Enchanting Juno

The total package

I'm having a brain problem right now. 

I remember when I was a kid there was always some complaining going on about whether reading junk was really reading and people trying to Save The Children From Trash.  Me, I loved trash, it improved both my vocabulary and my working knowledge of human sexuality and I am all for both.  And I believe that the more you read the more your sense of nuance improves.  Which is to say, you grow out of junk the way you outgrow Twinkies. 

Tastes like plastic, but EVERY once in a while you just gotta.  Maybe even a lot.  And then one day, revulsion (I'm trying to find my revulsion for fudge iced yellow cake right now).

Which is fine.  I don't approve of calling books bad names because someone somewhere decided they weren't respectable enough.  In the end the quality of the writing shapes you and sends you in new directions.

Which brings me to my brain problem.  I seem to be going in a new direction.  I had a long no reading period after my dad died, and then I was more into - pop non-fiction.  Some of which was great. And satisfying, because it grappled with big modern questions of survival and understanding. 
But fiction grapples with survival and understanding right?

Not the fiction I'd been reading.

So over the last 2 years maybe I've been reading again, but sputtering over it - 12 books at once, not much focus, trouble tracking complex ideas over the structure of the book.  I feel like an old dirty engine, not quite turning over, idling roughly before dying again.  Feeling like I used to be smart.   No - AGILE, I used to be agile. 

Then, last weekend I came to be hanging out with the parents of someone I went to grade school with.

She was the hippy mom when I was a child, who taught yoga and went back to school and worked as a physical therapist and fed the geese where they lived on the lake and worked for the environment all those years ago.  She took me for my very first walk in the woods when I was in the first grade.  It was magical, with rocks and lichen, like nothing I had ever seen or felt.  I told you about her a few months ago actually, which makes it especially weird I should run into her NOW. 

We talked about oh - people we knew in common, and how my hometown is bad and good, and how to change the world in small pieces and later her husband came downstairs and we talked about human potential and The Trial and the doors that are ours to walk through if only we know how and Slavic literature and the Good Soldier Svejk - which is one of the 17 books I am 3 chapters into right now - and she mentioned the Master and Margarita, which coincidentally, I had bought a month or too ago, but hadn't felt up to starting.  

And there is a fantastic story about THAT that I can't really tell you 'cause it's about their stuff but it ends in a oil painting like a Russian fairy tale and it made me glad to be alive.
It made me remember not feeling rusty, made me remember agility, it made me remember this piece of myself I've been looking for, and I feel like I just backfired through my own carburetor and woke up.  

I confessed to a few of my friends Monday this realization, that really, I'm an intellectual.  Over the howls of laughter and my defensive explanations - Bookish Wendy said "dude - it's like you're coming out of the closet - but we all already knew..." which is mortifyingly accurate - came awareness: I have sort of gotten into a place where I suppress this bit of myself - at least partly because it has no non-recreational outlet in my life.  Suppress it so hard that the skills, the habit of complex though is corroded.  I've been neglecting my brain.  Maybe I had to.  10 years ago I was all brain and nothing else and I had to learn to be heart and body too. 

And I did.  

I think its hysterical and inevitable that I discovered yoga NOW.  Of course.  Because now I need balance and integration (as well as the calm to survive this economy and its et ceteras) not merely the brute strength to change.  

Where was I?

Oh, brain problem.

My goopy old, gunk-clogged engine of an intellect is coming alive and I am glad to see it but boy howdy am I worried about the damage that may have been done.  I've been reading more, and struggling with serious, complicated paths through other people's thoughts.  I'm 50 pages into a dozen things, digging my mental fingers into the rock, looking for traction and it hurts like weightlifting after a 6 month break to go a bit deeper than the facile.  

Its all about fear too, isn't it?  What if I can't deliver, what if I'm not so all-fired clever after all, what if I dig and come up short? What if the brain that is the one thing about myself I've never doubted turns out to be a thin shield. 
I am always surprised to rediscover how little maturity and experience really shield you from fear and change.  Stress, yeah,  experience lets you eat stress for breakfast, but self-doubt not so much.

