Penultimate 2024 Post

 Penultimate because I want to do a "Recap 2024" post this evening.

2024 in general went well  for me physically until mid-November.  Since then, I got Covid, found that I needed two root canals, and had a fall that messed up my left arm (actually my whole left side is none too happy with me).  And then Sunday . . . I was at work, in the kitchen.  We were all chatting before getting started on diets, and having some leftover Christmas snacks.  I was eating chocolate covered popcorn.  I felt an unpopped kernel, discretely spit it into my hand, and tossed it in the trash.

Except that a moment later I realized that it wasn't a popcorn kernel.  I had tossed a crown into the garbage.

This wasn't just a little waste basket.  This is the big, outdoor sized trash can that was 3/4 full of meat and vegetable scraps (maybe some fish bits too), just plain dirt and random leftover food from all the animals dishes, and a gazillion paper towel.  Yes, I searched.  I spent a solid half-hour or more going through all that fistful by fistful, shaking out the paper towels, sifting through whatever the hell it was in my hand (honestly, by the time I got to the bottom, I might not have been willing to put it back in my mouth anyway.)

No luck.  It's weird that while the gap in my mouth feels like I could park a truck in it, the crown itself is maybe 1/4" across.  Fortunately, it was my temporary one.  Unfortunately, my dentist's office is closed this week.

And ending the year (actually starting the new one) with sadness.  One of the deer at the museum, Bella, has to be put down.  Deer in the wild can live 10-12 years, up to 16 years in captivity.  Bella is 17 1/2.  And I know at one point I took a selfie with her but I can't find it - and I don't want to take a picture of her now because she's pretty rough.  But she's important to me.  Flash back to April 2020 (and beyond).  I had just lost Bob, and at the point of a person's life when she desperately needs to have a shoulder to try on, an arm around her, the aching physical need to be held, and to hug - well, it was early 2020, and it's hard to hug from 6 feet away.  Thank God for the cats - but they're small.  I could hug pillows (I still do) but they lack warmth, breathing, and heartbeat.  But there was Bella.  She's a sweet deer, and didn't mind being handled.  So if no one was around, I would slide my arms around her, lay my head against her side, and just lean into that warmth, breathing, and heartbeat I needed so much.  I've always been grateful to her for that.

Otherwise, it's all good.  After some more serious hacking down the the woods, I came to a pretty good stretch that didn't need much, so I'm about 700 feet in now.  I'm starting to think that I won't be able to do the whole loop, because the area behind the house is where the big trees came down - there are root balls higher than I am tall.  But I still have hopes of finding my lamppost (unless a tree fell on it).  Problem is - I'm not quite sure where it was, because all the landmarks have changed.

But I'm just so happy to be wandering around down there.  If I wasn't so used to things like flush toilets, I'd be tempted to build a tiny hut and move in.

Hmmm.  That makes me think of the word "bothy."  It's a Celtic word - the closest English comes is a hut or shed, but that lacks the feeling.  A bothy is a place to take shelter - small, but safe.

In the meanwhile, I can lean against a tree and eat an orange.

We got in a new king snake at the museum.  He is very beautiful, in a very subtle way.  Most people would say "brownish."  But I found myself reaching for my phone to take a picture - old habit.  I get the impression that most people see things in the whole - as "blobs."  Bob saw details - and I learned to see details (see my earlier post about the details of an owl's feather).  We would look at (and often take pictures for him to have a reference in his painting) of say, the shading on a crab's shell, or the pattern that rust made around a bolt on a dumpster.  Looking at this snake, he had very subtle diagonal bands of slightly different shades of brown.  What was really striking, though, was that each individual scale was shaded.

Old habits die hard.  I had to give in to the urge to take a picture, even with no one else to marvel at it.

And that about wraps up 2024.  Recap coming.  Then it will be 2025.