Counting down the days. Writing down the moments.

~ fern-seed ~ Leave a comment

It’s been difficult to write much since the end of summer. Mostly because of the election. It just won’t fucking end. I spend too much time cruising through Facebook, stressing out over the latest bullshit news. And then I remind myself to stop doing that. To get off the Internet. Go outside. Cook some soup. Read an actual paper book. Look at something beautiful. Take a picture of it. Take the dog for a walk. Try not to get Covid. Get some work done. Do your shopping. Wrap your gifts. GET OFF THE INTERNET.

Up until this week, my job has been ridiculously busy, but even that has been a blessing in that it’s kept me off the Internet as much as it could. So for months, it’s been nonstop working, cooking, shopping, navigating unhappy teenager/young adult pandemic angst, and reading daily reports about how half the nation has gone insane and would prefer a sociopathic despot over the U.S. Constitution. And in the middle of all of it, autumn has come and gone, ski season has started, Christmas, my birthday, and the new year have come and gone, and still the election will never ever be over, it seems.

On top of the election, Covid-19 continues to putter along, keeping us all guessing. It doesn’t seem to be a raging pandemic as much as a puttering one. It’s always out there, the threat of it. And now there’s this new exciting extra contagious strain developing. The first case in the U.S. was in a nearby county, BECAUSE OF COURSE IT WAS, but the Governor decided to ease up on some restrictions anyway. I predict that will change in a month or so. My daughters are damned tired of the confinement, and I’m not sure how much they realize I am too. I want, more than anything, for them to be able to get on out there and do whatever they want. I want my 20 year old to be living in the apartment I’m STILL PAYING FOR up in Denver, to be able to take classes live in person on campus, to be able to take advantage of living across the street from the theater district, to see plays and to audition for them. I want all those things for her. But instead, she’s living here at home, sleeping till noon most days, living her life on the Internet till all hours of the morning, not making friends, feeling depressed and isolated. And my 17 year old, feeling immortal and invincible like most people her age, just ignores all the restrictions as much as she can get away with, while my husband and I worry that she’ll bring the virus home with her and give it to us older folks who are well beyond the invincible stage of our lives. And when we call her on her shit, she either justifies it or just cries.

So, now it’s 2021, and I’m almost afraid to imagine what this year will bring. I’m just trying to get through the next two weeks of Trump and his cronies still trying to steal the election somehow. I’m tired of having to worry about this shit. Especially since I have so much else shit to be worried about. Biden wasn’t my first choice for president by far, but I’m so looking forward to having a president that is actually sane and capable of doing the damn job.

The book is from my daughter. The elephant is from a work friend. I like to keep them both handy.

My 20 year old gave me a journal for Christmas: one of those directed journaling type things where I’m supposed to write down three moments of joy for each day. I’m not one to make New Years resolutions ever, but, so far, I’ve managed to come up with three things to write down every day, which is good, I suppose. They’re little joys for the most part, but my focus is more narrow these days, so I say they still count. I’m actually trying my best to sit down and write three things at the end of each day. On New Years Day, my three things were:

It’s not 2020 any more.
It’s not 2020 any more.
IT’S NOT 2020 ANY MORE!

I already know what I’ll be writing for January 20. In between now and then, it’s just touch and go.

How the Heat Wave Ended

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The heat was oppressive for at least two weeks, and by the time we got to September, we’d grown almost used to the constant smoky tang in the air, the haze of numerous wildfires burning throughout Colorado wafting into our area. And then we started seeing this sort of thing on our weather apps:

File this under: WTF?

That’s a pretty radical temperature change, even for our area. So, we spent the holiday weekend winterizing our campers and covering the garden beds, taking several breaks to escape the heat as best we could. By Monday afternoon, I felt too hot and tired to do much else. By late afternoon, the wind started to pick up and the air to cool ever so slightly, so I went out to my little unfinished garden and covered the plants as best I could. The sky was so hazy that the sun going down looked a little ominous.

