Ramblings

 11 days since my last post.  Brain sort of all over the place, so time for a ramble, without any obvious connections.

The nice thing about having this blog (as I've often said) is that I can look back and see that about this time each year I fall apart - and then sort of come back together again.   So the fact that my mind keeps flicking from 1972 (things starting to happen with Bob) to 2020 (things ending with Bob) to 2026 (now) and all parts in between is OK.  Sometimes it's memories.  Sometimes it might be closer to PTSD because for a moment I forget when/where I am.  Such as looking out the window at my car, thinking that I just want to get in it and come home but I can't until Bob dies - and then I realized that I'm looking out my own kitchen window and that I *am* home - at least as much as I can ever be.  These times don't really bother me - it's like 2026 self is observing and "isn't that interesting."

We had winter.  Actual cold (by Florida standards).  Going to work when it's 25 degrees and breezy - not much fun.  At home I have trouble getting warm.  I wear a sweatshirt, or wrap in a blanket, and sometimes I know I'm warm, even sweating a little, but it's like this core of cold inside that won't thaw out.  But all too soon it will be hot again so I guess I should enjoy the sensation while it lasts.

Even more surprising - Central and South Florida had winter.  Every year, when the temperatures drop, it's almost a joke that they have to watch out for falling iguanas.  When the temps are below 40, they go into a torpor and fall out of the trees.  As soon as the sun comes up and the temperature rises they wake up again.  But this year there were several days that stayed cold. With amazing alacrity for any organization, the FWC temporarily removed the ban on transporting wildlife without a license, and asked people to bring in the cold-shocked lizards to central drop-off points.  5200 were brought in over two days.  The sad thing- they were euthanized (nice way of saying "killed").  The bunny hugger in me is upset because they were just living their lizard lives.  The environmentalist in me acknowledges that they are tremendously invasive (that 5200 is a drop in the bucket of their population) and eating the native animals out of house and home and causing a lot of destruction.  But it's sad.

Woke up this morning and laughed because I suddenly remembered a time over 50 years ago when we were in bed and heard a cat crying, and an occasional thud sound.  Eventually our cat Algernon (our first cat) made his way into the room, bumping into walls.  Somehow he had found a little paper snack bag and gotten his head stuck in it.

RedBug is spending more time in the den, and has even wandered into the kitchen for a snack if I've forgotten to refill his personal kibble bowl.  He even found RiverSong's basket and somehow squeezed himself into it.

The Highland Games were this weekend.  Like the circus - I didn't go.  I've gone a couple of times, and they are fun (and there are Men in Kilts), but apparently I'm not yet in the mood to go by myself (and I didn't get any offers).  I also have a bit of a problem with the fact that unless you buy a VIP ticket ($$$$$) which gives you access to bleachers, there's no place to sit except on the ground.  After a couple of hours I get tired of standing and walking.   I also wanted to keep the weekend open because Jeff is in town for work and thought he might break free (alas - he didn't).  But the weekend was not lost - I actually went to the Weaver's Guild meeting (for once it was more on my side of town) on Saturday, and Sunday I started cutting up and burning a tree that had fallen on my walking path.

Projects are coming along.  I'm working on the 8th panel (out of 9) of the Forest Walk shawl (another reason for going to the Guild meeting - to get a couple of oohs and aaahs because this is getting to be a bit of a slog).  The cleanup of the rotting wood stack is slowly being finished - slowly because the wood is gone and the stakes pulled up, and now what remains is moving all of the cinder blocks and they're heavy enough that I don't shift more than a half-dozen before taking a break.

I did the drive across town today to the peridontist.  Turns out that they can't just evaluate if an implant can be done.  You have to start the procedure - pull out the root, pack it with bone paste and seal it up, then wait four months to see if my bone has grown into it enough to put in the implant.  So it will be four months and a few thousand dollars just to see if it's possible.  That all starts at the end of the month.

