Hi! Thank you for stopping in for a visit, this weekend. I have settled in for a last cup of tea for the day. As always, there’s cold-brew coffee, as well as English Breakfast and oolong tea; fresh mozzarella cheese; gluten-free crackers and mixed nuts.
It’s hard to believe that the weekend has arrived again so soon! On the other hand, we have gone from frost warnings to heat and fire warnings, and promised rain has fallen only as light drizzle or evaporated before hitting the ground. I have ignored the air quality to get outside early in the morning, before the flowers fold up ,or the petals fall off, and the plants shrivel a little more. I banked the chive patch with spent coffee grounds and tea leaves, and it seems that enough water is stored to keep them looking healthy. I also go outside with the Scampers and let the Sun warm and loosen my back muscles. It feels really nice.
I continue to fool around with the new WP blog, trying out things to see what happens. I have added some older poems—from the fifties and sixties—as pages rather than posts. I can use Categories on the posts to group genres and more recent work. To date, I have divided my posts among my blogs according to content/purpose. I should be able to come at it another way.
I am looking forward to the weekly Zoom gathering with Liz Danforth and friends. It’s both Social and Co-working, so a couple hours (or a bit more). I enjoy the visiting, and as with Lucy Snyder’s weekday lunchtime writing get-together, I expect to get a lot of poetry written.
I look forward to playing with the Scampers, catching up on household chores, and reading, the Scampers curled up beside me on the recliner. Sunday, meeting for worship.
Best wishes for your weekend and the coming week!
Lizl
P.S. Natalie is the current host for Weekend Coffee Share. You will find her post for this week’s Coffee Share and the Inlinkz link party HERE: What Made May Marvelous.
Weekend Coffee Share is a time for us to take a break out of our lives and enjoy some time catching up with friends (old and new)!
Grab a cup of coffee and share with us! What’s been going on in your life? What are your weekend plans? Is there a topic you’ve just been ruminating on that you want to talk about?
Visit Allison’s site, Eclectic Alli, for her Weekend Coffee Share post and links to other participants’ blogs!
Welcome to the weekend! Help yourself to tea or Toddy coffee, if you’d like. Gluten-free crackers and sardines on the side. This week has been pretty quiet at the house, thanks to the backyard neighbor and his outdoor cooking. I am guessing that they are smoking turkeys, although the smoke is white instead of black, these past few days.
As I mentioned earlier, Al’s family in the area have canceled winter holiday celebrations, and I expect that all things being equal, they will also avoid Easter gatherings. Personally, neither Al nor I observe the secular Christmas or Easter (or other) holidays, while we do enjoy getting together for family gatherings and birthday parties.
I have been writing poems, this week, and getting out of doors to take photographs in the front yard. The neighborhood’s fallen leaves seem to have landed around our front steps. Our house is tucked into a curve in the road with a small front yard. I have been dancing, more, and using the indoor elliptical machine, rather than the stationary bike in the backyard gazebo.
After November’s brief snows, the grass is mostly green, again, even though the nights’ temperatures often dip below freezing. Strong winds have cleared the tree branches of their leaves. The Scampers are napping a lot, since they don’t care much for going outside alone. The exception is early morning and mid-evening, when the rabbits are plentiful in the back yard. Al said, last night, that he heard the rabbit hit his head on the baseboard on his way under the gazebo, the Scampers in hot pursuit. At least rabbits and dogs are getting in their daily exercise.
I am still rereading Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment, by Francis Fukuyama. Finished rereading Sharon Shinn’s “Elemental Blessings” books, and I’m once again rereading L.E. Modesitt, Jr.’s “Imager Portfolio” novels. I have a friend in Australia who sends, once a week, her sermon and/or research notes; I have started in on the Advent notes. New book: Banshee Cries, by C.E. Murphy, “The Walker Papers” #1.5 ; enjoyed it very much.
I am dumping MS Office when my subscription is up, and switching to LibreOffice, which is supposedly better than OpenOffice for compatibility. I used OpenOffice when my main computer was running Linux. Sort of miss it.
I have run out of time, here, but I look forward to visiting your blog, this weekend, and catching up with what’s happening where you are.
Weekend Coffee Share is a time for us to take a break out of our lives and enjoy some time catching up with friends (old and new)! Grab a cup of coffee and share with us! What’s been going on in your life? What are your weekend plans? Is there a topic you’ve just been ruminating on that you want to talk about? All are welcome!
Welcome! I am happy that you’ve dropped by for coffee and a visit, this weekend. There’s cheese and crackers to go with the (hot or cold) coffee or tea, as well as cold water from the fridge.
