Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben

Back in summer, I went for a drive, and a few minutes into it, I saw a spider outside the driver's-side window.  It had built a web between the door and the side mirror, and was hanging onto it in the slipstream.  A timely red light allowed the spider to hurry into the side mirror for safety for the rest of the trip.  

The next time I went outside to the garage, the spider was once again on my car.  This time, I moved the spider over to the window opposite its former home.  It has lived on the window shade since then, sometimes hiding in the gap that shows at the top of the above picture.  The December cold seemingly hasn't affected its ability to find food.  The white egg sacs on display above indicate that this spider has done was it was born to do.  Eat, prey, reproduce.

Saturday Evening Post

Let me see... with another day together, PG and I drove to the At Home store, where she picked out some new bath rugs and a matching set of towels.  They asked us to sign up for their mailing list, so I gave them a non-essential email address and they took 10% off the bill.  Eight bucks is eight bucks.  

On the way there and back, we listened to the Max podcast Talking Pictures with guest Carol Burnett.  We saw that the new building that had been going up while PG was getting her PT nearby turned out to be a medical office.  Catty-corner from it, where there used to be a stable, there's now a storage unit.  

We stopped at Wegmans and got stuff from our shopping list, which ended up costing nearly as much as the rugs and towels, but took up far less space.  There wasn't even any meat in either of the shopping bags.  Parmesan cheese, mezzaluna pasta, pierogies, bananas, a cucumber, vinaigrette, paprika, oregano, lemonade, ice cream, Pepsi for tomorrow's pizza, probably too much info.

Small tasks:  brought the corded leaf blower inside off the deck and put it in the basement until next fall.  Brought the battery-powered blower in from the garage and used it to move the dust and fur on the basement steps to the bottom, then put it and its batteries next to the other blower.  Took a gas can to a nearby Wawa and got a couple of gallons of alcohol-free gasoline, which will be used in the snow blower this winter. 

PG watched Whitstable Pearl, and across the room, while my little cat rested on my lap, I watched YouTube on the laptop.  Irma La Douce, some music videos.  Drummed along with Lenny Kravitz's Low, which is slow enough and simple enough for an inexperienced student.  Later, a few minutes of a 23-year-old Joan Crawford in Our Dancing Daughters on the TiVo.

Still here

Another good day with PG.  After breakfast, I made a blueberry streusel cake, and when that was out of the oven, put together some spaghetti sauce from her recipe.  I chopped the onion and she grated the garlic.  

Early afternoon, we were in the family room.  She watched Whitstable Pearl and I watched some bookmarked YouTube videos with headphones on the laptop.  My little cat climbed onto my lap sometime during it all.

Supper at 3:00 as usual.  (Cereal for breakfast, and a filling but low-calorie supper.  No lunch.  I want to drop a few more pounds before the next 6-month checkup in January.)  Rice bowl, consisting of some cut-up turkey breast leftovers in a mixture of spanish rice, peas, corn, and pinto beans, with taco cheese and salsa on top.  Later, two chocolate chip cookies, a cup of hot chocolate, and a 1 x 1 square of the blueberry streusel cake.  Up here in the office, drum practice for an hour and four hard candies.  

Too cold and windy to walk outside.  Did fill bird feeders off the deck, otherwise stayed in all day.

Not much. How about you?

More of the same.  Still visiting the cats and kittens, still reading Le Monde, still playing around with drum lessons.  

Tomorrow:  process the pictures I took today; bake a lemon cake for Thanksgiving dinner; use the new cordless leaf blower to help move the leaves to the gutter out front; pick up a prescription for PG at Walmart.  And, play around with drum lessons after dark.

Worth remembering

PG was having back pain that neither physical therapy nor her chiropractor could make go away.  Eventually, she made an appointment with the family doctor, who prescribed meloxicam.  We were concerned that it's an NSAID, but it's a pain medication that treats inflammation as well, and doesn't have side effects of drowsiness or dizziness.  It's worked well in her case.  

Today, we did some shopping, and she was able to walk around with minimal pain in each of the 3 stores (Costco, Target, and Walmart).  Still, due to the prior pain she wasn't used to that much physical activity, so she went to bed and sleep well before me.

I'm practicing ghost notes, reading New Yorker articles about Dick Cavett and Eleanor Roosevelt, et aussi des articles du Monde de Maia Mazaurette.    

Far From Perfect

From a video on Facebook featuring Charles Phoenix and a pink 1959 Cadillac.  The original owner was in fact a craps dealer at Harrah's casino.

 

A few moments in an ordinary day

On our way home from the doctor, PG spotted a blue heron flying above us, I'll guess about 20 feet off the ground.  Its speed and ours were close enough, and the road was clear ahead and behind us, so I got a few seconds of its grace.  

We reached an intersection with a stop light, and the bird continued over the road, descending quickly and landing on a patch of grass just outside an area that was left unmown most of the year.  Both PG and I got one last glimpse of the heron on the ground after the light turned green and we continued on our way.