Hang in there…

By morning, it was snowing steadily, but the ground was so warm from the weeks of heat that it didn’t stick to the roads until late in the evening, and the house was still so warm that the heat never kicked on until midday yesterday. We ended up with five or six inches of snow covering the ground and weighing down tree branches. I’m not sure what my garden beds will look like when I finally go out to check. My broccoli had just started to sprout:

Tiny head of broccoli. Fingers crossed that it’s survived.

I’m hoping to salvage at least one head after all this. But if not, I’ll just chalk it up to life at 7,400 feet, and start earlier next year. I’m also going to do some indoor gardening in my little sunroom this winter. Maybe I can get some broccoli that way.

This morning, there’s still snow on the ground, and a dense fog has rolled in.

But it’s warming up. By the weekend, daytime temps will be back in the 70s, and we’ll have a few weeks of autumn. Fall in Colorado can be fleeting, but it sure is fine.

Hopefully, this odd early storm will help get all those fires under control. And hopefully, my garden has survived.

High altitude garden: a work in progress.

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I used to have a large garden when we lived in Pennsylvania. My husband, Mr. FS let’s call him, built me eight large, raised beds with a wooden slat fence all around it, and I had a few years of gardening bliss until we had to move back to Colorado, where I figured I’d never have much success. It’s a shorter growing season, and the weather is just generally harsher. Also, my neighbors all seemed to have either gardens they’d abandoned or gardens that the local wildlife ate more out of than they did.

But then COVID happened, and we found ourselves at home a lot more, and we also began to wonder how scarce some things could potentially become after watching the nation in general DISSOLVE INTO UTTER CHAOS over the slightest possibility that they might run out of toilet paper. And then there was that month when all the chicken got hoarded. I’m not quite sure I ever saw the produce department emptied out, but I did notice that things started to rise in price. During World War II, everyone planted Victory gardens. Today, everyone’s planting COVID gardens. If ever there was a time to give high altitude gardening a try, it was now.

So Mr. FS said: if I built you some raised beds, would you consider a garden this year? And I said: sure, but I’m going to want you to build me some beds that are well protected from the deer. And the rabbits. And the moles. Basically, I didn’t want to put in the effort and then watch all the woodland animals eat everything before we could. So we drew up some rough plans on the whiteboard in what used to be our homeschool room but has evolved into Mr. FS’s home office. We came up with what I like to call raised bed fortresses. They’re 4 by 4 foot squares, with 5 foot fencing all around and two doors on each side. I also asked Mr. FS to line each bed with gopher wire underneath the dirt so that rabbit and moles (which we have plenty of around here) couldn’t dig underneath the wood to get in that way, and we added two layers of chickenwire on the tops to hopefully deflect any overly large hailstones. We had one hail storm in June that ripped a lot of the young plants to shreds, but since then, they’ve recovered nicely.

Mr. FS and our two Saplings, constructing a Raised Bed Fortress.

So, I’ve spent the summer learning how to garden at 7,400 feet. It snowed on June 9, and we had that hail storm, but other than that, it’s been okay. We’ve enjoyed the project, and now have plans to expand quite a bit next year. I forgot how much I loved gardening. I can spend hours out there just puttering around, whether I’m planting or weeding or harvesting something. Or maybe I didn’t forget. Maybe I just didn’t let myself think about it too much — how much I missed my Pennsylvania garden. Mr. FS is happy for me, and also happy to eat fresh homegrown vegetables once again.

Not sure what’s up with the shapes of these bell peppers. We’ll wait and see.

Last night I picked a bunch of green beans for dinner and they were just so much better than what’s available at the grocery store. (The beans are actually one of the items that prompted me to ask for the FORTRESSES. Back in Pennsylvania, it was a constant battle with the rabbits, trying to get a decent crop of them. The bush beans, and pole beans, all are housed in the protected beds.)

Bush beans, carrots, and one large broccoli plant.

