on the upsondowns

in which our plucky heroine seeks equanimity...

My back is still quite cranky, the pain of which is probably driving some of my dark thoughts. On the other side of the balance, there are more and more beautiful and interesting things to see when I am out and about. I try and choose different streets to ride my bike, for just that reason, and by choice various side streets instead of the irregular sidewalks and high traffic main thoroughfares.

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~ so very small ~

Today in my Insta-feed there was a pdxdinorama post about a new little free art gallery, this time in my own sector of the city! Since the promised rain was not really happening, and I needed a break from the everyday, I decided to go look for it...

I rode further beyond St Johns than I'd ever gone, following the rough map drawn on the back of an envelope, and after a few turns through various maze like streets I was delighted to find my destination, this charming little "little free art gallery". Isn't this inspiring! Do I maybe need to figure out if I can build something like this at Acorn Cottage?

Anyway, how about a look inside...

I'd brought a few tiny paintings, and one of my golden origami dragons to leave in "trade" (all still in my pocket when I took this photo) and ended up choosing a painting from on the righthand wall not visible, that said "Home Sweet Home", which felt just right for my tinyfolk of Tansu Terrace...

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Brain weasels have been running amok for days now, sending me deeper and deeper into internal darkness. My toolkit is inadequate. Riding my bicycle is one of the few mental health activities accessible to me, but sometimes I have to pull my bike over to the curb until I regain equanimity. My online pal Cricket concurred that sometimes these sorts of mental "bad weather" just crop up randomly, stick around for some unspecified amount of time, and leave as randomly as they arrived. (I am going to check out the counseling option via my PCP office, which since they no longer have a dedicated in office staff person, is now all done by video call - I don't expect much, but retain an open mind, and sometimes just chatting with someone can be helpful to sort out tangled thoughts.)

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This is another bit that showed up on my Insta-feed:  Bentley House Minis made a long video of how she approached organising her extensive collection of miniatures. While I don't have anywhere near that amount of stuff, it was encouraging to watch how she thought about the process, and also about how she needed to stop periodically and then return to the process, acknowledging that it was a challenge to do.

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This morning I had my regular quarterly visit to my PCP, and since it was about the time I usually wake up, I had set my alarm for an hour earlier. Fortunately the forecast rain was not really doing much of anything, so the bike ride over there was pretty pleasant. Basically my health remains unchanged so far so good, so continue with the self care meals and exercise activity. My doc agreed with my assessment that whatever is going on with my back is probably not structural but to check back if it doesn't improve in another few weeks.

I remembered to ask the tech to please not use bandaids after the blood draw but rather paper tape. And then when we were rescheduling my next visit, and my doc told me that there were no morning appointments that month, I asked if we could just push the appointment out another month if there were early morning ones in July... She agreed, and found an open spot. Yay for me for asking for what I need! (much nicer to ride there and back in the early morning than in the hot middle of the day, and also fewer other humans are there).

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March SMART goals (x=extra)

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	red enamel samples	bathroom undersink access	some driveway moss
2	turn buttons	contrast numbers on oven knob	recycle bin
3	6 tiny books	paint frame black	yard waste bin
4	2 velour sports bras	frame gift painting	recycle bin
5	Stromgard enamels	front yard dandelions uprooted	recycle bin
6	velour sports bra	x	yard waste bin
7	x	x	yard waste bin
8	x	x	x
9	x	x	x

today's gratitudes-
1. the rain today was soft, I was able to both get to my PCP appointment without being soaked, and later in the day take a Long Ride beyond St Johns
2. An adventure, to go find the new tiny art gallery I read about on Insta. And I found it, and that was a fun thing to do. I brought three things to leave there (two tiny paintings and an origami dragon), and took away one... It is a LONG way from here on my bike. (Which let me know how much farther than that it would be to the someday six to ten years from now city pool that will be replacing the nearby pool they closed)
3. A nice long phone call with my oldest friend Sharon.
4. I was able to get my COVID booster shot at my PCP appointment this morning. So much nicer to get it there than at the drug store.

Time of Isolation - Day 1356

hippo birdy...

in which our plucky heroine begins another dive around the sun...

here: enjoy "Axial Tilt" by Cat Farber...

