pameladean (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
pameladean) wrote2021-11-02 07:01 pm
pameladean) wrote2021-11-02 07:01 pm
Angels and mortals fight for the right to have a little pleasure
It's November. All over the screen behind a storm window that has been closed for months because the screen has a hole through which once entered a hapless mouse and later a hapless sparrow, the ivy I should not have let grow so high is turning delicate shades of pink and lemon and gold. The inner shaded leaves are still the palest green. Beyond the ivy, the volunteer Norway maple that grew stealthily through the neighbors' peabush hedge is also turning gold. On the boulevard, its probable parent is half gold, half green.
We went to a delightful outdoor MinnStf Halloween party at Dreampark last weekend, and on the house, which is gold with red trim, the same ivy was turning the same colors, like living Halloween decorations. That was in back. In front, there were more than a hundred pumpkins and a host of ghosts and a very large mechanical black cat that turned its head and made you jump. But in the back, the ivy was a very good decoration all on its own. Also I toasted marshmallows for the first time in decades, and talked with many people I miss and value.
I am mired in tax stuff. So much stuff. So very much so very late stuff. If I do not hear back from the accountants via email very soon I will have to pick up the telephone. I loathe and abominate the telephone. Ursula Le Guin once said, "For me the telephone is for making appointments with the doctor with and cancelling appointments with the dentist with. It is not a medium of human communication." Now for me, it is a medium of human communication, but only with people I am intimate with. I do not want to make and cancel appointments on the telephone, nor describe the precise morass I am in with the taxes. Email is ten thousand times better for that.
I quite successfully emailed our excellent handyman, Jake, about the hand-sized holes the squirrels chewed in a different office window. He came out to look at the window, prepared to cover the tempting wooden trim of it with aluminum at once. However, it's in a very awkward place, a basically unintelligible niche between the front porch and the side of my office, which is a sunroom that sticks out from the rest of the house for the better provision of windows to earn its name. The ladder he has won't fit in there, largely because of the porch roof; and also he forgot we have brown trim on the house and bought white aluminum. We didn't actually care about the color of the aluminum, but obviously the inadequacy of the ladder was an issue. In the end he came upstairs and helped David take the air conditioner out of the window, and then hung out of it measuring everything. He will return on Thursday, when it will helpfully be ten degrees warmer outside, with a mysterious structure composed of scaffolding and an A-frame, which he says will permit him to reach the window; and also with brown aluminum.
I will just add that the fascia board than runs just below the roof along the entire front of the house is also covered with brown aluminum from the first assault the squirrels made on the house.
In any case, all these arrangements were made either in email or in person. The telephone was not required.
In other news, I have finally read Caroline Stevermer's The Glass Magician, which was published in 2020 and which I bought then because Caroline, and also because pandemic. But I didn't read it until this week. I loved it a lot. I was quite puzzled by the very pared-down prose and affect at first, but soon saw that this was a reflection of the face that the protagonist, Thalia, shows the world. There is more to Thalia, a lot more, but the spare language made a very effective frame for a story of shapeshifting, stage and actual magic, family secrets, and more. I've never read a book quite like it, so obviously I am going to have to read it again when I want that wry, astringent, slowly accumulating flavor, so rich and layered by the end.
David and I have had our booster shots and Lydy should follow soon. I'm still not going to restaurants, nor going indoors without a mask and only out of dire necessity, say for example because my doctor wouldn't renew a couple of prescriptions without seeing some new lab work. The lab work was unexpectedly good: my A1c has not changed since April and it's in quite a good place. Everything else that was checked was fine. It is apparently not yet time to look at the B12 levels, but I can still feel improvement in the areas I think the deficiency affected, so I'll be content until the next time. I hope when I next need to come under a roof that is not my own, all the numbers will be less dreadful. I've had many conversations with friends about what Minnesota did wrong; the most popular answer is, "Chose our neighboring states unwisely." But there are so many variables, I don't even know.
We're thinking of hosting a small Thanksgiving, with liberal application of rapid antigen tests beforehand. I hope the numbers are better by then.