Ah well, I'm only ever happy when I'm evolving. 

The sword in the stone.

So I am starting to think about knitting.  Not in a oh right, I have a lot of yarn I should Do Something with it kind of way, but in a looking at patterns thinking about pretty yarn sort of way that is strongly discouraged under present economic conditions.  With pleasure, not obligation.

I made the strategic error of looking at Old Maiden Aunt's site a few minutes a go and was overcome with an unseemly and base lust for well, everything.  If I am very, very good and kind to small animals and my mother, maybe I can have some someday.

Pardon me, I had to go look again.  And I appear to have bought 1300 yards of lace weight.
How extraordinary: I haven't had a yarn accident in about a year.  Except for that one time, at Colourmart.  (The 10/28NM heavy dk 30/70 cashmere/wool is utterly brilliant and I am only telling you 'cause I have 12 cones in 3 colours or something ridiculous like that.  In fact, I have just the sleeves left in an ACTUAL SWEATER in this yarn.  If the sun ever comes out I will show you.)

If I believed in jinxes I would not mention any of this - for fear of scaring my knitting soul back into the dark corner it's been lurking for so long - but it's nice to think yarnily again - not as an evasion from the rest of my life but just as a part of it.  I've watched so many friends and acquaintances shape lives in fiber - writers and designers and teachers - and thrive, and there came a moment when I realized that wasn't for me - not that it wasn't going to happen but that it wasn't what I want or need.  I adore fiber, but it is not my FUTURE, it's just a part of me.  Just, funny word.
It was painful though, watching them all go and flourish without me, when I felt stagnant and confused about my life.  I had to sort out their paths from my own.  It's good now. 

I think that's perhaps why I'm seeing yarn in the corners again.

A match struck in a dark room

Making Light is often a good read - I haven't the stamina to be a commenter there, but I do enjoy the place, and find out there interesting things about the world and all it's parts.  The other day Abi Sutherland had an Open Comment thread up there about a second century potter and why we know who he is at all. 

Because he left a mark.

It's just so human, shouting into the future on a scrap of pottery discovered against astonishing odds c. 1800 years later. 
I made this, I was here.

We're all doing this - we knit and blog and write and have children and paint and sculpt and cook dinner and plant things and build temples to the glory of our gods in all our little ways - I remember looking at embroidery at the Metropolitan - it was 4 or 5 years ago, an exhibit of ...Byzantine art?  I don't remember that, but I remember these tiny micro mosaics and the gold embroidery, the work of someone's hands, the work of someone's life. 

I worry sometimes that in this digital age, this age of service and finance and disposable goods, we manage to mark our lives with stuff that won't last, that our voices will end with the obsolescence of our technology.
Of course I also think that the act of forgetting is as important as the act of remembering and that much has to be lost for the next generation to rediscover and relearn.  What to sacrifice though? 

Fate decides - that exploded kiln must surely have felt like work lost the the potter then, a wasted effort. 

The idea of leaving no mark is terribly lonely, and I think making things, actual things, is a nice way to spit into the void.  I'm glad I make yarn and sometimes, things from yarn.  I'm glad most of the people I know make things, meaningful, beautiful things.

Hello to you, Lucius Meticius Ferenius, and hello to those you loved.  You existed.

Scenes from a life, electronic edition

(edited for spelling, slightly abbreviated - 'cause we go on and on and on.....)
 

11:46 AM me:  is it lunch yet

  ?

 Marin: Absolutely.

 me: cookies!

 Marin: For you, of course. I'm still in the brunch zone.

11:47 AM me: feidl trip for a bagel?

  (OK, that IS a typo)

 Marin: I did just have a bagel. We get free donuts, bagels and fruit on Fridays at the office.

11:48 AM And I have an apple waiting for mid-afternoon crash time.

  What I don't have is cookies.

 me: (I am NOT singing the cookie song. Or maybe I AM)

11:49 AM Marin: And doing the cookie dance to go along with it.