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~ a benign adventure ~
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Today my pal Ursel had the day off work, and asked if I was going to do anything for my birthday. I decided that going to the Lan Su Chinese Garden would be a fun excursion, and we couldn't have asked for a nicer mid-December day, with the sky so blue and sun so bright that sunglasses might have been nice... We spent time wandering around the garden, taking photos and appreciating the many wintertime vignettes (I wish my phone camera had been good enough to let me share the corbie in the persimmon tree, nibbling at one of the remaining ripe fruit, but I did manage to catch Ursel in the sunbeam)

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I was so excited to find this DVD of "The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse" available on Etsy. It only took two weeks from when I ordered it for it to arrive here today.... I immediately tried to play it tonight, and was very disappointed... Instead of lovely clear video I got the sort of scrambled pixel squares that I have only ever seen before on overly used public library DVDs.

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I did read the many positive happy reviews of the DVD before deciding to purchase it, so I never expected this problem. I wanted to reach out to the seller first before leaving a scathing review of this very disappointing product... "Based on the many good reviews you have of this film, I can only imagine that I somehow received a defective copy; I don't know whether a replacement copy would be any better, but the DVD that arrived here is not playable at all." I'll have to wait and see how the seller responds...

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~ Advent Swap day 21 ~

pretty lampwork beads in pale blue and tomato red...

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December SMART goals (x=extra)

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	7 jars quince	kitchen plumbing	old plumbing
2	dried pears	heat pump installed	old furnace
3	dried persimmons	return vent vanes	high pitched whine
4	linen gauze privacy curtains	bedroom register	-
5	tiny peach charm	bike flat tire	-
6	1-wire Laurel setting	x	x
7	x	x	x
8	x	x	x
9	x	x	x

today's gratitudes -
1. phone calls and video chats with friends and family
2. tasty food cart pod lunch, a gyros sandwich bigger than I could finish, and a mango lassi to slurp up for drink/dessert
3. wandering around downtown enjoying the sunshine and the Chinese Garden with Ursel

Time of Isolation - Day 1267

blue roses on toeses...

in which our plucky heroine follows a wild hair down an internet rabbit hole...

I had a sudden desire to add British canal boat style roses to the toes of my just-painted-blue canvas shoes. The blue roses remind me of the 1978 Winterland Grateful Dead poster*, and I hope that these shoes will remind me to keep whimsy in my heart as I continue down the path...

The shoes themselves were originally a (boring) beige canvas, and I painted them blue last week. (The previous pair I painted blue lasted 4 years before they fell apart, but the paint was still in good shape. Just plain ordinary craft acrylic paint is surprisingly durable, unlike whatever the microfiber is that they use for shoe linings.) I found some good step by step tutorials and images online which helped me get the style of rose I wanted, and I used ordinary blackboard chalk to mark out where I wanted to paint the roses, because it wipes away with a damp cloth after the paint is dry...

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Saturday I took a small adventure and went to see my friend's display at an outdoor "art picnic" in one of the local parks. It was a treat to see them, and their artwork in person, as well as to get a sense of the hyperlocal and mostly youthful art scene. There was a wide range of media and imagery, of course, and it rather reminded me of my youth, when folks would gather on Cambridge Common on Saturdays to vend and be social.

I was totally wearing my P100 the whole time, and the middle of the day on a Saturday afternoon the bus was not terribly crowded. It felt fairly safe as the location and layout meant that there was plenty of fresh air, and enough distance between folks for comfort. Almost no one these days seems to be wearing masks, which makes me sad though.

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~ 100 day stitch book project - day 94~

Day 94/100 (page 19) - Sunday added some more subtle hillocks to the landscape, with stem stitch and a bit of French knots, and I began adding stars to the sky at the top to better balance the geology at the base... Today I plan on finishing up the starry sky, which will complete this colophon page.

(Saturday) Day 93/100 (page 19) - finished stitching the various hillocks in place...

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Saturday I took a small adventure and went to see my friend's display at an outdoor "art picnic" in one of the local parks. It was a treat to see them, and their artwork in person, as well as to get a sense of the hyperlocal and mostly youthful art scene. There was a wide range of media and imagery, of course, and it rather reminded me of my youth, when folks would gather on Cambridge Common on Saturdays to vend and be social.

I was totally wearing my P100 the whole time, and the middle of the day on a Saturday afternoon the bus was not terribly crowded. It felt fairly safe as the location and layout meant that there was plenty of fresh air, and enough distance between folks for comfort. Almost no one these days seems to be wearing masks, which makes me sad though.

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well dang... making haste slowly would have been better! Trying to clean up the kitchen by carrying all the jars of quince jelly to the pantry shelves, and I dropped one. Glass shards mixed with jelly are a Big Mess. I hope I got it all; wiped repeatedly with damp paper towels until I couldn't see any more "sparkle"... And I still have the rest of the putting away and washing dishes left to do.