I haven't planted the species tulips yet, but it will be warmer at the end of the week. Ideally I'd spend one warmish day clearing space for the tulips in the amazing jungle that the yard and garden beds have turned into, and another actually planting them. I'm also tempted to go through my ridiculous hoard of old seeds and fling onto the ground any that say they can be planted in the fall. We'll see.
I've put my book aside for all the tedious paperwork of the taxes, and the only good thing I can say is that I'm starting to see the faintest stirrings of a desire to get back to it. Thus are we spurred to the work that should be our delight, in these parlous times.
I continue to value all of you exceedingly.
Pamela
We went to a delightful outdoor MinnStf Halloween party at Dreampark last weekend, and on the house, which is gold with red trim, the same ivy was turning the same colors, like living Halloween decorations. That was in back. In front, there were more than a hundred pumpkins and a host of ghosts and a very large mechanical black cat that turned its head and made you jump. But in the back, the ivy was a very good decoration all on its own. Also I toasted marshmallows for the first time in decades, and talked with many people I miss and value.
I am mired in tax stuff. So much stuff. So very much so very late stuff. If I do not hear back from the accountants via email very soon I will have to pick up the telephone. I loathe and abominate the telephone. Ursula Le Guin once said, "For me the telephone is for making appointments with the doctor with and cancelling appointments with the dentist with. It is not a medium of human communication." Now for me, it is a medium of human communication, but only with people I am intimate with. I do not want to make and cancel appointments on the telephone, nor describe the precise morass I am in with the taxes. Email is ten thousand times better for that.
I quite successfully emailed our excellent handyman, Jake, about the hand-sized holes the squirrels chewed in a different office window. He came out to look at the window, prepared to cover the tempting wooden trim of it with aluminum at once. However, it's in a very awkward place, a basically unintelligible niche between the front porch and the side of my office, which is a sunroom that sticks out from the rest of the house for the better provision of windows to earn its name. The ladder he has won't fit in there, largely because of the porch roof; and also he forgot we have brown trim on the house and bought white aluminum. We didn't actually care about the color of the aluminum, but obviously the inadequacy of the ladder was an issue. In the end he came upstairs and helped David take the air conditioner out of the window, and then hung out of it measuring everything. He will return on Thursday, when it will helpfully be ten degrees warmer outside, with a mysterious structure composed of scaffolding and an A-frame, which he says will permit him to reach the window; and also with brown aluminum.
I will just add that the fascia board than runs just below the roof along the entire front of the house is also covered with brown aluminum from the first assault the squirrels made on the house.
In any case, all these arrangements were made either in email or in person. The telephone was not required.
In other news, I have finally read Caroline Stevermer's The Glass Magician, which was published in 2020 and which I bought then because Caroline, and also because pandemic. But I didn't read it until this week. I loved it a lot. I was quite puzzled by the very pared-down prose and affect at first, but soon saw that this was a reflection of the face that the protagonist, Thalia, shows the world. There is more to Thalia, a lot more, but the spare language made a very effective frame for a story of shapeshifting, stage and actual magic, family secrets, and more. I've never read a book quite like it, so obviously I am going to have to read it again when I want that wry, astringent, slowly accumulating flavor, so rich and layered by the end.
David and I have had our booster shots and Lydy should follow soon. I'm still not going to restaurants, nor going indoors without a mask and only out of dire necessity, say for example because my doctor wouldn't renew a couple of prescriptions without seeing some new lab work. The lab work was unexpectedly good: my A1c has not changed since April and it's in quite a good place. Everything else that was checked was fine. It is apparently not yet time to look at the B12 levels, but I can still feel improvement in the areas I think the deficiency affected, so I'll be content until the next time. I hope when I next need to come under a roof that is not my own, all the numbers will be less dreadful. I've had many conversations with friends about what Minnesota did wrong; the most popular answer is, "Chose our neighboring states unwisely." But there are so many variables, I don't even know.
We're thinking of hosting a small Thanksgiving, with liberal application of rapid antigen tests beforehand. I hope the numbers are better by then.
