Late July Update

Life continues to be rich and fall here in Enoughsville.  We're all making the most of summer, in all its warm glory.

Gosling's dogs enjoy the water;
"this is the closest they'll get to the beach".

Cchild and David were actually at the beach . . . 

. . . as were Achild and Bchild.

Watch out for the big crabs!
They might eat you up!

Far, far away from the beach, the Minnesota Twins played a game in a large stadium . . . 

And who do you think sang the National Anthem at that particular game?  My kids, that's who!

A photo of Nelson and Sizzling (and a few other singers)
on the giant screen.  Whoop!

Nelson and Sizzling enjoying the game, post-singing.  

My guy has been enjoying cycling (naturally), plus visiting a variety of military museums, interviewing Vietnam veterans, and attending book group discussions.

And me, what have I been up to?  A variety of things.  For one, I've been having fun making things, flexing my "Rubbish Rescue Artist" muscles.  

My "Little Farm Library:  Take a Cow; Leave a Cow".
I love the little hay loft window.

I've also been meeting with a fee-only financial advisor, to think about the transition to retirement I'll be making next year.  I feel like I have a good overall idea of how to go about this, since I've read so much stuff about personal finance over the decades.  Still, I really wanted to have someone good to bounce ideas off of, and so I've forked over a bunch of money so I can talk with someone else who has opinions about geeky thing$ that none of my other friends or family care about:  variable annuities vs distributions, donor advised funds and qualified charitable distributions, RMDs, HSA regulations, . . . if this is the kind of thing you like to chat about, ping me!  My advisor and I spent a little more than two hours yakking about all this, and we'll be looping back for more of it later.

All three of these cows have since been taken. 
(I've put more cows in; so far, no one has left a cow,
but it's early days yet).

I've also been mathing, of course.  I submitted a paper a few weeks ago (while we were on the Experi-cation), and now I've started a new exploration of something called "Reverse perspective".  For me, this involves building 3-d models (drawing, cutting, gluing), and then thinking about aspects of the constructions that are most and least effective -- it's a lot of fun, and brings many of my favorite activities and interests together. 

I just love this little barn I made, I have to say.

Outside of the house, I've been exploring, finding new places to walk, new running paths for my friends. I even went to an open house for a bunch of "Tiny" houses (bigger than my Little Free, smaller than my row house, but more spacious than I would have expected; that was fun).

A dozen little homes were on display.

I'm also reading up a storm.  I've been catching up on magazines -- I have a good friend who drops off National Geographics, Guide Posts, and Smithsonian Magazines after he's done with them, and I've had a blast working my way through a backlog that I'd been saving for this summer (thanks, Randy!).  I've read beach novels, and math books, and art books, and disappointing books.  My two favorite recent reads are "Life Time" (which is really a book about our circadian rhythms, sleep, and how or bodies move through the day) and Emily Mooney's "The Cost of Living" (a beautiful series of essay-stories about -- this is not quite right, but it's hard to summarize accurately -- living with chronic illness, finances, and the medical field.  It's read-aloud captivating, this book is).  

The inside sometimes feels bigger than the outside.

And how's my own health?  My ear is still mildly uncomfortable, but it's nowhere nearly as awful as before.  The ringing persists, but it's mild enough that I don't have to maneuver my schedule or my surroundings; I just deal with it.  My jaw feels the kind of ache like I'd get when I'd been smiling so much that my face would hurt -- just now, it feels like that most of the time.  And my left ear in particular still feels like it's a bit stopped up.  I'm doing mild exercises, and I bought a night dental guard (which, to my surprise, I really like).  So, that's my head.

Cabinets inside the stairs; cute!

As for my bodily fluid levels, I just got a certificate from our local blood bank listing me as a 12 gallon donor.  Before I moved to my current job, I'd donated through the American Red Cross,  which has a different count than our local group, so I don't know what my life-time donation level is, but I figure that a dozen gallons of blood and one kidney in a three-decade stretch of time isn't all that shabby.

And that's the news from our family, which continues to be wealthy in our adventures.  May you and yours be similarly prosperous.