If we were visiting together, today, I would report that I am feeling much better than I was, a few weeks ago. I’ve finished the prescribed antibiotics, but have continued taking OTC antihistamine pills. Since the pollen count is high, right now, and I am quite allergic to tree pollens, the antihistamines help with getting to sleep and not waking up in the middle of the night. The air quality in eastern North Dakota in recent years has deteriorated, and so I spend more time indoors within range of the air cleaner.
The weather’s been colder than I would have liked. The temperature, Monday evening, was four degrees below freezing, and when I got up, the next morning, there was frost on the grass and thistles where the sun had not yet reached them. Most of the tulip flowers did survive. More have not yet bloomed, and so I am hopeful.
I had planned to have planted wildflower seeds by now, but between feeling ill and considering the cold temperatures and snow in northeastern Minnesota and elsewhere, I have yet to order seeds. I expect that some of the annuals that commonly reseed may appear a bit later. I did not have a chance to finish raking the backyard garden space and clearing out the late-autumn grass.
A delight has been the return, after years of absence, of the common wild violets to the lawn, coming up around the new workshop, now that the ground has settled, and some grass is also growing. I have enjoyed taking pictures of the violets and the hardy crop of dandelions. I have seen bees at the dandelions, already, and look forward to their return. If I have any wildflowers, this summer and fall.
My Dandelion
At the follow-up with my PCP following the emergency room visit, I learned that I had lost five pounds in weight since my six-month checkup in December. I think that I have become careless about eating and should try for more frequent meals and scheduled mealtimes. That may be easier to do at this point, because I am also trying to exercise regularly, again, now that I am feeling more energetic.
I have enjoyed taking more photographs, this week, as I have gotten out into the back yard with the dogs more often. I am enjoying A Woman of No Importance, by Sonia Purnell. Also, I have reread my favorite parts of William Kennedy’s Toy Soldiers and watching the movie adaptation again on DVD.
During my spell of unwellness, I have withdrawn from some activities and am less often on the Internet. I had been feeling unsettled. Withdrawing has been helpful, and being more selective of activities has helped with relaxation. I have listened to some classical music, also, which helps.
Thank you for your time and company! It helps, being able to visit with people.
I look forward to visiting your blog during this weekend.
Best regards,
Lizl
Thanks to Allison of Eclectic Alli for hosting Weekend Coffee Share! Please find her post and the link-up for this weekend HERE.
If we were getting together for coffee or tea, this afternoon…you would be able to get to the house. Travel advisories are canceled in the area, and the sun is making inroads on the seven or so inches of snow that fell on Thursday and Friday. I think that we are expecting a second flood crest, but for the time being, we’re good, here in town. The seepage ended in the basement, and I was able to catch up with the laundry and dish-washing. We made a trip to the butcher shop and grocery store, and I cooked the meat in anticipation of a possible loss of electricity during the blizzard. Which there actually were, in the area, but not close enough to us to worry.
Blue Wild Flax Flower – September Garden
Photoart – Blue Wild Flax Flower
Blue Wild Flax – September Garden
I would also show you where an industrious bird (possibly looking under the snow for nesting materials or food) was clearing away snow, this morning, and tossing dead leaves and grass onto the front sidewalk, looking for something that he or she didn’t immediately find. I hesitated to take many photographs from my vantage point in the doorway, for fear I would frighten away the bird before it found what it wanted.
Discarded Rubble
If we were visiting together, I would tell you about my progress in the April poetry writing, a poem a day during National Poetry Month. I have written at least one poem for each day, plus a couple of warmup poems at the end of March, through Friday. I still have to write a poem for today. When I tried this (without my poetry-writing email group) for National Haiku Writing Month, I gave up at about this point in the effort. This time around, I am not concerning myself so much with writing to provided prompts from Writers Digest, a daily library mailing, or the Academy of American Poets (a group that I have supported since the beginning of last year). Not all of the poems that I have written so far this month are ready to put online, but I have written and posted one original poem for each day on my Quiet Spaces (dot net) Journal. And also, randomly, on others of my blogs.
Writing, whether poetry or prose, inevitably stirs up trains of thought that I many not always want to follow to speculations and/or conclusions. A dangerous thing about writing, as opposed to reading. The “inspirations” come from within me, and not as distractions from outside of myself.
The Scampers have fallen asleep while waiting for their suppers, and so I must leave you! Coffee or tea to go, as you journey on? Help yourself! (I have eaten all of the filberts and veggie crackers. Sorry!)
