b goes bloggish

I’ve been learning things today, very disorganized.  I ran my morning errands, to get the microwave and modem.  The internet is not yet here so I’m using my phone as a hot spot and am being profligate with my data use.  Once the person from Xfinity comes Sat I’ll have Wi-Fi again.

 I’m exhausted.

Oh joy, gratitudes galore, I’ve heard the train horn 4 times this evening.  And loud enough to hear clearly.  I feel like I’ve come home.    It’s been a long spell without the sound of trains, not just in Maine, but before that for years in Enfield and Wallingford before that.  Here they color my night and will sing me to sleep. I’ll have to look at a map and see where they are.  I doubt there is a train yard near enough to hear as I did for the first 16 years of my life, with the clang of trains being hooked up, and I can’t feel the rumbles like I did in Wooster Sq. but they will sing through my days and remind me of all I had to start with and all that what went into my first memories. 

Fri morning Too tired last evening to finish, I’m spending the morning waiting for the delivery of a rug.  Any day can bring rain and I don’t want it sitting outside for hours.  I don’t even know if it’s coming today.  I did get a visit from my painter, they will be in on Tues to paint.    

       

                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Sat. I’m sitting in the window, watching the Comcast guy hook up the house for WiFi and phone.  They used to have service here, but went to a satellite dish that’s hidden in one of the large camellia bushes.

The snow is expected to stop midafternoon, we got about 18” out there and I don’t expect much more. It’s not too heavy which is nice, and I am full of gratitude and triumph at freeing my garage door.  I’ve been chipping at the ice and sweeping every last grain of snow away and finally the concrete floor let go of the gasket and the door rolled up, hooray!  

I got the rest of the shoveling done while the flakes were getting very big and the sky was lightening. I noticed last night, actually about 4am, that although it was overcast and snowing I could see throughout the interior of the house.  I do keep a light on in the living room all night and it could be it was reflecting off the snow but from my bed I could see to the opposite side of the house and it was as well-lit as the side with the light.  Then I thought it must be the moon, however the moon is waning and will be completely dark in 2 days so that’s not it.  Dawn is 5:40 so perhaps it was predawn.  I’ll have to see what it looks like tonight at 7pm and later.

I’m grateful for the equinox coming soon.  

I’m grateful the snow falling off the roof didn’t block the exhaust pipe for the furnace and that the roof above it is empty, so no worries until the next snow fall.  Until now it hasn’t been close, but one big snow dump off the roof and it could get blocked.  I tried to dig out from under the end of the pipe but it blows hot air and melts the snow nearby so it’s all ice.  It’s certainly not energy efficient to blow heat out the exhaust, but snow might be the reason for it.  

I’m grateful I seem to be closing in on a computer problem that has plagued me for about a year, several times a day the internet drops me for a few minutes.  It’s very frustrating when I’m trying to do internet banking, for example or other important stuff as well as interrupting me at the most emotionally tense points in movies I stream.  This is a lemons ➛lemonade thing, I’ve been trying to squish this thing to get some juice out for ages.   My internet company finally figured out it was something with iCloud and I finally convinced the Apple people it really is. So I willingly and helplessly­ followed his direction and he, in order to help me get rid of this problem, essentially get rid of the program without having it take everything it ever saw. Bottom line, at least at this point, is that I am now downloading a whole bunch of stuff I seem to have put into iCloud that will stay on my computer and the process is taking so much bandwidth that I am unable to access the internet.  And from the amount left and the speed with which it’s going, it won’t finish until tomorrow, early morning, I hope.  That’s the lemon.  And a bit of anxiety, I have to use the internet for work tomorrow morning by 10AM. But if it finally fixes it all, that will be sweet.

I took some pix I hope to include but I don’t know what capabilities I will have and when.

I’m grateful I thought to be sure I’d have a computer to use at work since I usually use my own which is going to have to stay home until iCloud finishes downloading.  

I’m grateful I have some books downloaded so I can continue reading while I wait for the internet to become available tomorrow.  Also that I can still use Word to write in my journal, even if I can’t save it.  It gives me a good reason to be grateful for the internet when I have it, which is usually.  For some reason email comes through at times, I don’t think I can get pictures through, so I’ll wait and send the two days together with pictures

I’m grateful that this time is given to me and I will use part of it to write to Philip

This morning I was able to enjoy one of my special joys, the sparkle, everywhere, after a very heavy frost. Way back, when I first decided to look for joy in my life, and decided to find as much joy as possible from every opportunity, this, the true rainbows of color on sunlit snow, the chance to get a sparkle of pure red from a point across the yard, was the emblem of what I was looking for.  Yesterday it was the intensity of blue of a cloudless winter sky, so deep you could almost see the stars and yet the blue of it alleviating any ponderous sharing of solitary mysteries, the loneliness of physics, instead, rejoicing at the exquisite detailed beauty the ponderousness

Another spectacularly bright day with the blue I tried to replicate for my bedroom.  

I have to buy some 7Up! I found some “spiral cut ham” on sale in the “ends” section of the meat counter at the local general store.  It’s beautifully low fat, but oh boy, salty?  So, I Googled it and the current general thinking is to boil it in soda or vinegar and sugar. Supposedly it won’t add a sweet flavor but the sugar “draws out” the salt.  They said I could use water too, which was my original plan, but I’m intrigued with the raves for the soda solution.  

I’m grateful for my meal yesterday.  I wanted to use up some salsa, I adore Mrs. Renfro’s (mild, low cal) peach salsa, a delight on salmon, and I have several jars I stocked up on that I now need to eat before my move, so I microwaved diced onion, sweet peppers and mushrooms, with chicken pieces in a sauce of salsa with yogurt added that was mmmmm, luscious.  Not French country cooking and certainly not a lamb feast, but not bad.  

I use yogurt for a sauce frequently.  If with a meat dish I’ll add a splash of wine a la stroganough.  I call it stroganough because I add things into it (garlic and onion powder, maybe cumin or basil or Chinnese 5 spice) until I have enough.

I’m grateful I have plenty of wood to last me through the chilly spring time as well as winter.  I’m using this very real gratitude to also include a couple pix of my wood handling past.