Mending Jeans

An aside, even before I start the post:  because of multiple google accounts, I get photos into this particular blog by downloading them and then re-uploading them . . . so as I was getting ready to pull this post together, I downloaded a folder called "mending-jeans", which compressed to "mending-jeans.zip".  Too funny!  I'm not mending the zippers, but still . . . 

Inkling brought a friend to brunch, partly so the friend could have waffles with us, and partly because said friend didn't know it's possible to mend jeans.  We three all seem to get the holes in the same places (inside thighs).  So we got to do some collaborative fixing.   Here's my how-to:

One, gather materials.  

Sewing machine, pins, scissors, and scraps of denim 
from previously sacrificed jeans.

Two, pin a scrap over the hole, but on the inside of the jeans.  Make sure the scrap and the jeans lie flat.

On the first pair, I pinned on the inside of the jeans, by the scrap. 
Sometimes I prefer pinning the other (good) side.  

Three, turn the jeans right-side out, and make sure the patch is in the right place and there's no bunching

The pins (for this first pair) are on the other side,
but you can see them poking through.
The patch is much bigger than the hole;
eventually I'll cut the excess away.

Four, stitch around the hole itself with a zig-zag stitch, to help reduce fraying, . . . 

. . . and then sew around an even larger circle/square, so that the patch is well-attached to still-strong pieces of the jeans.

Five, Remove the jeans from the sewing machine, and trim the thread.  I then use pinking shears to cut the excess pieces of scrap off the back.

On darker jeans, you can see the white stitching,
so maybe use a darker thread. 
(However, I've found that because of where this hole is,
it's harder to see while you're wearing them).

If the hole is large or there's a bunch of weak material (as on the second pair we repaired), I sew back and forth with a waffle pattern, to attach the patch to the existing material more thoroughly.  

If you look carefully, you can see the waffle pattern.
It's hard to see the stitching here, which is good, really. 
On pale jeans, white thread hardly shows.

And, done.

Tiny good deed for the day (topology involved)

I suppose that my regular stint serving breakfast once a week at the local soup kitchen could be counted as a good deed, but that's gotten to be such a part of my routine that it's not what I was thinking of when I patted myself on the back for a cute little job well done.   

As part of my morning at the soup kitchen, I got to fold the laundry, which is one of my favorite jobs there because it involves untangling apron strings, which is a delightful puzzle always.  In fact, I wrote a blog post earlier about how my practice with untangling apron strings helped me fix my expensive cordless blinds.  Well, this week I realized that two aprons were sewn together wrong, and the loop that goes around the neck wasn't actually attached.

Incorrectly sewn. 
The two loops should actually loop together.

I told the powers-that-be that I'd take these two aprons home to do a quick fix.  That's the small good deed I patted myself on the back for.  It's fun to fix things for other people, isn't it?

First step: use my seam ripper, a tool I love.  
Love, love, love -- it's so useful for sewing projects!

Once I disassembled the first strap, I realized how the original sewer could easily have made the stitching blunders -- figuring out how to thread the strap through the black plastic piece and the other loop was a bigger brain teaser than I thought it would be.

This seemed right while I was putting it together,
but then I realized, "nopers."

There's a type of math that studies things like knots and loops and links: it's called "topology".  I really love that subject, and this turned into a fun applied topology puzzle for me.

Next configuration.  I sewed this in place, 
then realized it was wrong, too.  Back to the seam ripper.

This was the threading pattern that did the trick.

After a few attempts, I did figure it out.  It turns out that removing the old stitches and putting the new stitches in were just as quick and easy as I thought they'd be . . .  but getting the straps into the right place between those two steps was quite a bit of mathematical maneuvering.

Phew!  All done.

And next week, I'll take back two aprons whose neck straps are both now in the right place, ready to get tangled into tricky topology knots with other aprons like the best of them.

Update from the train home

Life continues to be rich and full here in Enoughsville.  I'm writing this update on an Acela train, heading back home after an Experi-cation (experimental vacation), visiting friends and family and summer camps.  It's been a series of many novelties and enjoyment, and also a lot of good feedback for me on how to plan for somewhat longer future trips.