It’s been a fairly large undertaking, and we’re actually still not finished. Three out of four beds are built, but only two have doors on them. The third is ready for doors but Mr. FS has been too busy with work to finish. So I planted things that deer generally don’t like in that bed: zucchini, bell pepper, and tomatoes.

I keep having to trim back the zucchini plants to give the bell peppers a chance.

The zucchini have taken over, and the tomato plants are actually getting nibbled down by some animal out there. But we’re still able to harvest plenty for ourselves. So I can’t complain. Actually, I’ve decided to NOT complain. We’ll get these things finished at some point. I find that I’m in no particular hurry. Gardening isn’t something that lends itself to HURRYING. Gardening is more about puttering. Thinking. Tasting.

The nasturtiums took forever to bloom, but they’re worth the wait.

Discovering.

Sunday morning, over coffee.

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Me: Did you see this headline about the fire tornado in California?

Husband: Fire tornado???

Me: Yes. Apparently, conditions were unusually perfect for the formation of a firenado, also known as a pyrocumulonimbus cloud. It formed near the Loyalton fire. Can you imagine?

Husband: Jesus…. Who had firenado on their 2020 Bingo card?

Me: I know, right? I was just on my way to look up air-fryer recipes, because the new air fryer will arrive today, and this popped up.

Husband: You searched for air-fryer, and THAT came up?

Me: Not exactly…. I was about to do a search, but this came up first and distracted me.

Husband: So… if a firenado were to move to the coast, and just edge over the water… and accidentally pick up a shark….

Me: It would be a fire-shark-nado!

Husband: Yes!

Me: I suppose the shark wouldn’t survive. The fire would sear it nicely though. Shark steaks would fall from the sky, fully cooked.

Husband: Mmmm… shark…. People would be like: why are you out here tossing spices and oil into the air?

Me, laughing: Shark is supposed to be really healthy for you, I think.

Husband: So what are you gonna cook us in the air fryer tonight?

Me: I dunno. Cod, I guess.

An acrid bite to the air.

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There are fires burning in the mountains north and west of us this week, and air quality alerts have gone up all along the front range. All week long, we’ve awakened to an ever increasing acrid scent and smoky haze in the air. We don’t have central air at our house, so we usually sleep with the windows open at night. In the mornings, we’ve been closing the windows and blinds for the day, to keep the house as cool and as smoke-free as possible. But even so, I have a constant metallic taste in my mouth, and a slight ever-present headache.

Two of the fires are actually in locations we’ve visited recently, on social distanced camping trips, so it’s strange to think that places and roads we just drove through are now closed and under evacuations.

Just last weekend, we snuck off for a weekend camping trip, our last before we had to drive our oldest back to Denver for college, and since we were close by, we drove to the top of Independence Pass, just to show the girls. But we didn’t stay long up there because it’s 12,000 feet up, and that can make us feel a little… odd… being up at that altitude, but also because it was damned crowded up there, and we didn’t want to be around so many people, masks or no. So, we drove back down the narrow and winding roads, back to our quiet little campsite, and kept to ourselves.

And now, Independence Pass is closed, I think. Not because the fire is burning up there, but because truckers keep trying to use the road as an alternative to I-70, which is partially closed due to fire. The problem is: big trucks can’t make the narrow hairpin turns that Route 82 is full of. There are signs all over the place warning large trucks and RVs to NOT TRY TO DRIVE ON THIS ROAD. But still… people have tried. Image a tractor trailer or Class A RV navigating this turn:

Now imagine that going on for miles and miles, 12,000 feet up endless narrow roads, no guardrails, switchback after switchback after switchback. Now imagine it super crowded with truckers and several dozen cars of varying size, trying to find a way around the I-70 closure, with heavy smoke in the air.

Not the best of ideas.

But given different circumstances, Independence Pass is beautiful. Here’s a picture of the top of the pass, taken a year ago, when we passed through there briefly, before the pandemic, before the fires, before everyone under the sun decided to take up camping as a hobby.

