Crowns

Crown Imperial,  Fritillaria imperialis. A few weeks and the blooms will be gone. As all crowns should be. 

“Whoever had created humanity had left in a major design flaw. It was its tendency to bend at the knees.” -T. Pratchett  

Winter dead soul

When I lived with constant pain

Wisdom blooms in spring. 

Came across one of the old bits about wealthy/celebrities in their mansions whining about the horror of having to stay in their lavish homes during lock down. Of course, along with everyone else at first, I thought "poor babies!"  

But I have another thought.  

McMansion Hell discusses the issue of mansions as being aspirational. Oh! The parties they will have! So many friends! And how essentially unlivable these houses are. Less houses than Event Centers, Convention spaces, Hotel lobbies. They are a gilded hell created by people with more money than sense.  To have to live in them without respite, really is awful. They are blandly tasteful, cold, drafty, echoey. Good for photos and as stage sets, but not at all as homes. 

Not that I feel pity for them. Not at all. But their complaints are genuine. They have build themselves a nest of wire.

No one wonders why living in a cramped, cheap apartment is awful when you can't leave. But they have no choice. We lived in such places most of our adult lives, we sympathized with all those staring at eggshell painted walls and beige carpeting for months at a time. Or worse, or with horrible landlords who would not keep the places livable.  

I was grateful every day stuck inside that we found House the Home, and weren't in some tiny apartment. This place was fine for a long day-to-day, comfortable, livable.  The company helped of course. Dylan and cats are all I could want, more than I could have hoped for. 

Gratitude with every breath. 

Micro

A dozen or so

Microgardens growing here

Crowded together. 

When asked what I grow, I begin listing, and the list is very long. Because this wasn't planned as a whole, landscaped, groomed, perfect space. I dug a hole, fed the soil, tried a plant. If it grew, it could stay. If it died, I would try another.  Over and over I dug, fed, planted, waited.  I tried to read the seed packages and plant requirements, but so often I was swept away by the image on the package or the ID tag in the pot. Sometimes, those grew well, often they became compost. 

I fought foxtail grasses, Morning Glory, English Ivy, Star of Bethlehem and assorted weeds whose name I never learned. Replaced them with Lemon Balm and catmint, and some other mint, but at least those do not have spiky seeds that get lodged in dog's paws. Nor does it grow up the bricks and destroy the mortar. Yes, it's also invasive, but it is green and Eleanor loves it.  Veronica covers the soil in winter and early spring, another volunteer, protecting the bare ground. I pull it up and compost it, just enough to let other life through after it is spent. It's welcome enough in its season. 

Lots of irises, tulips, alliums this year, color in spring. 

Life returning. 

Unpaving

Spring has some.  Rain next week. So, I had to get the pavers moved and the rain barrels up. I always get caught up and do too much, and ache after. But the greenness is calling out, and I must comply. 

The barrels are also finally connected with tubing, so both will fill, given enough rain. 
 

Ashes

 How can I forget

That I am dust and unto 

Dust I shall return?

"Fortunately, some are born with spiritual immune systems that sooner or later give rejection to the illusory worldview grafted upon them from birth through social conditioning. They begin sensing that something is amiss, and start looking for answers. Inner knowledge and anomalous outer experiences show them a side of reality others are oblivious to, and so begins their journey of awakening. Each step of the journey is made by following the heart instead of following the crowd and by choosing knowledge over the veils of ignorance." 

 - Henri Bergson 

daily zen

Strangely, I've used this analogy most of my adult life. Ten years of catholic school inoculated me against religion. Quite the opposite effect from what my mother intended.  And my questioning began about age seven, when St. Anthony clearly failed to find a small ring I'd lost.  If a saint can't convince a god to find a small child's most treasured possession, what good are they? Nothing should be easier, or more important if they required her belief. The only sensible deduction is that neither exist at all. 

