked if she happened to have any bottles with her that she could sell.  She did, but in her trunk, and went outside to get them.  After she returned, Ann asked if she could pay the herbalist directly, but was told no.  She needed to go back to the counter,  where the line had grown, and most of the customers ahead of her were card carriers.

The Plan

After these early weeks of New York grief, subzero weather with little cheery snow,  an inordinate amount of contract work from my old company, I finally finished the novel I've been working on all year.  At 70, I have basically no chance of publishing it, but the thought of not writing another one is yet one more grief.  So, I figured out a way of starting a new novel without embarrassment.  As I wrote and edited my current one (working title Love After 55),  as I dug into the characters and rewound the plot, and imagined weather and rooms, and googled things I didn't know, I discovered how much I loved reading the revisions.  In fact, the book became not the one I wanted to write but the one I wanted to read.  It almost doesn't matter if others don't like it, or don't read it, or think it's simple-minded and pretentious.  I really like it!!!  I'm not trying to write anything important or even necessarily thoughtful.

In any case, I have some additional tips on how to settle into retirement outside a small upstate city if one doesn't want to write a novel.

Take non-credit classes at the local communicate college.  My choices are "Starting a Food Business", "How to Cook Chicken Milanese (which includes how to cook tiramisu-- the main reason for taking this one-night class), Basket weaving (Seriously.  I need a new trash basket in the bathroom).

Join a gym.  Have joined Planet Fitness, which is incredibly cheap ($10 a month) has a very well-planned process for building strength using their machines.  I've had two orientations, neither of which involved working out, so I was able to feel righteous without having to exert any energy.

Find a local bar/restaurant hangout.  Ours is Daba and Helskinki.  Unfortunately, the Daba chef-owner is looking to sell his place and start an apple farm, but he's asking a lot of money, so it will take awhile. In the meantime, it's bartender, staff, food, and other hanger outers make it our favorite.  We use Helsinki mainly for eating but it also has a nice staff and a great music venue for boomers (Amee Mann, Chris Smithers, Nick Low, and various favorites'  offspring, like Amy Helm and one of the Allman kids, who have similar styles to their parents.  It also provides dinner that you can eat close to its small stage and good natured fellow audience members.

Buy snowshoes.  I already have skis and skates but Michael, cleverly, won't do these things, and the increasing conviction that solitary sports involving feet sliding out from under me suggests I might need some alternatives. So I bought snowshoes for both of us.  Had one good day of snow, and we trudged up the hill.

Convince your friends to move up.  Have three so far.  Am working on others.

Create mass emails inviting others to visit.  Be sure to have enough aerobeds. 

Living Below Zero

Oddly, it has been this cold streak that has bolstered my intention to be here and leave New York.

 Before the holidays, up in Hudson, the weather was dull and mediocre.  Sky gray.  No snow.  Walking was a brown trudge past large sticks known in better times as trees. Temperatures hovered slightly above freezing, and the air was mucky with humidity. The barn's forced-air heat was not enough to battle the chill efficiently, and, because we are now paying for our heat, we keep the thermostat set at degrees well below what I was used to in our over-heated Manhattan apartment.  I was cold all the time and shivered continually,  reminding myself of an old fridge ice-maker about to break down.  At night in bed, I clung to Michael and my cats.  I binged on gluten in various forms and took no exercise.

My days were spent working on a major annual project from Medscape, which, after finishing last year, was one of the impetuses (impeti?) for retiring.  "Yay, I don't have to do this damn survey and write 600 captions again!"  And here it is, supporting not only me but my husband and son as well, who have a contract for designing its hundreds of charts and slides.  The work has thousands of annoying details with the potential for riddling errors, and the results are only mildly interesting.   Working on a flat fee, my hourly rate quickly dropped to slightly above minimum.  I couldn't get back to my novel.  None of the things I had planned were working out.  I missed my old life.

Then came the holidays with its welcome distractions, parties with old and new neighbors, visits from my nun sister, kids, friends, and lots and lots of better food.  And, my very own revelatory Christmas present to myself, an LL Bean flannel nightgown.  So when temperatures plummeted in the last few days, blasting frigid air around our inadequately insulated barn apartment --  the Christmas miracle -- I'm not cold.  I have learned to clothe myself! I can stretch out in the dark with my nighty.  And by extension, I now have learned to layer during the day -- long sleeved shirts and sweaters.  When I go out I have finger mittens (everyone should have them), a hooded coat, and scarf.  Inspired, by this learned warmth and the more interesting world outside, I am willing to venture out.  Also, I'm done with the damn project.  I've returned to my novel and expect to finish at the end of the month.  I hope to create a few interesting posts.  I'm looking at Facebook (maybe that's not such a great idea).  And we are talking to some people today about building up here.  Slowly, slowly, inching are way out of the city.  Maybe.