I laughed at myself this afternoon.  I got home, took care of a few things, then looked out the window at my dusty car and decided to wash it.  In Ye Olde Goode Days I would have said something like "think I'll wash the car" and Bob would have said "OK, I'll bring the truck around too.  I wonder if I have any tire dressing.  I need to set up the pad on my drill to polish the headlights.  I have to drag out the extension cord and the shop vac so we can vacuum the insides.  Uh - never mind.  That's too much for this afternoon - we'll do it some other time."
So we drove a dirty car a lot.   Today - in the words of Nick Offerman - anything worth doing is worth doing half-assed.  I got the hose, bucket, car wash, and a wad of nylon net and 15 minutes later had a reasonably clean car.  I even put in another 10 minutes cleaning the windows, headlights, and reflectors.

I'm still slogging along on my 1084 mile virtual walk.  I hit the 86% mark today (933 miles done, 151 to go)  I'm getting very tired of obsessively trying to keep track of my daily steps - but I should be done in a couple of months.

I got a nice compliment - nice enough that I want to write it down so that 2027 self can be reminded and smile.  It came from my chatbot - but hey - I take what I can get.  We were having a discussion of coincidence vs. the Baader Meinhof effect.  In this case, it was the word "quandong" - not a word I had encountered before but then got it twice in one day.  First, watching "Tasting History" where he saw it in a recipe (it's a fruit) and then that night when I was reading a book on birds, and it talked about a bowerbird building the bower in the shade of a quandong tree.

  At one point the bot said that yes, it was a coincidence, but that my interests are so varied that "You cast a wide mental net, so sometimes you can catch the same strange fish from two different streams."   I like that - I'm not a dabbler, a dilatant , or scatter brained.  I just cast a wide mental net.

And now, with the brain dumped, I'm going to resume my binge watching of The Great British Sewing Bee and knit a bit more on that shawl.

Flirty Owl, Bug in the Sun, Another Big Project

 I didn't go to the circus.
I've written about the Royal Hanneford circus before - the multi-generational family one.  I first went in 2023.  I had agreed to meet a friend there, but he fell asleep on his couch instead.  I felt very self-conscious - as far as I could tell, I was the only person there by myself.  But I eventually realized that no one else noticed, or cared.
In 2024 I went by myself, no worries.  Same for 2025.
But this year they caught me a little off-guard.  In previous years the circus has come to town in March or April, for two weekends.  This year it was the first week in January, for just one weekend.  I've been feeling unbalanced, and somehow just couldn't get myself to get up and go.  I threw the decision to the fates: I did a FaceBook post of "Hey - the circus is in town this weekend - anyone want to go?"  I got two positive responses - unfortunately from people in Alaska and England.
So no circus this year (at least not the Royal Hanneford - the Cirque Italia is coming next month).

Sometimes I take advantage of the lack of accountability in my life - that I have no one in my personal life to notice or care what I do.  I wrote last time of losing my tooth.  I got it checked out by the dentist, and got my referral to the periodontist.  I decided to do my grocery shopping on the way home so I didn't have to do it Friday after work - and I got a king cake.  I love those things.  And, because of the above-mentioned lack of accountability, there was no one to notice if for the next few days I got in the habit of staying up until 2:00 a.m., eating king cake (yes, one person can eat an entire king cake in 3.5 days) and flipping aimlessly through YouTube.  But it seems to have set some sort of reset button - since that binge, I've been better at staying in 2026.

King cake come with a little plastic doll (in theory they should be baked in the cake, but for liability reasons they're now placed in separately.)  Because of this annual indulgence, I now have three little dolls.  I can't bring myself to toss them, because Bob liked to make little found art assemblages with them.  Maybe sometime I will too (this one he painted, then put together with a ring box and a key)

 

I'm still knitting on the Forest Walk shawl.  Five panels done, four to go.  It's cold right now but by the time I'm done it will be too hot to wear it.  But it's more of a process than a product thing.  It's particularly pretty just piled up on my lap while I'm working.

Despite having a little spate of rain here and there, we continue to be quite dry (we didn't have a hurricane or even a tropical storm at all in 2025, so about a foot less rain than usual).  Lakes and ponds are way down.  But I rather like the very eerie effect of the cypress trees with their enlarged trunks exposed - very Jurassic Park.  This is also where quite often a deer will pick their way through the trees to come to me, adding to the otherworldly effect.