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April SMART goals (x=extra)

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	page 15	taxes done	jars to Mud Bay
2	custom Tullia daypack	shoes painted blue	recycle bin
3	page 16 and 17	shoe elastics transferred	extra plant pots
4	page 18	roses on shoe toeses	yard waste bin
5	-	-	grapes to compost
6	x	x	x
7	x	x	x
8	x	x	x
9	x	x	x
10	x	x	x
11	x	x	x
12	x	x	x
13	x	x	x
14	x	x	x
15	x	x	x

today's gratitudes -
1. The roses for my shoes turned out just fun as I imagined them
2. Avgolemono (aka demonology soup)... always good
3. The person I hand embroidered a label for their quilt was quite happy with my efforts. And I learned how to better estimate how long it takes, and managed to get a successful result on double gauze, which is not trivial.

Time of Isolation - Day 1041



* This is the concert poster I had in mind...

Tuesday tidbits

"practice makes proficient" - not perfect, not necessarily progress...
proficient* = competent or skilled in doing or using something

So make good choices about what and how you practice, whether with hand or brain or spirit, because repetition makes whatever you repeat more likely to happen again. Some of the things I have practiced over the years/decades have really made my life easier, like I am much better at soldering than I was when I started. Some of the things I have practiced over the years/decades have made my life much more difficult, like assuming danger all the time, which has limited my life in uncounted ways. We most often think of practice in terms of trying to learn new skills, but we are practicing continually in all the different spheres we exist in. I continue to attempt to notice what I am practicing, and to practice by choice and not by default. This is way harder than it sounds, and is in itself a type of practice...

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Every time I've ridden the train between Boston and points west, this curious structure has fascinated me, and this trip I managed a few decent photos...

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as seen from the train, and enlarged to show facade

The water visible in the photos is Farm Pond in Framingham, the terminal end of the Sudbury Aqueduct, which was built between 1875 and 1878, and was in use for over 100 years. The small building is not an unusual home site, as I had imagined, but rather a "gate house" that houses part of the machinery that controlled the flow of water.
Here is a photo from 1910, looking in the opposite direction, and the rail line is clearly visible in the background.

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May SMART goals (x=extra)

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	earbud case	replace button patches	chicken house
2	Ursa pullover	pruned parking strip	chicken waterer
3	x	renewed raised planters	lots of yard waste
4	x	plant salad table	paper recycling
5	x	plant tomato starts	-
6	x	grapevine pruned	-
7	x	green onions planted	-
8	x	I-cord edging	-
9	x	x	-
10	x	x	-
11	x	x	-
12	x	x	-
13	x	x	-
14	x	x	x
15	x	x	x

today's gratitude - the internet makes doing research eversomuch easier, as only those of us who grew up before will ever appreciate

*late 16th century: from Latin proficient- ‘advancing’, from the verb proficere, from pro- ‘on behalf of’ + facere ‘do, make’.

there and back again, once again...

In which our plucky heroine travels a long way to honor a long traveling...

It was in recognition of my parents 65th wedding anniversary that I took most of the month of April away from my ordinary life, to go by train cross country once again. My parents live in Lexington, just outside of Boston, so seeing them in person is not something I can do often. This trip, my little sister flew up here from Palos Verdes so that she and I could travel together via Amtrak. Indeed, it was the first time ever that we have taken a trip with just the two of us, and after over three days in close quarters, that we both are still friends says much for both of us.

here she is, sitting on the couch/bunk, reflected in the wall mirror in the wee bed/sit we shared... (I measured, and the floor space was slightly less than my SCA tent, yet contained two bunks, a table, a chair, a sink, and a tiny enclosed commode/shower unit)

once out of the Portland metro area, the train travels along the Washington side of the Columbia river, with many beautiful vistas... Sometimes there is wildlife visible, I saw a bald eagle in a tree, and on the return journey, a group of three deer foraging along the riverside

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The days on the train seemed to go by both interminably and very fast. On our layover in Chicago, Gigi and I decided to find somewhere to eat dinner, and by total random chance, ended up at the Little Goat Diner. One of the best meals I've had in a long time, and my only regret was that there was no way to package up the leftovers to be food-safe without refrigeration.

Before we knew it we were in Lexington... The years have been relatively kind, though relentless, in their effects on my dear mother and father. I am very grateful that they are still of sound mind, if rather more frail each time I visit.