  I can hear you from here.

 me: actually, am drinking fruit smoothie.

11:50 AM Marin: That sounds pretty good too. I should do more smoothies. I think I'd enjoy them.

  Can you put oatmeal in fruit smoothies?

11:51 AM me: its a commercial one - Naked Mighty Mango - its got 4 and a 1/3 serving of fruit in it

  if you want you can

  i wouldn't

11:52 AM Marin: I wonder if you can get powdered oatmeal for that purpose. I'm thinking of the fibre and cholestorol-lowering benefits.

11:53 AM me: i would maybe start with one of the soluble fiber mixes first

  i mean I see the point, but i dunno...

5 minutes

11:59 AM Marin: I was hoping you had some experience. It sounds like a bad texture idea to me, but surely I'm not the only one who wants a complete, delicious breakfast in a glass.

12:01 PM me: heh

  well, what about citrucal or whatever it's called?

12:02 PM Marin: That's a possibility. I don't know if it's as magic as oatmeal, but it might be an admirable and less gross substitute in a smoothy.

12:03 PM me: the bobybuilders put all that crazy protein powder in - it tastes like chalk to me

 Marin: Total departure: Nathan Branch informs me that No. 4 of the Six Scents line comes in a bottle with a skull on it.

 me: well, i see you will be buying one then

12:04 PM Marin: Most of the protein powder leaves me gagging. My brother turned me on to some good stuff, so if I ever get to a place where having protein powder on hand makes sense, I know what to get.

 me: heh

 Marin: Yeah... I had a, "Do I even care about the juice?" moment when I found out about the skull.

12:05 PM me: I know :)

  huh: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Strawberry-Oatmeal-Breakfast-Smoothie/Detail.aspx

12:06 PM the reader comments say put the oatmeal in first and make it a fine powder then add everything else

12:07 PM Marin: Now, that makes a ton of sense.

  Oh, the magic of the Internet.

 me: i know!

 Marin: And, once again, somebody else was my guinea pig. It's a good day.

12:08 PM me: it looks good, except for being suspicious of the oatmeal.

  but hey - you go first

 Marin: I guess I could guinea pig for you on this one, since you took the Jean Nate bullet for me.

12:09 PM me: totes

  are you ready for the cookie?

  I ate my broccoli already

 Marin: I didn't see you eat the broccoli.

12:10 PM I don't think you can have a cookie until I'm sure you ate the broccoli.

 me: what's your phone number

 Marin: Wow... extreme measures to get to the cookie.

12:11 PM me: number?

12:12 PM (this cookie is made of win)

 Marin: *** *** ****

12:13 PM A girl in the office that just changed a bunch of codes in the data system said, "Just let me know if you need anything else!" I said, "A cookie would be nice."

12:14 PM Oh. Cookie porn on my phone.

12:16 PM me: did you get my picture?

12:20 PM Marin: Oh, yes. And I sent you a picture of my snack. Only it took me about fifteen minutes to get all the picture and all that worked out.

 me: heh

12:21 PM that's a handsome apple, but the cookie was better Marin: I know. Mine is but a pale attempt to taunt you. The apple dance? Not as compelling as the cookie dance.12:22 PM me: well, MAYBE in a NY State orchard in October  a free apple makes you understand about Eve and the snake Marin: That's kinda deep.12:23 PM me: that's me  it should be fresh not free though Marin: I would venture that a free apple is nothing to sneeze at, but maybe not worth pissing off God.12:24 PM me: true  nothing like a 1200 dollar sale to round out lunch12:25 PM Marin: Woo-hoo! me: which makes this month...almost not shitty Marin: Now there's a rousing endorsement.12:26 PM me: i have my own particular KIND of optimism Marin: I get that.  There's a whole range of optimism that goes, "That didn't suck quite as hard as I thought it would." me: heh12:27 PM ok i have laughed out loud. Marin: It's another successful day.

that's a LIVE chicken......