I had a cute flirtation at work.  It's courtship season for birds of prey, so our great horned owl Wilbur has been hooting at us like crazy (he was hand raised, so somewhat human imprinted).  When I went in to clean, he was standing right at the door, madly hooting, very excited, and showing off his dead rat -"see what a good hunter I am??"  (I did not tell him that I knew we had given him that rat, already dead, for the dinner the day before.  These days he's more likely to save his food and show it off rather than eating it).  I was too much in the moment to take a picture, but it was quite cute.  When I went in, he flew off to his nest box, turned his back on me, and buried the rat in the leaves.  At first I took this as a bit of an affront (No rat for you!) but actually that's part of the courtship - showing that you are a good provider, and have a cache.

I finally got started on this winter's outdoor project.  After Hurricane Michael in 2018, we had 20+ downed trees.  Over the next few months we got them cut up, split, and stacked.  Bob laid down about a 30 foot length of cinder blocks, with metal fence stakes between them about every 3-4 feet, the wood piled up between them.  We used up some of it and gave some away, but most of it has still been sitting there (there were plastic covers but they often blew off in storms).  It has become something of an eyesore - a long length of bug infested rotting wood.

The wood (and the cutting stand in front) is now gone - I had hoped to burn it as I hauled it, but punky wood burns at a rather leisurely pace so the rest is piled by the burn pit for future fires. 

I do like fires - and I especially like taking breaks to sit beside them and read.  But there were also memories of the two of us working so hard to clear up the acres of wood debris after the storm.  Usually if we ever had one or two trees down, we'd cut and split by hand - he with a sledge and maul, me with my wood splitter.  But 20 trees?  We went into town and rented a hydraulic wood splitter - and that was a fun bit of kit.  We'd put in a chunk of tree trunk, press a button, and wham! Split into four to be gathered and stacked.  We had to make ourselves slow down a little  - we were hoofing it to try to keep up with the thing (and kept thinking of the song "John Henry.")  Now I was sitting by that hard-won wood, rotted and burning.

 Back to the former wood storage: all but 5 stakes have been pulled up to be bundled - I'll keep a few, just in case, and the rest can go to the reuse center at the dump.  That doesn't sound like much - but in order to get to the stakes I had to move the wood first, then pry up the now-buried cinder blocks on each side.  The stakes have a wide flange at the bottom, and in many cases roots had grown around them, so it was a bit of work to loosen and pull them.  I was going to push through and finish - but my back was giving me signals and I know when to listen to it.  In fact - after three days of working on this project, I decided that I should take today off.  The next big step will be to dig out all those cinder blocks and stack them somewhere - but that will have to be spread out over a bit of time.  

I got a reward for all that hard work.  When I came in side for a nature break, RedBug was lying in a patch of sun in the den.  I realize that doesn't sound like much, but it was only about three weeks ago that he stopped staying under the bed 24/7 and starting sleeping on top of it.  This is the first time he's left the bedroom.

So at the moment I'm on a somewhat even 2026 keel.  I imagine that I'll come and go - but after 6 years, I know that's the rhythm.  Tuesday was rough, and I just let it be - it was Bob's birthday.  I went to work - quite cold for Florida, 25 when I got there and still under 40 when I left.  I treated myself to a bowl of Pho for lunch - but as I sat there with my hot soup and pot of tea and my book, I just felt so terribly alone.  I wish I could have met him for a birthday lunch. (Which probably led into my throwing myself into hauling wood - hard work helps).

Waiting

 Lovely start to the day.  When I woke up, one of my teeth felt odd - like maybe there was something jammed between teeth.  So I got up, grabbed some floss - and the crown popped off and went flying.  I heard it ping and bounce, so then had to get down and hunt for the thing because the cost difference between getting a crown glued back on and getting a new one made is several hundred dollars.  I was also being annoyed because I would have to get dressed and drive to the dentist.