:::

After spending two weeks with family, it was time for me to get back on Amtrak and head west for home. The trip home I'd be back in a roomette (more like a bunkbed with doors), as opposed to the larger "bedroom sleeper" I'd shared with my sister.  The Metropolitan Lounge in Boston had a beautiful decorative ceiling:

Eastern farmland is very green in the springtime

in Albany, the section of the Lake Shore Limited from Boston joins up with the section from New York City, before continuing on to Chicago.

Union Station in Chicago is the primary Amtrak hub for the whole country. There are interesting bits and corners around the station, and this section of fountain caught my eye... very Deco. Instead of a restaurant brunch, I was eager to get in a bit of walking, since the weather was quite moderate. I ended up picking up cheese and tomato and some fruit at a grocery store, and put together a lunch plate of my own when back in the first class lounge at the station. After that, and availing myself of the spa shower (much larger and not moving from side to side like on the train) it was time to switch over to the Empire Builder for the remainder of the trip. I Much Prefer the western train, which still has an actual dining car; the eastern trains have felt the Unkind Hand of the new CEO, and have box meals, which are quite inferior in both choice and quality to what was formerly available...

crosssing the Mississippi...

the train stopped somewhere in the middle of the night, for long enough that I woke up from the lack of movement. I think that this is Minneapolis/St Paul, but was too sleepy to look it up and make a notation in my journal.

more Big Sky vistas - the open water here had been still frozen three weeks prior...

Rocky Mountains, as we head into Glacier... not a lot of snow visible compared to previous trips in the past

Sunrise, looking out the back window of the sleeper car towards the east

there are no words...

in which our plucky heroine is rendered speechless...

I very unexpectedly ended up being able to go see the full solar eclipse, despite my lack of advance planning... some old friends who live right in the middle of the totality zone in Jefferson Oregon opened up their backyard for an eclipse overnight shindig, and some of my dear Olympia friends (Bill, Cathy, Jen, and Toshi the wonder pup) scooped me up, took me there and back home again afterwards. On eclipse morning, we all set up chairs in the front yard and had a perfect view in a clear sky to watch the moon shadow cross the sun face. my friend Bob set up his camera to take timed photos at set intervals*, while the rest of us sat and chatted, or knit, and all periodically looked up to watch the progress of the moon shadow...

""... Seeing a partial eclipse bears the same relation to seeing a total eclipse as kissing a man does to marrying him... Although the one experience precedes the other, it in no way prepares you for it. During a partial eclipse the sky does not darken—not even when 94 percent of the sun is hidden. Nor does the sun, seen colorless through protective devices, seem terribly strange...

What you see in an eclipse is entirely different from what you know... You do not see the moon. So near the sun, it is as completely invisible as the stars are by day. What you see before your eyes is the sun going through phases. It gets narrower and narrower, as the waning moon does, and, like the ordinary moon, it travels alone in the simple sky. The sky is of course background. It does not appear to eat the sun; it is far behind the sun. The sun simply shaves away; gradually, you see less sun and more sky...

... A piece of sky beside the crescent sun was detaching. It was a loosened circle of evening sky, suddenly lighted from the back. It was an abrupt black body out of nowhere; it was a flat disk; it was almost over the sun. That is when there were screams. At once this disk of sky slid over the sun like a lid. The sky snapped over the sun like a lens cover. The hatch in the brain slammed. Abruptly it was dark night, on the land and in the sky. In the night sky was a tiny ring of light. The hole where the sun belongs is very small. A thin ring of light marked its place.

excerpted from Annie Dillard's 1982 essay "Total Eclipse"

It was so different to actually experience it instead of just reading about it or seeing pictures, or even the one time I saw a partial solar eclipse. The quality of the light kept changing, the wild birds all went to roost in odd places, it gradually cooled off as the light became more plangent, and the heat of the morning was pierced now and again with a wisp of cool breezes. Street lights came on, and then the peak moment arrived!

During totality we could all take off our eclipse glasses and look directly at the sun, seeing the corona in wispy rays surrounding a dark circle. The horizons we could see between the buildings appeared colored as at dawn, only in the entirely wrong places, to the south, and the northeast (I have been told that if on a hilltop, the sunrise colors are the whole circle of the horizon...) I found it to be literally awe inspiring in an almost atavistic physical sense... my legs got shaky, and I found myself waving my arms in the air and hollering (which is not how I usually react to things)

I am so very grateful to have been able to see the eclipse, and will treasure the memory for the rest of my life, as one of my peak experiences ever...

* he then assembled them into one composited image, which gives a sense of what we saw in the eastern sky

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via the train, the last leg

So after that tasty lunch, our plucky heroine returns to Union Station... Heading back, I noticed these decorative cast iron gratings inset into the walls of the corridor back towards the central areas.