It’s worth the high altitude drive up there, provided you’re in a car that can handle the road. Five stars. Highly recommend.

It looked similar when we were up there last week, except for the crowds of people wandering around.

Two days ago, we drove our oldest up to Denver, to move into her apartment before her semester starts at CU. She texted us this picture later that evening:

So, yeah. Fires are burning this week. And we’re all staying in as much as we can.

Still.

Where did the year go?

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Jesus, I set this up a year ago, posted a few pictures, and then just disappeared again. Where did the year go?

Well, obviously, it got eaten up by my regular life. I keep thinking I’m almost done with the busy part of my life now that one kid is off to college and the other is a junior in high school. But no. I’m not there yet.

Clearly.

I suppose the fact that I was sick for so long has something to do with it too. And not cool-interesting-illness kind of sick, not like back in my college days when it took them forever to figure out that I had pernicious anemia. Nope… this time it was just a cold, that morphed into the flu, that morphed into bronchitis, and then it turned out that I had developed hay fever at the age of 50, for the love of God, so by the time I was done taking all the medicine they prescribed for me and I was still feeling like shit, I went back to the doctor and said, in a nutshell: WTF???? And the doctor was all: well, do you have allergies? And when I said no, he said, well, we’re seeing hay fever in people this year who’ve never had it before. Allergy season is particularly bad this year and started very early. It’s probably allergies.

So, I’ve been congested since March. Like, how is that even possible? Part of me didn’t believe this new doctor I go to now, when he said I have allergies, although I did keep taking my Claritin and even finally gave in and started using the dreaded hateful Flonase on top of that. And even with those things, I’ve spent the summer consistently congested, and on days when the ozone alerts are active (which has been a lot! a lot more than I ever remember at least!) I was (and am) still congested. But then I went to the eye doctor for a regular checkup and lo and behold — he could see that I have hay fever by looking at my conjunctiva, or whatever the hell it was he called it.

“I see you have allergies,” he said to me. “How are you managing?”

In my head, I was all: yes, apparently I have hay fever. For the first time in 50 goddamn years on the planet. Also: I guess my new doctor isn’t the quack I thought he was. 

Out loud I said, “It’s not too bad. I take Flonase and Claritin every day.”

He then waxed poetical for a few minutes about the wonders of Flonase. He, apparently, has had allergies all his life. And Flonase is what finally saved him.

I hate Flonase. I hate spraying anything in my nose. But I’m learning to live with it. Because what else can I do? If I don’t take it, I’m worse than when I do take it. So, every day, I spray a fine mist into each nostril, try not to flinch too much, and wonder if I did it right. I’m getting better at it, I suppose.

So, for more than half of my 50th year, I’ve been battling colds, flu, bronchitis, and hay fever. It slowed me down more than I care to admit I suppose. Whenever I had free time, between work, finishing up homeschooling my youngest, launching my oldest into full time college, trying to keep up with the dishes and laundry, blogging was really the furthest thing from my mind. Mostly, I’d just sit on a sofa, resting, watching mindless television, scrolling through social media feeds.

The first frost should come soon. Hopefully, I’ll get some relief then. At least I’ll get some skiing in.

And if I really make an effort, I’ll blog more too.

Scooby’s street?

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mysterylane

We find ourselves traveling through Gunnison more and more these days, and we’ve often passed by this funny little sign, and I finally managed to snap a picture of it. Maybe someday we’ll turn in and drive to the end. See who’s there.

A rare sighting

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payphone

We live in a forest in Colorado, on top of a smallish mountain divide, where mule deer are plentiful, along with a smattering of coyote, foxes, bears, even a bobcat. We do like to travel as much as we can, though, and we like to drag our teenage daughters along with us whenever possible. Sometimes, on our many road trips, we spot something that’s quite unusual for us to see, like this weird-looking thing, spotted somewhere on the outskirts of Gunnison.