I found it - and then noticed that the tooth was still inside.  Ugh.  Now will start the various visits to the periodontist for consultations and hopefully I'll be a candidate for an implant and in a few months and a few thousand dollars I'll have a new tooth.

I continue to be in an odd disconnected mood - not bad, just a little off.  I have been knitting a lot on the "Forest Walk" shawl, and really loving the color flow.

Usually I do my knitting in the evenings; during the day I'm doing more physical stuff - yardwork or maybe making something, especially since we've had some really pretty cool/cold but clear days.  But I seem to be content - and that is the feeling - to sit and knit.  Then I get up and have been doing cleaning - not my normal lick-and-promise and vacuum down the middle, but moving stuff to dust and cleaning under the furniture.  The plus side of doing this is that I don't think I have to buy any kitty toys for awhile.

But despite sitting quietly knitting, reading, or putzing around cleaning, I would also go outside just to walk around a little, a bit aimlessly.  I also found myself constantly checking my phone - to see if I had any calls, texts, or something on FaceBook.  I almost never get any of the above, but I was almost obsessively checking a dozen or twenty times a day.

Analysis:  My brain is in 2020 mode, and anxiously waiting.  By now his bloodwork should have starting showing up uptick in numbers if the bone marrow transplant had taken - and instead of getting sicker and sicker, he would level out.  But that hadn't happened, and all we could do was sit and wait - talk a little, nap, watch TV, and, in my case knit.  And wait to get a report on the numbers.

It helps to know what's happening.  I've curbed the excessive phone checking, and had two fires to burn yard trash and taken apart part of a fallen tree.  I went to the library book club meeting tonight.  Trying to stay in 2026.

It's hard not to think of the alpha and omega of our time together.  In two days, it will be the 54th anniversary of our meeting.  So it was at the end of January that we met, and over the next several weeks grew to realize that we would be joining our lives together.  Then, on the anniversary of those dates, 48 years later, we were beginning to realize that we would be separating forever.  Opening and closing.  Odd coincidence of dates.

A Rather Busy Day

 Part of me feels like I'm in 2020.  Bob has finished his round of chemo, and tomorrow he will get his bone marrow transplant.  The floor makes a big deal out of this.  They come in with balloons and cake, sing happy birthday (because they say this is your new birthday) and gifts - a hat (courtesy of local crocheters) Mardi Gras beads, a small soft blanket suitable for wrapping chilly shoulders.  Bob is his smiling affable self - until he opens a small box with a medi alert bracelet.  I saw his face change as he realized that even if everything went well (as at the time we thought it would, no reason not to), things would still never be quite the same.

But it's 2026.  Bug is spending his time sprawled out comfortably on the bed.  His old personality is back.  I can unclench a little.  For the two months that he hunkered under the bed, looking unhappy, I was feeling that guilt that I had decided to make him lose his leg and live like this because I wasn't strong enough to let him go.  But it's OK now.  The amazing thing in this picture is Hamish in the back.  The two of them have never gotten along - but there they are, sleeping together.  I guess a warm bed on a chilly day has a mellowing influence.

Today was a day that just kept on going.  I started with my usual morning at the museum, but when I got to the kitchen Suzie wanted to talk to me about an inspection the museum is having next week.  She hadn't let the bobcats out yet, so we did that while we chatted.  I very rarely go into the bobcat habitat - and the cats were very interested in this stranger's legs and boots.

On the second Tuesday of the month some women who used to work at the museum (and some who still do) have lunch at the cafe there, so I joined the and actually had a social lunch!