Fulminent

 Yesterday I missed the wordle, just bad luck choosing letters.  So when I got home, Dylan tried it, and got it in two.  I watched him with absolute delight as he put in the correct word, made my day. I also got one in two this past week. Strangely, it was both nice, and a bit of a disappointment to get it so easily - much more satisfying to get it in 4 or 5. 

It was also a day that felt like a lot of progress, I had a lot to do, and accomplished pretty much what I'd hoped to. Figured out a snarl that I hadn't even seen before, that will make the re-organization of clinic designations a lot more effective. Sounds boring, but it's really an essential piece to keep the right patients getting the right care in good time. It took this long for me to understand the process sufficiently to correct it. 

Of course I worry for the world. But it also feels like a tipping point.  The time to lance the boil, amputate the limb, the infection has declared itself, and there is no question about the next, drastic, steps that need to be taken. Nothing will be the same, after. 

People demand to know why the side that is trying to do good is "so bad at messaging!"  There are at least two reasons for this. Good people do not think like evil people, and assume that most people are good and doing the best they can. Good people trust that everyone else is just trying to do the best they can with what they have.  This is an essential part of what makes up good people. 

The second major problem is that good people don't have the power of fear and anger to crush the other side. If they did, they wouldn't be good anymore. Humans respond more to violence and fear because those are immediate threats - it's a core Survive-right-now instinct.  Good things can be safely ignored. Immediate threats have to be put in the center and fought or run from in a way that chronic threats do not. All our stories are about monsters and violence, fear and loss - because that is when we need stories the most. Malignity comes in many forms, we must be able to see it and fight it. And that is obsessive and addictive, all that rage, all that horror, and it's easy for evil people to misdirect us, send us after the wrong enemy. 

Beneficence is... well, boring.  It always looks pretty much the same. That it feels better, allows us to think and find joy - means it's much harder to talk about, harder to share. Because Good isn't the opposite of Evil.  Good is a balance of forces.  Evil is the extremes of violence and submission, both but without stability. 

It's why I will never write a decent novel, I keep taking the conflict out of it. I want to soothe, and make every character's life better, just as I do in my everyday. I genuinely do not get angry anymore, not like I used to. I had my father's rage in me, for so long, but it's run out now. I feel the sadness, the frustration, the fear, but it doesn't turn into anger anymore. Burned out that circuit, apparently. 

I have no time machine, I can't go back and un-mistake. I have to take it from here and make the best I can of it. Learn the lesson and proceed to work the problem. Press the error into my brain, find a way to avoid it in the future, and move on. 

It doesn't make for a compelling story. Makes for a better life, though. 

Yes, that is a heating vent behind Zeppo's left shoulder. 

Brain

 My brain is starting to show the effects of learning so many new things. I'm starting to see the patterns, and notice when it's wrong.  One of my colleagues has been effusive in her praise for my picking up on, and continuing to pick at, an anomaly. Specifically because the mistake made would have been a blow to patient care if not caught early. I still think her handling of it had more effect, but I let the positive reinforcement work on me. 

I'm finding ways to double check that make sense to me. 

Got four surgeries scheduled yesterday.  I'll get another one or two tomorrow, and possibly catch up on the waitlist a bit by next week.  Booked out to May for shoulders, and into April for hands. We need another couple of surgeons, our new hand surgeon starts this month. And our new shoulder surgeon should be here by fall. Until then, we make do. 

Gods, we need Universal Health Care.  But within that,  we also need specific Veteran care, because they are a particular population with their own peculiar needs. Lots of substance abuse, lots of homelessness and unstable home lives, lots of mental health issues - and not all combat related PTSD.  The VA is actually equipped to deal with in, in a way that non-VA hospitals are not. We keep surgical patients as long as they need, when other hospitals would send them home that day or the next day. None of our patients will ever lose their house because of a hospital bill. Most of our Vets really appreciate how they are cared for here. 