I look forward to reading about your week! And don’t forget to stop by Allison’s to read her Weekend Coffee Share post and connect with others.
Best wishes for the week to be!
Love & hugs,
Lizl
P.S. I never did get through the “Terms of Service” for the new link set-up for Weekend Coffee Share, and so I am not adding my Coffee Share link, there. You can still find me on Twitter and the WordPress Reader, though, if you aren’t following my Coffee Breaks blog.
Weekend Coffee Share is a time for us to take a break out of our lives and enjoy some time catching up with friends (old and new)!
Grab a cup of coffee and share with us! What’s been going on in your life? What are your weekend plans? Is there a topic you’ve just been ruminating on that you want to talk about?
All are welcome! Just add your link to the Linky-List, and be sure to visit others and join in their conversations!
Welcome! Please help yourself to your choice of (virtual) beverage and snacks. At this time of the morning, everyone else is still asleep in our household. I am trying to avoid making any sounds. The Scampers have been quite demanding, being inside and without any meaningful exercise for too long.
Bored, Now
If we were having coffee together, this morning, I would tell you that I have welcomed the respite from the long stretch of sub-zero Arctic air that should have stayed at the North Pole where it belongs. When I took the Scampers outside, first thing on Friday, the temperature was high enough that I was able to go out in shirtsleeves to snap a few photographs. Our next Winter Storm Advisory indicates a return to inclement weather less than ten hours from now. I am not amused.
Cotoneaster Fruit
One of my planned activities for the weekend and the rest of the month is to write a haiku (or related poetry form) for each day in February. I am not confining myself to the prompts provided at NaHaiWriMo (February is haiku-writing month), but of the haiku that I’ve written so far this month, one of yesterday’s poems included the prompt. So as to not clutter my poetry blog, I am collecting the February haiku at my Blogger blog for the time being: theartofdisorder.blogspot.com (I also have November’s poem-a-day poems there; I didn’t manage a poem a day, but I didn’t miss a lot of days.) Here is Friday’s poem:
winter’s fingers draw pictures on the windows
while I sleep beneath my quilts
There is also a photo to go with it. My other activity for this weekend is to go through my sorting boxes, looking for music CDs that my husband wants to add to the computer that he takes out to the workshop. I had not been keeping track of them, not having a CD player for too many years. I have been feeling out of sorts for weeks, now, and I’m hoping that napping and remembering to eat more often will help.
If we were having coffee together, this morning, I would mention that another of my cousins has died. I hadn’t seen him often for many years, now; not since his father’s funeral in 2013, I believe. I had 60-some first cousins, my dad being the oldest of twelve children, and I did not know many of them. Most did not live in the area, and I had left home at age seventeen, missing most of the family reunions for that side of the family. I think they had a lot of reunions on the West Coast.
I can hear the Scampers waking up in the next room, and so I must bring our conversation to a close. Looking forward to visiting your Weekend Coffee Share post before the weekend’s conclusion.
Weekend Coffee Share is a time for us to take a break out of our lives and enjoy some time catching up with friends (old and new)!
Grab a cup of coffee and share with us! What’s been going on in your life? What are your weekend plans? Is there a topic you’ve just been ruminating on that you want to talk about?
All are welcome! Just add your link to the Linky-List [at our host Eclectic Alli’s site], and be sure to visit others and join in their conversations!
California Poppy in July
frosty mist and fog
streets papered with sheer ice
the warm steam from my cup
— mine, today
If we were having coffee together, this afternoon, I would recommend Skype or telephone. We have been enjoying freezing drizzle and fog, and the neighborhood roads are iffy, with many traffic mishaps reported around town. My husband has skipped his habitual coffee break and is spending the day in his workshop (where he has his own coffee maker and snacky things in the mini-fridge. I don’t expect to see him before suppertime.)
If we were visiting together, today, I would tell you that I did order that salt-and-pepper set that I mentioned in one of my last Weekend Coffee Shares; the package is to arrive within the week. I am quite happy about that. I would also tell you that my husband ordered a copy of Rachel Mankowitz’s book, Yeshiva Girl, for me. I have not finished the book, yet, but it is interesting and well written. (I get through paper books much more slowly because of eye strain.)
I would also mention to you that I started taking my antihistamine tablets, again, and they are helping with the irritations in my mouth; I already had cut down on spicy foods without much luck, and so I figure I added something to my diet over the past three or four months that I am allergic to. Also, since starting to take those pills, again, I am sleeping soundly through the night and my blood sugar levels are getting lower between meals. A happy sign. My blood pressure, which I try to take a couple times a week, was 101/66 at last check, and my blood oxygen level is up. So, I have managed to not upset anything crucial, this week. A major accomplishment!
