Loose Leaf Notes

Walking on the rows of our garden like an astronaut looking for life on the moon, I discover a few volunteer kale plants that have survived the morning frost.  I transplant them into the cold frame, pick a batch of remay-covered Swiss chard and harvest what’s left of the parsnips with a shovel, soaking and scrubbing their long muddy tubers in cold water.

Inside, still scrubbing and cleaning up the muddy splash at the sink, my husband, Joe, is talking on the phone to a friend who’s complaining that her dog barked for hours and she didn’t get enough sleep.  “Tell her to thank him because he probably warded off a bear,” I say, not having been able to shake the feeling of vulnerability I’ve had since I found bear scat on our front porch a few weeks ago.

Our neighbor Bob comes over bringing Joe a copy of the article in Tricycle magazine about the teen mindfulness retreats Joe’s non-profit iBme puts on.  I hear them talking on the porch but I feel too busy to join them.  The sun is shinning brightly through the windows, so I drop what I’m doing to dust off the picture frames in the hallway and the bureau in its path.

After pulling our army green wool blanket out of storage, I decide to wash our sheets and the pillow case to the buckwheat pillow I take to a friend’s house on Thursday nights when I sleep on the mat next to her bed. She’s sick with cancer and appreciates friends in the community who will stay one night a week to give her family members a break.  “We’re all dying, only some faster than others,” I say to Joe when he reminds me it’s our night to go.

Lunch is delicious, chicken with parsnips and volunteer turnips greens mashed with butter into the last of our Yukon gold potatoes. I eat on the porch, purposely trying to soak up the sun for my recommend daily allowance of Vitamin D. I try to read about mitochondrial dysfunction and intravenous glutathione as it relates to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome but find it hard to concentrate.  Maybe The Floyd Press?

I’ve been running half the walk (about the length of a football field) to our mailbox on the front of my feet like my friend Katherine recommended after reading Born to Run, a book about the Mexican tribe of natives who run long distances in bare feet.  Carrying the local paper and Christmas catalogs in one hand, I collect kindling with the other on the walk back.

I spend some time fiddling with the story I’m working on about community theater, check my Facebook page and my blog.  I manage to get the Scrabble game to the top of the stairs, ready to put away, and made a copy of the two-letter-word list to give to my Asheville Potter son, Josh, when he returns for Christmas and wants to play.

We have mice!  I try to get started on cleaning the kitchen but discover that my traps of mouse poison have been raided, so I refill them and clean up after the critters that come to visit a couple times a year. The mice are a nuisance, but knowing they’re in the house is nothing like finding a copperhead on our rust-orange hallway carpet like the one I found in the fall when I was home alone and had to kill it with a yardstick, the leg of a kitchen table and lawn clippers.

By 4:00 the clothes are hanging in the cellar by the woodstove and I’m feeling exhausted.  I babysat my grandsons the day before (the highlight of my week), making the hour back and forth commute down the mountain.  Over the weekend we hosted 100’s of people in our house for Josh’s Sixteen Hands  Studio Tour (my one big yearly social event) and it’s all catching up with me.

“Teatime,” I declare while making myself a pot of Earl Grey Green.  Maybe a little Dr. Phil? (Ever since HD came to the mountains we only get one network channel.)  I dig into the marzipan Christmas stolen  that I buy ever year at this time from a local German baker,thinking to myself “I know I didn’t get as much accomplished as I wanted to, but at least I know one thing: life is good.”