We spent most of the time in New Hampshire, where my husband and I got to enjoy said friends and family and wonderful views, and where the mosquitos got to enjoy us.  The plusses of the trip were many.  I got to connect with old friends, and also to strengthen connections with acquaintances who I've been wanting to turn into friends. 

We're becoming peeps.

We also spent some awesome time with my Sister-in-Law and her husband.  Jean is convinced that she and her brother are turning into their parents.   At first I couldn't quite see it, but by the end of our time there I really did.

Brother and sister, looking good!

The sign behind them says "Fine Antiques".   No comment.

My step-daughters often gift me with their cast-off clothes, and Jean jumped into that family tradition: she loaded me down with clothes, and I was happy to add fancy wardrobe items (that match my color palette) to my suitcase (and my body!).  Thanks, Jean!

I totally love this dress,
especially with a mountain in the background.

Being at the camp in the woods was really good; I think it even helped a bit with the ear trouble I've been having.   It's been a long time since I got to go on rambles through the woods, and I had a good time exploring, climbing, and feeding the mosquitos.

I also got to swim across this lake to "Blueberry Island", where we had an all-natural snack and then swam back.  This made me nostalgic for visiting my sister, who also lives on a highly swimmable lake, and so it's now on my to-do list to schedule a time to visit her.  (Although I might not be able to get there in time for the swimming temps to be reasonable, at least not this summer).

What have I learned from this Experi-cation so far?  

• The big plusses:
  Definitely, definitely I like visiting and being with people I know.   
  I surprised myself with how much I enjoyed the lake swim. 
  Amtrak is a great way to travel, where possible.   
  So glad I brought a puzzle book along. 
• What to do differently: 
  bring a book to read aloud to my husband in the rental car,
  bring snacks to eat (I should have known that!),
  don't forget the EZ pass.
• What I still struggle with:
  leaving the dog behind,
  pricey camps,
  pricey rental car,
  pricey food. 
  (And that "pricey" is of course relative to my incredible tightwad norms, but hey, they're my norms, hence my struggle). 

I might have left my dog behind (with a friend who loves dogs, so not all alone!), but Kinderling picked up a dog to make up for it.  She says,

She is hanging with us this weekend. We might have her for a couple of months as an arrangement with her owners. Its been fun having her, and A-child has met her match energy wise with this German shepherd/husky mix

Aowyn (Wynnie) :)

And Inkling, not to be outdone by last week's update from her older sister in the dancing department, says,

I went to an 80s theme dance tonight!. . .

Guess what song this was

Nelson got it in one:  "Footloose".  Yeah, Fam!

And that's the news from our family, which continues to be delicious to discerning insect aviators.  May you and yours be similarly metaphorically delicious, but possibly in different ways.

Update: enough with the ears, and can't get enough of the family

Life continues to be rich and full here in Enoughsville.  

For me, the big news is all in my head: I snagged an early appointment with an ENT, checking out the increasing ear/jaw pain and the ringing I've been dealing with.  He had good news and . . . well, not bad news, but he didn't have the magic wand I was hoping he could wave and make this all go away.  The good news is that we've managed to rule out lots of things that might be problems.  In particular, my ringing is not currently caused by

• DBT (my knee-jerk, go-to, self diagnosis of "Deadly Brain Tumor"; I'm glad that that my ENT appreciates the humor in my both jumping to this and also that I know that it's irrational);
• Ear infection;
• Ear wax (I'm squeaky clean, thanks to the ear-rigation I had earlier);
• clogged Eustachian tubes (they're clear now, apparently);
• hearing loss, probably (I have some asymmetry, especially in the high frequencies, but I'm still mostly hearing well in the speaking range).