My cleaning and straightening project is coming along slowly. On careful scrutiny, I discover that my clothes closet is full of clothing that I never wear. I mean, like, for a decade or more. Almost all of the clothing I wear can be (and would be) stored in dresser drawers, if I could get through the boxes of odds and ends to sort and toss. I am wondering how to rearrange things to move the dresser into the clothes closet. I do not dare to dump entire boxes, no matter how old, into the dumpster without looking through them, because one of the boxes contains my old Lenovo laptop from the years when I did freelance work.
I think that the problem I have with putting my bed-sitting room in order is the same problem as my trying to put my blog pages and posts in order. I have nowhere to put the items that I have not yet decided to either toss or keep. Or what to do with the ones that I want to keep, but not make public. I see some massive printing projects in my future.
In closing, I would tell you that my younger sister has ordered the hardcover proof copy of the book she has compiled/written and edited of our parents’ correspondence with each other, beginning when they met in Iowa before the United States entered World War II. I am excited to see the finished product.
Again, thank you for listening. I look forward to reading your weekend post.
Welcome to my back yard! This afternoon, I am enjoying a pot of “ti kuan yin goddess of mercy” oolong tea from Stash Tea online. Bribing myself to drink less coffee to cut back on the carbohydrates. While I drink tea “straight”, I make my coffee from homemade, cold-brew concentrate added to whole milk. It’s a meal in itself; I am trying to limit myself to once or twice a day.
If we were having coffee together, today, I would invite you outdoors. I am sitting in a camp chair that’s stored in my gazebo. It is under the bending branches of the cotoneaster bushes and out of the direct sunlight.
The dogs seem to like the sunshine. My previous two dogs (Ladd and Samantha) were black cocker spaniels, and both of them enjoyed “sunbathing” also.
Out in the Sun
The week has been a quiet one. On Wednesday, we traveled to the home town for our semi-annual dental appointments. Al got two fillings while I waited, since there was an open time slot in their schedule and it saved us making an extra trip. I have orders to floss more often, please, and brush at the gum line.
Al ordered blinds for the workshop windows. He finished installing them, this afternoon, and then headed out to do some shopping (undoubtedly for the workshop) and coffee at his favorite restaurant. I have gotten the laundry washed and dried, but not put away. the kitchen is looking pretty good. Using plastic utensils and paper plates and bowls help a lot, except for the cooking necessaries, helped a lot with that. Paper plates in a large stack. The stores must be thinking “picnic”!
Incoming Weather
I am seeing definite storm-type clouds to the north-northwest. Hot as it is, I should expect there might be rain, tonight. The backyard neighbors have put up chicken wire on their side of our fence, and so we are not enjoying many visits from the neighborhood rabbits. I miss them very much.
We took extreme measures to try to protect the rabbits from trying to get through the fence at the break where the gate leaves a gap, here in the back yard. The first day that the chicken wire was placed to block that gap, a rabbit trying to outrace our dogs went through and ended up trapped between our metal fence and the chicken wire, which was too tall for him to get himself out of without a terrible struggle to reach the top, clawing at the chicken wire.
Blocking the Way
We have bolted a board to the gate posts high enough that the rabbits will not try to get through, there. we have left a space beneath the front gate where they can come and go. Our new neighbor to the south is planning to put up a privacy fence between his yard and ours, and so there will be no place from which to watch the rabbits except for between our houses and across the street through the front-room window.
The one concern that I do have is that the spouse of a family member has entered hospice care, this week. Not unexpected, but still…even the inevitable can be jarring.
I have started going to bed earlier, which, oddly, is resulting in my sleeping later into the morning. And so, I must get up promptly to get good photographs of the wildflowers.
I have enjoyed this time visiting with you. I hope that you have a wonderful weekend and beyond!
Best wishes!
Lizl
Weekend Coffee Share is hosted by Alli at her Eclectic Alli blog. and the InLinkz link is here, where you will find links to other Weekend Coffee Share participants.
all is still
but the raindrops falling
on the street
An afternoon for nostalgia! The rain has been coming down, off and on, for hours, and according to the forecast, that won’t end until early morning. I’ve got water hot and ready for tea (black and Oolong only, this week), coffee concentrate, and cold water from the refrigerator.
If we were having coffee together, this afternoon, I would invite you to look through the old photographs that my sister on the East Coast sent to me; they were in the materials she took back with her from the family home after Father’s funeral—a selection of pictures that she thought I might enjoy having, after she’d scanned all of them into her computer.