Apparently I don't blog anymore. All the things that once would have been blog posts are now IM conversations and tweets. 
I don't mean to leave you, Lucille, but well, in the immortal words of Crash Davis, we're dealing with a lot of shit.
Work, destiny, future, safety vs.satisfaction, responsibility, moral values, finance and oh, the siding fell of a part of my house.  And some of it involves privacy and some of it involves other people and some of it....well, who wants to be a whiner?

But I still love you and to prove it I will tell you a story.

OK, I TRIED to tell you a story but it went kind of sad and creepy and so I will, as the man said, sum up:

My calves have a stalker.  Some odd fellow who doesn't understand gym etiquette or boundaries and to whom I will have to be terribly rude if he starts following me around the gym again, has a crush on my calves.  Not me, my calves.  Just my calves.  He told me they were most beautiful and then stared RIGHT AT THEM in a pervy way while I was working out.  I had to tell him to stop. 

Also, if you do three big sets of calf extensions for the first time in months, you will, when you go to yoga the next morning, make a very sad involuntary noise every time you go into downward facing dog. much less try to put your heels down. Ow.

And then, when you try and get out of the car at the diner for the egg and hash brown fuel you require, you will be unable to extend your hamstrings sufficiently to achieve fully upright bipedal status.  Which will make you laugh really, really hard.

What else? 

The siding really did fall off my house and I FORGOT TO TAKE A PICTURE.  It's shaming really.  There's a bit of my house which faces the neighbor and I cannot see at all because of the fence and apparently for years the leaf bits from HIS maple tree have been getting behind the boards and rotting the supports until one day all the rotted fresh compost exceeded the strength of the remaining nails and half the siding fell away at a 45 degree angle, held on only by the bottom fasteners. 

Repairs are underway as we speak, but at least I shall have an unrotted and shiny new fence at the end of it.  Thus removing my excuse for neglecting my garden.  Three cheers for my friend T and his contractor's license.  I left him cookies this morning.

And now I need to go do a bank deposit.

Scenes from a life

I am very attached to green vegetables - I must tell you about the nutrition cow I had last week - and so I stopped at the cute cheap gourmet place with the local produce on the way home from yoga.  Because I et all the ones I had last night.

I am in line behind what I realize slowly is a very cute man.  Plaid flannel shirt, nicely fitting, in flattering autumn shades, flat cap worn well, nice shoulders.  Unfortunately, a beard, but a handsome and well maintained example of the breed.  I am deciding if he is old enough to hit on and if I want to bother, all post workouty and rumpled as I am, when I notice his groceries.

Bread.  The good square Pepperidge Farm white that makes beautiful toast.
Sausage.  The exquisite gourmet breakfast links I have admired but refused to shell out for in the past.
A dozen eggs.
A jar of nutmeg. 

There is no way I am getting the attention of a man with those hopeful groceries.

He leaves and the sales clerk starts to ring up my broccoli and I say - "That guy?  SO has a date tonight.  One he is very optimistic about the outcome of."

And she grins at me and says "Oh yeah, that is a love breakfast if I have ever seen one"

And we look at him getting in his truck and I say - "good luck, dude, good luck"

But we cannot figure out the nutmeg.  Can you put that on eggs?

Hai!

I got distracted there.  I always do. 

So thank you for all the hosting recommendations.  I looked at a bunch of stuff but in the end the awesome Sweater Project David led me to Google Apps which let me set up a free account WITH my domain name and then forwarded it to my regular gmail account so it's all seamless and shit, at least once David explained what an MX record was and how to update it. Yay for David.

And yay for google which better stay not evil because I dunno if I can give them up

For those have you who have experienced my incredible bouncing email account, this should all be a thing of the past.  Email at will. 

The only channel that ever has anything on is BBCAmerica.   And yet I am watching a Nora Roberts Lifetime movie.  I used to like her books but either my perspective has changed or the translation to film is awkward.  Everything seems imbued with a kind of fake-gothic-quasi-hardboiled demeanour that's hard to take seriously.  Also, there are a lot of hostage events in this (apparently) medium sized town.
Not that this is stopping me from watching.
OK she just shot her own car in frustration.  Not that I don't sympathize.  But really.