This is shower room #2, the accessible shower in the first class lounge. I took full advantage of the chance to have a relaxing bathtime, in a larger space that wasn't constantly moving, as soon it would be time to board the Empire Builder on the final leg of my long long trip. There is a shower available in the sleeping cars, but nothing like this ... Indeed, I wish that Acorn Cottage had a lovely walk in shower space instead of the Terrible Tub!

An abandoned building, one of many seen in the back parts of cities where the train lines run. The patterns the blocked, unblocked and broken windows made seemed to me a kind of wabi sabi gridwork

Soon enough, we were out of the really urban zones and back into the heartland of the continent. The first morning we passed through a lot of rain, which mostly precluded much photography, but I managed this one as the clouds were lifting

Dinner in the dining car, looking out the window past my own reflection to the lights beyond. Pretty much the only time I eat steak is when I am on the Empire Builder. The Amtrak "signature steak" is the best dinner on the menu, and is truly delicious.

A huge flock of pigeons swooping in an aerial dance around these buildings...

Ah... these are perhaps grain elevators? (which would explain the reason for all the birds?) This ignorant bicoastal woman is embarrassed by how much she does not know, but I do know that every day and every place has its own beauty

As the mist rises on the second day, in this field the hay bales are sharp edged rectangles...

... while in the next field, the bales are, instead, huge bristly sharp edged cylinders wrapped in green

In far more places than two years ago, plantations of windmills were visible from the tracks. (As well, I was surprised to see quite a bit of solar panel deployment in Massachusetts, again far more than on my previous trip)

Approaching the Rockies, and Glacier National Park... A bit more snow on the eastern faces of the Rocky Mountains... but sadly by the time we were well into the mountains it was full dark, so no photo opportunities, just time for sleeping...

And in the morning, one final view of my temporary conveyance...

looking from the roomettes towards the actual first class bedrooms, the central corridor makes a bend and then runs along one side of the rail car, as the few actual bedrooms are a bit more "spacious"...

it was a good trip, and if life allows, I will do it again in another two years.

via the train - between here and Chicago

in which our plucky heroine shares a travelogue...

It took a while to get all the photos off my camera and into the computer. My cross-country trip last month was all via Amtrak, and covered over 6400 miles and four time zones. One good thing about train travel is that there is no jet lag. The first leg of the trip was aboard the Empire Builder from the west coast to Chicago; I left from Portland's Union Station on September 7th.

my carry-on gear is stacked on the seat opposite me: daypack, soft suitcase, and my elegant black straw hat with the silk chiffon scarf acting as a hatband. My rolled up memory foam is stashed atop the two provided Amtrak pillows, which are sitting on the "stairs" used to get into the upper bunk in the roomette.

As on my previous cross country excursion two years ago, the plan was to travel in (relative) style, ensconced in a first class roomette, aka "bunk bed with a door". Being able to lie down to sleep at night makes the long journey mostly relaxing rather than grueling.

Eastern Washington sometime on the first evening...

Multiple reflections, somewhere I think in Glacier... the observation car windows above and a fragment of sky down in the river.

Many horses in Montana. While I love seeing the varied landscapes outside the train windows, I often wish there was some way to know more about what I am seeing - given the spacious landscapes with few animals visible for most of my travels, looking at all these horses penned up in one place was not reassuring as to their future destiny, though one friend suggested it may have been part of a mustang roundup.

Montana really is the big sky country!

big sky, tiny cows...

big sky and rolling hills... I love the quality of the light in the prairie heartlands

sunset on the first night, looking west from my seat in my compartment, hence the blurry edge as I focused outside the train

passed through most of North Dakota and Minnesota while I was sleeping, and in the morning caught a few glimpses of Minneapolis/St Paul after breakfast...

As we travel from Minnesota through Wisconsin, the landscape changes yet again. I liked the contrast here between the concrete highway understructure, the stacks of railroad ties, and the wild greenery on the embankment

more industrial scenery the further east we go...

highway megalith

we passed through Milwaukee sometime after lunch (lunch was tasty barbecue pork shanks with mashed potatoes and salad and Greek yoghurt cheesecake for dessert)

A very colorful bridge in downtown Milwaukee

and some matching highway spaghetti, also blue and gold... just looked this up online and it is part of the Marquette Interchange, a new redesigned multi-freeway intersection in downtown Milwaukee

...and this concludes the first leg of the trip photos, taken over the almost two days between home and Chicago.