Making Sense Of It All

First, I have been absent from here far longer than I anticipated... Had a scary few days not long ago when western winds whipped up. A third wildfire this summer took hold some 20 miles due north. It tore across acres of land leading to multiple sudden evacuation orders in a densely populated area. It was unknown how fast and far this latest manic wildfire would travel -- just about the time our region's power went out. Needless to say our go-bags were packed. It was an unnerving night. When the power came back six hours later we learned the winds shifted the flames away. We were out of immediate danger but our neighbors to the north weren't so fortunate. This latest disaster seems to have awakened some reconsideration about unchecked development in wildfire prone areas, but it remains to be seen if any policies will change. The Mad Dash Now, the back half of each year since 2013 signifies a particularly maddening dash into the unknown. This is when the U.S. health insurance i...

We've been binge watching a series that first aired in 2014 called The Last Ship . It can be a bit campy and veers into a fair amount of melodrama, but the story line checks several boxes.  First, as Klara saw first hand when we visited eastern European towns together some dozen years ago (where I dutifully photographed plague monuments), I'm all in on plague stories. This is a long-standing interest. The biology, the social impacts, and the public health responses over centuries fascinate and (still) shock me. Second, there's a navy component that appeals to my guy who served on a ship for years before I knew him. (He confirmed the depiction of deployment is realistic.) Finally, it's surreal to see a pandemic depicted so eerily close to what we experienced just six years before the COVID pandemic. It's like revisiting the future. The constant threat and plot turns in the series feel very true to today. You know, the increasingly unstable world order and all. Each d...

From girlhood I've wrestled with a propensity to leap from one project or focal point to another.   I can recall my father's caution as bedtime neared: "It's getting late, Let's not start any big projects!" Easier said than done. My brain has always been wired to be highly reactive to whatever is in front of me. When I'm in a zone I can be remarkably productive. But, when too many important questions or significant ideas crowd my thinking, my thought process becomes fragmented and frustrating. Keeping a clear track was easier in the pre-digital age. Technology today makes it temptingly easy to jump even faster from one thing to another without fully completing any task well. List-making helps. So, here it goes: Wily sarcoidosis symptoms, meds, and health effects Given my ongoing ankle stiffness and pain flares, my rheumatologist in late June upped my  hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) from 300 to 400 mg a day. I started HCQ in late March to reduce sarcoidosis-drive...

  February 16, 2025  Wellington (NZ) Botanic Gardens  My thoughts are with Mali who shared the passing of her dear husband this week. I don't know what it is to lose a beloved spouse. The sea of emotions must be truly overwhelming. Loss is personal and each of us finds a way to navigate the grief in our own way. Our time here on this planet is short and our one lasting legacy is the people we touch and the memories we share. If I've learned anything over my 63 years it is that grieving is easier when we feel supported and seen. I see you Mali. I'm grateful that we had some time together in person -- the four of us -- to share food, wine and stories. Though it was only a weekend in each other's presence, the experience remains large in my life. There are few people I can say I've felt instantly at home with; you and D are two of those people. It was truly wonderful to be immediately and fully at ease with each other and bonded based on our collective experiences as i...

2016: Strolling with my sister and DH in the Midwest neighborhood where I grew up. The past several months I've been slowly emptying stuff out of closets, drawers, garage shelves, and cupboards. We've logged 10 years in our current place, but never fully unpacked boxes stacked neatly out of the way from 30 years of togetherness.  It's surreal to mark three decades since I chucked just about everything I had from my old life and started over at 32. I flew cross-country with two suitcases. Meeting me on the other end a week later was a small truck holding my mattress and a few smaller pieces of furniture and pots and pans that I paid to move.  Today, the act of pruning belongings and surrendering mementos and stuff is both liberating and emotionally taxing.  What to Keep and What to Let Go Diving into boxes of things that once seemed impossible to toss (all those old memories!), today feels less impossible but still requires time to sort and filter. Contained within: file f...

First, cheers to all my peeps who know and appreciate the downside spectrum of the mid-May Sunday-palooza, which can run the gamut from mildly grating to downright painful. I'd all but forgotten about this newly carved out space due to recent distractions, but then the second Sunday in May rolled around.   I'd done a pretty good job of not thinking much about it this year. I purchased and mailed something to my mother well in advance of the commercial onslaught and didn't get nearly the volume of disingenuous promotions. (Curiously, more than one retail entity, screenshot below, broadened the promotional appeal to encompass a larger population.)  The optimist in me wondered: could the past decade-plus of pushing back on "mom-centric" pro-natalist messaging be getting through? The cynic in me said: with the world's economy under greater pressure they don't want to discriminate against any sales target. Last Friday, though, I was on a short, flat terrain wal...