She's got some great sweaters though.

I love Twitter.  Unfortunately, it diverts potential blog ideas into 140 character snippits.  I have a short attention span. 

Today was really beautiful.  Driving with the windows open and great music on the first fine spring day of the year is one of life's great pleasures.   I car danced and I am not ashamed to admit it.

I ate too much Indian food today and it gave me a headache.  I've noticed this about sugar recently, headaches.  I had a food aversion during the kidney stones and ended up caffeine free - which has stuck - and sugar free - which has not, particularly during PMS. 
But now when I over do it, I get a headache.  So is there sugar in Murg Tikka Masala? Navratan Korma? There BETTER not be sugar in the lemon rice, cause it rocks my world. 

New favorite beverage:  Filtered water with a lot of lemon juice.  I know, do I know how to party or WHAT?  Hydration is my new religion.

I tried to explain to my mom that lip and nose piercings aren't even all that radical anymore and I should totally get my nose pieced for my 40th.   She was...unconvinced, shall we say?   I can't decide if I was serious or just winding her up.  I guess we'll see.

I'm in love with yoga.  I'm going four times a week and rearranging my life to make it five.    I have this weird leg/hip problem that has been a problem for like, 4 years.  Gone.  I can sleep in any position I want now too, which my spine has been unwilling to discuss for  - 5 years maybe?  Plus I feel amazing.  This is after three weeks.  I am crazy with curiosity to see what happens over the next six months.  (Yeah, yeah, I KNOW you told me I'd love it.  Times and season, my dear, times and seasons.)

Reading: Titus Groan (slowly) (very dense and very good)

Knitting:  Baby Cables (also slowly)

Watching a bit too much TV cause jumping from weights once a week through kidney stones into weights once and yoga four times per week has left me a tiny bit wiped (by 'tiny bit' you should understand I mean utterly flattened), but energy is coming back up.  Soon I will dig out of my couch nest.

Hope you are all well.

I have a sense of humor again

and I'm wearing perfume for the first time in 10 days.  By these signs I declare myself healed, more or less.  Let the games begin!

Thank you for all your good wishes and affection and wild extravagant compliments and such.  And for telling me some of your own stories - that's my favorite thing.

I have only been receiving about 1/2 my comments and I hold my email host responsible.  something about the code on comments and replies to comments flags their spam filter, they can't fix it, 50% of everything bounces and it makes me homicidal.  What is the point of an email host that cannot adapt to one of the most common blog platforms around? 

GoDaddy is dead to me now.  Any recommendations?  I need really, really basic domain hosting and email with no known comment/reply compatibility issues.

Fat, Female & 40

So I had a very interesting week.  It began Monday with what I thought was a case of food poisoning that just would not quite clear and than clarified into acute abdominal pain on Thursday.  I know doctors mean acute in some kind of diagnostic way, I mean it like, fuck that hurts.  Oh wait, fuck, it hurts even more.  Is it hot in here?  I need some air.  ow.Ow.OW. 

Of course we are in the middle of switching health insurers, just to make things more complicated.

Eventually I drove myself to the emergency room, shouting incredibly colorful things at anyone who dared stop at a light in front of me and garnering stares from a woman walking by, as the windows were wide open.  Since, as I mentioned, it was hot in here. 

While I was being evaluated by the nurse he said, "probably gallstones".  My GP had said the same thing on the phone when I talked to her earlier and I asked him why everyone was so convinced of this on no more evidence than it all seemed to have started when I ate something greasy.

And he said "well, you can't sit still", which is true, I was pacing and standing and sitting and bending and kneeling and walking, "but mostly you're the right type."

Type?  Sure, he said.  A woman, forty (39 I said) and...small pause...not slim.

I was amused.  "Tactfully phrased"

"There's a phrase we use, a mnemonic.  But I'm not telling you"

Eventually I achieved a kind of weird yogic prone lotus on the exam room bed - it's funny what pain does to your sense of self consciousness - that was semi comfortable and remained thus until the doctor came in. 