Of course some don't - mostly because they want something that isn't what they need. Patients who seem to think surgery is magic and will take away all their pain. The ones who think our top notch shoulder surgeon doesn't know what he is talking about when he says that further surgery would be a phenomenally bad idea. The grumpy guy who blames everyone else for him not checking his mail or calling before driving in from Podunk, UT.  I suspect they are what would once have been called malingerers.  One in every platoon, I think I know what they were like in Basic. 

And I love that I have that experience, that commonality, that urge to yell "Airborn!" when something is dropped and breaks. 

If you know, you know. If you don't - it's not really possible to explain. The experience, the feeling of it. 

And now, this work, this duty. It's sort of the same, first wallowing and nearly drowning, and finally floating in it. Like marching with 32 women and making hardly a sound. 

Answers

Addendum: Salt Lake City - 4568 ft 7 AM Sun    11.0" /28cm  snow, 1.50"/ 3.8cm water.

 And we got 0.75", 1.9cm, water out of this storm, and it's still going.  Soaking in the cardboard under sand. Compost next week sometime. I'm not driving in this if I don't have to. 

This was part of why I went all out yesterday, but this result is better than expected. 

Sandy

Whole lotta sand under there.  And beneath that a weed stop fabric, doing mostly nothing. And under that, coarse gravel. That might have been put there by the Previous Owner, but I suspect it used to be a sort of driveway, since it lead to the coal chute. 

Yes, my back does hurt, but not as badly as after any random day in the OR, so... yeah. I laid cardboard under a layer of sand, and it's supposed to rain tonight and tomorrow. Sometime next week, I'll add compost. And then plant beets, parsley, lentils. I'm looking at Oryzopsis hymenoides, Indian Ricegrass, as a native well suited to this space. 

It already feels better back there. 

Eighty

"My father, who lived to ninety-four, often said that the eighties had been one of the most enjoyable decades of his life. He felt, as I begin to feel, not a shrinking but an enlargement of mental life and perspective. One has had a long experience of life, not only one's own life, but others' too. One has seen triumphs and tragedies, booms and busts, revolutions and wars, great achievements and deep ambiguities. One has seen grand theories rise, only to be toppled by stubborn facts. One is more conscious of transience and, perhaps, of beauty. At eighty, one can take a long view and have a vivid, lived sense of history not possible at an earlier age. I can imagine, feel in my bones, what a century is like, which I could not do when I was forty or sixty. I do not think of old age as an ever grimmer time that one must somehow endure and make the best of, but as a time of leisure and freedom, freed from the factitious urgencies of earlier days, free to explore whatever I wish, and to bind the thoughts and feelings of a lifetime together. I am looking forward to being eighty." 

 - Oliver Sacks 

Gratitude

Ok, I needed this.  Had to deal with a grumpy man, who is 80 (I know because he told me several times that was why I didn't produce a hand surgeon out of thin air to see him, and that meant I obviously wanted him to just die.)  Instead I spoke like I was his grandma, reflecting back his platitudes to me - "Phone works two ways, you know!"

"Yes, I know. So instead of driving four hours here*, check your mailbox and call before you come. Phone works both ways, as you say." Eventually I just got chipper, "See you on the 14th!" He snarled and stormed off. My schedulers and I laid bets that he would show up anyway. 

So, aging doesn't automatically bring wisdom.  It offers the opportunity, and it's up to each of us to reach out and grasp it.

This spring I am reclaiming some of the Previous Owner's ill conceived patio for the garden.  It gets so much morning and midday sun, when the back of the garden gets very little sun due to property line junk trees. A baking patio and a cold dark garden is the wrong way round.  So I will take up the pavers, move them to the car-turnaround area that gets so muddy.  For the garden extension, put down cardboard and compost and plant beets and parsley

*2 hours, more like. Still significant, but not 4. 

Fuzzy

 She loves him, purring.

Sleeps behind his knee, pinning

Him down as he sleeps.