I haven't planted the species tulips yet, but it will be warmer at the end of the week. Ideally I'd spend one warmish day clearing space for the tulips in the amazing jungle that the yard and garden beds have turned into, and another actually planting them. I'm also tempted to go through my ridiculous hoard of old seeds and fling onto the ground any that say they can be planted in the fall. We'll see.
I've put my book aside for all the tedious paperwork of the taxes, and the only good thing I can say is that I'm starting to see the faintest stirrings of a desire to get back to it. Thus are we spurred to the work that should be our delight, in these parlous times.
I continue to value all of you exceedingly.
Pamela
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You have my deepest sympathy over the taxes. I too hate business paperwork and business calls. I hope everything needful gets done and handed in with the least possible grief. I hope it spurs you!
Thank you for reminding me to read The Glass Magician. I am lightyears behind on new fiction.
Hurrah for boosters!
May the tulips come up.
Nine
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I can understand peoples' discomfort with the telephone. I made my living via the phone for 43 years, and did a reasonable job of it. I therefore didn't think I had difficulties with the phone. As the years went on, however, it become more difficult. And now that I've retired, I have developed an aversion to it that is quite irrational.
After all, I am still of the opinion - based unfortunately on my experience with people who Will. Not. Read. the emails I send them, FFS, there's more after the first two damned sentences, you utterly incompetent illiterates ... ahem ... where was I - ah, yes; I am of the opinion that phone calls can often scare up real action, where an email will gather pixeldust in an ignored electronic queue.
I do wish you the best with all your communications, and I offer heartfelt cheers, complete with pompoms, on the fascia-fixing and the taxes.
Take care.
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May the numbers go in the correct direction and the squirrels be obliged to continue to occupy the out, with no part of the in. Also to entirely neglect the tulips as those should be planted.
Ontario's current stats, with seventy-odd percent fully vaccinated, give the fully-vaccinated one chance in twenty of a symptomatic case. For my own part, I would not risk that; wild-type covid was more than miserable enough.
Which I suppose to also describe your tax wrangling; I hope that concludes soon and well and stays concluded.
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I expect it is much better than taxes! I hope you can get back to it soon.
Thank you for the snapshot of your November.
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There's a hairy woodpecker that loves to poke around in the leaf-clogged gutter above my window. Once he landed right on my screen and stared in at me! I couldn't get my camera in time to get a picture. I'm thinking of pressing suet or peanut butter into the screen to see if i can entice him back, but we already have a problem with white-footed mice, so maybe that's not a great idea. Still, it would be fun to be eye to eye with a woodpecker.
The Glass Magician sounds intriguing, whereas the tax situation sounds exhausting and unpleasant.
I like your plan for your hoard of old seeds. Imagine what surprises might greet you next year. Maybe none! But if not, maybe you'll have made lots of birds and chipmunks happy. And maybe you'll get some unexpected sprouts.
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I always love your nature descriptions -- like a window on your world. And it's also always lovely to see a post from you.
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<3 to you--always glad to see an update!
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I'm still squeamish about being in contact with people outside my closest friends and family. I know rationally that Ottawa is doing pretty well about COVID, but too many people are getting careless, and the numbers did a bit of a spike when schools opened. A friend of mine who's a teacher has had to file union grievances regarding hazardous working conditions. She says that the principal is on her side, but is handicapped by school board policies.
Our SCA group is running its biggest annual event in a couple of weeks, the first event it's run since COVID hit us. It's greatly reduced in scale from its usual size, and everyone going indoors will be masked and must be fully vaccinated. I really want to go, as several friends will be receiving long-overdue honours, but I know I'm going to be very much on edge.
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The ivy sounds so pretty. I miss having fall color here in my part of the Bay Area. We don't have anything much that changes aside from assorted liquidambar trees which are not ubiquitous. When one finds them it is marvelous to see the flaming colors.
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I am once again behind on tax stuff after having got caught up at great difficulty and expense. Another pandemic item I didn't have the energy to cope with, I guess.
I galloped through The Glass Magician when it first came out, but I should probably reread it in a more leisurely manner.
I was sorry to miss the Halloween Minn-stf meeting, but I was back in Chicago then. I assume you know at least vaguely about my family stuff from Lydy. Someday we shall meet again, though.