"I think you have gallstones"  he says. 

Exam, blah, blah.  Tenderness in wrong location for gallstones, possible appendix?  He still thinks gallstones and sends me for an ultra sound, not before giving me a big fat syringe full of something just delightful in the line of an anti-nausea med, as well as something equally delightful by way of a pain killer.  I really could not tell you which one I liked better. 

When he comes back to tell me what next I am high enough to say, "explain the gallstone conviction to me.  Why does everyone start there?"

"You're the type."

"And the type is?"

He would clearly rather not tell me.  I insist, in my charmingly narcotic persistent way.

"Female, 40 and...another word that starts with F"

For some reason I found this hilarious.  Female, Fat & 40.  

Well, ok, fair enough.

Fat is a word I have been avoiding my whole life, treating it like something between a moral judgment and a declaration of low value.  But in the end, it's just a description.   We forget that, there's a lot of other baggage attached.  Higher body weight has some straight up medical consequences that are based in biology and chemistry, not opinion.  No matter how much we might like that to not be true.

To my mother, fat is the most important thing about me.  It's both a judgment and a fear, she sees her own weight problem as the root of her life's dissatisfaction and monitors others as harshly as she monitors herself.  I grew up hyper aware of fatness.
And of course people who love me, if I say I'm fat will say, no, you're curvy or no you're above your ideal weight or no, you're big not FAT. 
What they mean is that I am not unattractively fat, that I'm healthy and fit and pretty and smart and they love me.  And it has always been very, very important to me that they say that, that they believe that.  So I can believe it myself.
It's always been important that I not have any health conditions associated with obesity too.  Cause then, you know.  I'd be FAT.  And have no self worth.

So you would think FEMALE FAT & 40 would be the worst thing I ever heard.  But I thought it was funny.  And not just cause of the opiates, because I still think it was funny.  Also the way everyone tip-toed kindly around it so as to not be mean was really sweet.   Silly.  But sweet.  Though I think now, they were waiting for explosive denial and anger.

I'm just so over it, working so hard to pretend I am other than what I am.

I was dating this guy last summer, and one time we were in my bedroom and I was getting dressed and he stopped me and said "you have such a beautiful body" and my jaw crashed onto the floor, like do not pass go, WHAT?!  Because he was entirely sincere.
And eventually I pulled myself together enough to say "thank you, I don't ever think of myself that way but, um.  Thank you" ('cause of course I need to file the disclaimer on the compliment WHILE accepting it)
And he said "well, why not?"
And I'm like "well, uh, um - I'm kinda of fat, you know?"
And he said the most remarkable thing I had ever heard.  "Does that really matter?"

Do you mean to tell me someone could like me not in spite of my weight, but because my weight is irrelevant to my attractiveness and worth?

Weird. 

I tell you what too.  When I was sitting there all drugged up and waiting for the cat scan the nurse who checked me in came to hang out with me.  I mean, he checked vitals and stuff, and we had a long and probably not as witty as I remember conversation about the blood pressure cuff and how if it was accurate I was probably dead and he got it working and what have you, but I think he was getting off duty and came to see how I was, 'cause he wasn't the nurse assigned to me or one of the floor nurses in my section.  He just liked me enough to see how I was doing. 
Even though he knows how much I weigh. 
He was cute too, I should have asked him out. 

This maybe doesn't make sense, but it just felt like a really powerful moment, a tipping point.  I've been fat my whole adult life for lots of reasons beyond the simple I like to eat too much.  I don't really have much belief in plain old simple reasons.  But I've never been able to say it without bracing myself, or explaining why it's only sort of true or flinching deep inside. 
And how can you thrive if you flinch whenever you think of yourself? 

But moments of pain strip off the bullshit always, and it just all seemed so stupid in the ER.  It still seems stupid to think of myself with an asterisk next to all my good qualities, a footnote that says, *but she's fat, you know.  Why on earth would I need to tell a man who is looking at me naked that I'm fat?  He's had sex with me, he knows what I look like. 