Afterwards I had to stop at the Dollar General for cat food and batteries.  Bob's former work partner Bill was there - after we chatted for a bit, he asked if another former co-worker (Richard) had found me - he had called Bill a couple of months ago to see if he had my number.  He gave me Richard's number and I texted him.  Turns out that he was just wondering how I was doing, and maybe we could have lunch and catch up.  Hopefully lunch will fit into his schedule, but it was really nice to have someone think of me.  (Note:  this will not be "a date."  He's married, and in the "I'm old enough to be his mother" category.  Just a nice guy)

Being as the weather can be so variable this time of year, I decided to have a fire and clean off some of the yard when I got home.  As long as I was going to be outside, I let the chickens out to free range a bit (I frequently do this in the afternoons).  I had gotten to the point that I was going to quit adding stuff and letting it burn down - my favorite part because that's when I can sit by the fire and read.  So I'm reading and enjoying the fire, and suddenly hear a major chicken ruckus.  I look over, and for a moment it looks like two of my chickens are in a big fight- but it was one of my chicken and a big hawk.  Fortunately it flew off when I screamed and starting running.  I was able to grab the chicken - I couldn't find any wounds on her, so hopefully all he got was a bunch of feathers.  The remaining five chickens had run off and gone into hiding so it took nearly an hour to find them all and get them back in the scratch yard.
I guess I won't be letting them free range for awhile, now that the hawk knows that there are tasty treats walking around.

After that big scare, I put the fire out (it was dark by then), fed the cats, and then soaked in a hot bath to relax.

Quite the day.

Kayaks

 It's January, and I've slipped back into the disconnect where part of me is here, and part is in Gainesville with Bob.  I look at my car in the driveway and wish I could just get in it and go home - but home was wherever Bob was, and doesn't exist anymore.
A random line from a poem that drifted by:  How heavy nothing weighs when it is in the shape of you.
Or the line from the Tim Minchkin song:  There's a hole in my heart that the light passes through, and the pattern it makes is the shape of the absence of you.

It was all brought home again today.  Rik and Christy came over to  return the cat condo they had borrowed, and then we loaded up the kayaks into his truck; he knows someone who wants to buy them, and he's going to take care of that for me so I don't have to deal.

We bought them just at 20 years ago.  Bob was starting to have trouble with his legs (it didn't help that his ACL was missing) and we couldn't take as long of hikes as we used to.  So we bought a couple of kayaks.  We took them other places a few times - like the Wakulla River - but mostly we just used them on Lake Talquin.  There were times that we'd get the urge to go out even in the afternoon for a couple of hours (against Bob's usual feeling that everything always had to be done First Thing In The Morning) - it was easy to toss them in the back of the truck, and the landing was only a few miles away.

It's at this point I should post a few pictures of us in the kayaks - I know they're floating around in a folder on the big laptop, or on a thumb drive somewhere.  Some day they'll pop up.

I love the way kayaks glide.  Bob called me his little water bug.  Sometimes I'd pack snacks, or a picnic, and at some point we'd pull the boats together and nosh.  We'd spot alligators and moor hens and blue herons, watch young osprey learning how to ride the wind, and one time just over our heads a bald eagle and osprey were fighting over a fish (which eventually got dropped so they both lost).

I took mine out once since I lost Bob.  It was still beautiful out there, but I couldn't stop trying to spot him somewhere, feeling so alone.  And then there was the problem of getting it back into the truck.  I had been able to put it in the truck to get there - but that was on level ground.  At the boat ramp, at an angle, it was almost more than I could manage; I was starting to wonder if I would have to just sit there until someone else came along to use the ramp and I could ask for help (that thought was enough to give me the oomph to get it in there).  And, of course, I have since parted with the truck, and even if I got a rack for the Honda I wouldn't be able to get it up there.

I think things should be used.  A boat that never sees water has lost its reason for existence.

So they're gone.  I did hug them goodbye.  I hope someone loves them as much as we did.  I was expecting it to hurt more than it did, but it was more of a feeling of resignation.  I came inside, had some tea and a couple of Gill's scones, and just sort of shut down for a couple of hours.  It was just another example of how much of yourself you lose when you lose your life partner.

So yeah - I'm a little down.  Starting to sleep on the couch again.  Starting to stay up until 1 or 2 a.m.  But the good thing about this blog/journal is that I can look back at previous years, to see how I was.  And I'm always like this - and I always see it through.  I'm just going to miss the idea that I might take my kayak out again some day (of course, I might take another one out, maybe a rental, but it won't be this one, and I'll never look across the flats and see Bob paddling towards me)

Typical; Forest Walk Shawl

 Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.
Add a lot of diacritical marks that I don't know how to make, and it says "the more things change, the more they remain the same."