We put off grocery shopping until late afternoon, so Al could get the electrical work done in the workshop he’s building in the back yard. Yes, ongoing! He hopes to have the electrical inspection done within the next week or two. Now that groceries have been secured, he has another list for the shop. I spent yesterday evening catching up with laundry, and tonight I will be cooking meat for the week to come. I have a lot of salad greens, nuts, broccoli, and a summer squash. I still am trying to cut more carbohydrates out of my diet to lower my blood sugar and keep it low as I cut down on the medication. I have been working to fine-tune the timing: when I can eat carbs and have the least reaction to the blood sugar levels. Times of the day and what foods to eat first and by how much lead time.
If we were having coffee together, today, we could take our cups to the gazebo, where I now can heat it without the space heater’s blowing a fuse! I put the foam blocks in the eaves, which are left open during the summer for increased air circulation. That is, letting the hot air out the eaves while cooler air comes in from beneath the floor. Which reminds me…I have to go out there and turn on the heater, so that when I exercise in the gazebo, it already will be warm.
Back, again…the weekend has taken another turn, and so I must end this post. Did not get enough sleep, last night, and now I can’t stay awake.
Hope you’ve had a good weekend!
Later!
Lizl
P.S. In the leading picture, I am the second person (in the trumpets row), and my youngest sister is in the row in front of me, second person from the left; she played clarinet.
If we were having coffee together, this afternoon, we would be inside the house. We’ve got wind gusts to over 30 mph and dust blowing everywhere. If you don’t care for coffee, I also have hot tea and bottled water. Al drank the last of the lemonade. (Well, all of it, since I don’t have any.) The puppies are curled up for a nap, one on the love seat and the other at my feet.
If we were having coffee together, I would confide that I feel a bit down. My last poetry workshop assignment went in to the leader, yesterday, and I’ve received her response. Very helpful and encouraging. I tried to write a poem today, but did not get anywhere with it. Not at all happy with it. The current phase of Al’s carpentry project is not going well, and so he is quitting for the day and going out for coffee at his favorite café. While you have some coffee, I had better feed the puppies that Al woke up. Be right back!
If we were having coffee together, today, I also would tell you that I am trying to get back into exercising regularly, which I have not done since my last appointment with my doctor. My sister on the east coast has started on the technical aspects of putting together the keepsake book for the immediate family: letters and pictures that we inherited as part of the parents’ estate, when our father died some few months after our mother, last winter. I do not deal well with distractions, adrenaline in general, or activities outside the home (which includes, of course, the garden, yard and other buildings on the property).
I have gotten tired of fish and switched back to beef, occasionally having some baked chicken, and so I am no longer losing weight…but not gaining. I think that I need to go back to menu planning and keeping a food diary. I am supposed to be cutting back on foods high in calcium and switching from “lite salt” to regular; both my calcium and potassium levels were high on the last blood panel. I did okay on the milk products for a few weeks, but … I am not keeping track as I should.
If we were having coffee together, I would share a poem that I wrote during April (write a poem a day month) and revised during this past week, in light of what I have learned (loosening up) about writing haiku and tanka. One of the things I enjoy is science fiction/science poetry, and I wrote a poem about the sound that snow makes when it falls in response to the prompt “the silence of snow”. An article was written and published in a 1999 issue of Nature (.com): “The Sound of Snowflakes“. Basically, I added words to it. This is the new version of my poem:
whispering silence
the gentle touch of winter’s cold
on the lake’s smooth surface
the quiet of the falling snow
the chime as each flake fractures
The news, domestic and international, has been getting me down, and so I have been avoiding newspaper sites and aggregates. I would cancel my NY Times subscription, but I am enjoying the daily crosswords. I probably will unsubscribe from The Washington Post. What I have done is sign up for an account at Medium, which at least gives me choices among writers, topics, and news articles from elsewhere.
If we were having coffee together, I would tell you that I am seriously considering another course to sign up for, now that Introduction to Japanese Poetry is over. That would give me something to concentrate on, other than meal planning, exercise, and the state of the world today.
For those of you in Canada, I hope you are enjoying your Thanksgiving Weekend! Here, Monday is “Columbus Day”…but also Leif Erikson Day. Stories about Leif Erickson fascinated me when I was a child. My Sami ancestors (according to a family member of my grandfather’s generation, now deceased) came to the United States with the first wave of Norwegian immigrants. (Come-latelies. My mother’s people started arriving with the first crossing of the Mayflower in 1620-21.)
Thank you for visiting. I really did need to talk, today. I’m going to quit talking, now.
The Moments Between 