This isn't a fat acceptance thing really, I have some problems with the way that discussion is framed, and no, I don't think obesity is just as healthy as thinness, save your breath.  I...
I guess I'm officially done flinching.  And yeah, I'm fat.

Oh, and no, it was not my gallbladder.  Kidney stone.  Don't recommend it.

A step at a time.

I have noticed this before, but it is so worth noticing again - you all are terrific.   I find it awfully heartening to find out that there are (obviously brilliant and perceptive!) people out there, ones who know me in real life, and ones who only know me from the blog, who think well for me, as well as of me. In such a beautifully thoughtful way.

Nobody better ever pick on the Internet around me, because I tell you, it has brought me more than I can ever possibly measure.

Spent the week paring the corners off my budget and exploring different ways to expand my business.  I have some ideas and got some notions from others; unfortunately everything takes time, so let us hope for slightly looser pocket strings in my existing customer base while I try this out.  
Oddly, I feel better.  Faced this set of my own failings, working on a plan....if it succeeds that's great, and if it doesn't, well......then I'll have a new life.  And that will be OK too.  Transition sucks, but you know me well enough now to know how I love me some evolution.  Plus I had a revelation while thinking about it, a good one, though that's a post for another day.

And I stand corrected.  I am a creative person.   I will make sure not to doubt that again.

In the meantime, I went for a walk this weekend.   I have such a mixed relationship with walking.   The very first time I ever walked in the woods I was in first grade and I went with Rob-from-my-class and his family and by the end of the day I had a gorgeous worm-eaten walking stick that I kept for years and a crush on Rob, which was more likely a crush on Rob's mom, who was the yoga-teaching hippy mom at my school.  They lived by the lake and fed the geese and thought about the environment and were the first people I ever knew who had those 5 gallon bottles of water for drinking and cooking.  It was like going to another, very, very cool planet. 

But other than that first experience, and walking by the ocean at my aunt's house - I hated it.  Walking out of doors?  With the bugs and stuff?  And sweat?  (I was a very girly little girl).  Even when I was young and limber and well able to walk the lead for a day, I got through hiking by shutting my head down and going on auto pilot.   Which kind of misses the point, yes?   Walking in NY is ok, cause there is ALWAYS stuff to be amused by and usually friends - walking and talking is great.  

These days the bugs don't bother me so, and I have rediscovered the beauty of discovering what might be under a leaf, but I am older and creakier and less fit - it takes a half an hour for my hip to loosen up and stop hurting and about an hour UNTIL my foot starts to ache.  So I have tended to avoid.   But more and more I hate being limited to 'indoor girl' and the aches and pains which once seemed like a reason NOT to do things now seem more like a reason to DO something. 

Ferociously determined is just another way of saying obstinate as a pig and 40 can bite me in the ass if it thinks its going to make me LESS.  Not that I have a plan.  More an inclination.  I like inclinations better than plans anyway.

So I went for a walk in the park near the canal with a friend and had a fine time and my foot never even really hurt much after an hour and a quarter which is huge thing and it was only a little bit sore this morning and we saw naked trees and people with happy wet dogs and geese and ducks and no squirrels which is odd, and reproduction Durham boats and a spinning wheel through a window and watched the river current and I wore her son's hat cause I forgot my own (bad knitter!) and it kept sliding up until I looked a complete dork, and that was funny too.   And at the end we were walking by the canal and there were three ducks, one white and two green headed, and the white one was diving for something tasty and I do not think there is much in the world I like better than a duck's ass pointed at the sky with his little orange feet paddling hard to balance him.

Which led to me calling out to the duck - loud - "do it again, baby".  And then to his friends, "Give me some mallard ass, lemme see your duck ass".   Which they did.

My friend, needless to say, laughed.  But seriously.  What is better than diving-duck butt? 

I'll tell you what's better, is a few minutes later when a small group of four landed in formation, wings back breaking and slicing the water like art.