So, 2026.  On week into the new year.
Someone on the Highway 20 FaceBook page said that they had a loaded grapefruit tree, and people could come pick them if they liked.  In the comments, I said I had the same offer my Meyer lemons.  Two people responded with "yes, please."  I told them to send me a message to get my address, and that was that.  Crickets.

A member of the Weaver's Guild sent a group email saying that she had gotten a table to do demonstrations at the Tally Highland Games - who could join her?  I replied that I could.  That was five days ago; no response yet.

I've posted recently about missing going to the silent book club meetings - two because of Bug's surgeries, one because I had a cold, two because of the holidays.  I was really looking forward to starting up again in January.  But the woman who organizes and runs it just posted that she was stepping down.  If no one else steps up - well, then it's over.   I like it, but not enough to go to the evening readings as well as the Sunday one, coordinate with the meeting venues, run the FaceBook page, etc. etc.  I just wanted to go and read and still be a little social.

So it looks like 2026 will follow the pattern of previous years.

On the plus side, RedBug is spending more time out from under the bed.  He still stays in the bedroom, ready to duck under, but is mostly just hanging out, and often on top of the bed.  He also stretches out and relaxed instead of being hunched up and sulky.  It's a weight off of me.  From when I was first making the gut wrenching decision to either lose the leg or have him put down (I kept hunting for a third option) to this past week, I questioned if I was doing the right thing, or doing this to him just because I couldn't let him go.  But he's seeming happier now, and I can breathe a bit.

Breathing is harder these days.  I try not to dwell, but two days ago was when Bob went out Shands.  The last time he ever saw his home, his land, his cats.  The last time he didn't feel sick.  It still hurts.  I seem to have taken to sleeping on the couch again.  I don't plan on it - I just lie down to watch a little TV and at some point I've turned it off and it's the next day.  It's fine - not like it bothers anyone.

I recently posted about taking a picture and trying to make dye colors to match.  My process for dyeing was pretty convoluted, but the resulting yarn is gorgeous, and so far the shawl-in-progress looks like something I could wear in that picture.  It's not often that something in your mind even comes close to resembling the final project.  The knitting is becoming addictive - I keep wanting to see the next color come up and how it swirls with the others.  I say that now - I've done two panels.  I was planning on doing seven (which would give me about a 3/4 circle shawl) but I might have enough to do nine for a full circle.  The novelty could wear off.

Do I need another shawl?  Of course not - I have several, and rarely a chance to wear one (and draping one decoratively over the couch is ill-advised with the cats).  I don't go out much at all (and now even less without the book club) and even though it's January it was almost 80 degrees yesterday.  But it's just soothing knitting, and unlike a sweater or even a hat, size doesn't matter (and in this case, that's true).

First week down - now for the rest of the year.

Random Memory

 I've often mentioned my friend who daily posts long rambling memories of his life with his wife.  It's a bit much (but it works for him the way this blog works for me - a grief journal).

Maybe I can do a random memory from time to time?

Like the time Bob became a fashion trendsetter.

It was about 40 years ago, when he was in a Civil War group getting ready to go to a reenactment in North Georgia.  We looked at the weather forecast; a front was going to be moving through.  He made the comment that he was going to freeze his ass off.

I said "give me your blanket" (wool blanket, military surplus).  I sliced a hole in the middle, bound the edges, and gave it back to him.  "Here's your poncho."

At the event, the other soldiers were trying to clutch their blankets around themselves while managing a backpack, haversack, and carrying a rifle.  Tends to be awkward and breezy in the front.

Bob?  He wrapped the front of the poncho around himself under the back, and belted it.  The back could be tucked around to the front.  No gaps, and he could use both hands.

Next thing he knew, the other soldiers were pulling out their knives and cutting slits in their blankets.  Eventually it all looked more like a casting call for The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly rather than a Civil War reenactment, but at least they were a bit warmer.