All of this means, there's no easy fix.  However, one of the oddities my ENT did see is that I've been clenching my jaws, unbeknownst to me.   In other words, the gold star for long-distance diagnosis goes to my uncle who wrote to me to suggest,

Only thing I can say is that I find that if I'm clenching my jaw muscles a lot, that can cause a lot of tinnitus for me. I have to consciously relax the jaw muscles and keep them relaxed to make it go away. But this may have nothing to do with what you're going through. I hope it goes away soon! 

I've been clenching so unconsciously and so consistently, apparently, that it's hard for me to figure out the difference between doing it and not doing it.  My ENT says the way to stop is to "be a detective"; I also read some advice on the internet that if we relax our jaws into the right position when we pronounce the letter "N".  So I've been doing a lot of the Batman song ("na-na-na-na, na-na-na-na") and saying "Nnnn" to myself at night as I prepare for sleep.  And so far, it seems to be helping (although being obsessed with where my jaw is happens to be another learning/life experience!).  I have a lot less discomfort in my ears and jaw now --- it hasn't gone away completely, but it's subsiding.  The ringing is still there, but even that seems less . . . oppressive and overwhelming, I guess.  So, I'm grateful for this week's developments.

Moving on to out-of-my head topics, I'm tardy in sharing these cute photos from attending a performance of Grease with two of my daughters last week.  I know it seems all sappy to say so, but I love seeing how my kids have turned into awesome, fun-loving young adults, and even more so that we enjoy spending time together.  

Kinderling and Inkling dress appropriately for the show.

Aren't they adorbs?!?

(Inkling, good luck in the Tour de Fleece!)

Even my kids who are farther away share activities with us from afar.  We'd grown up dancing to Footloose in the living room, and here's Gosling hoofing it up to the same song.  She writes,

Went to a Three Sheets to the Wind, concert last night. They are a yacht rock cover band. They played footloose... I think I take after my father

Gonna get loose, footloose,
kick off your Sunday shoes!

(By the way, Gosling, I hope you got the car window fixed, and so glad that the rock that flew out of the lawnmower didn't hit your leg!  Plus, I know I owe you a letter.  I think now that my head is settling down, I'll have the headspace to write.)

Nelson called me up to ask me for advice (I love that) and then again to thank me for the advice (double-love!).  Then he sent this photo of sharing a meal with Sizzling and her fiance -- I'm so looking forward to seeing them in a month for the wedding!

Yummers!

And I don't have a photo of my guy, but he's been having fun traveling to the armor museum and doing more protest stuff.  The most recent was today; he was with a group who were escorting women safely past anti-abortion protesters.  While much of his group was doing the escorting, he and one of his friends walked over to two of the protesters and had a nice conversation about what drives their beliefs and behaviors.  It sounded very cordial; he says he really enjoys being able to engage like that.

And that's the news from our family, which continues to be wealthy in our adventures.  May you and yours be similarly prosperous.  

My gravity-powered meditation clock

I just dug this out of my drafts folder; not sure why I didn't hit "publish" a long time ago!  It has nothing to do with July 4th, and it's a bit outdated by now, but since I do still love my little hourglass (which is really a 10-minute glass), I'll go ahead and share.  

When I start getting overwhelmed, when I have trouble managing so much to do, when I want to do anything other than that huge task that's been looming over me, . . . when I start to feel like circumstances are controlling me instead of the other way around, that's when I pull out my telephone's 10-minute timer.  Ten minutes is powerful.   Ten minutes of email; ten minutes of research; ten minutes of stretching; ten minutes of memo-writing.   Those focused bursts end up being more productive than the alternative hour of foggy slogging along.  

One of the things that I started doing about four years ago was a ten-minute mediation before I left the office.   It's been (on those days that I actually do it) a balm, and a chore.  It's a chore because it's hard to make myself sit down and do it (work is calling, baby!), and it's been a balm because I feel approximately 85 times better once I've actually done it.  

I've been only mildly twitchy about using the same timer for my meditation as for my work-related tasks.  Honestly, it's mostly been just fine; so I guess this next thing I'm going to talk about is truly splurge-y:  I've gotten myself a meditation timer.   It turns out (the amazing internet informed me) that it *is* possible to get a 10-minute hour glass, as oxymoronic as that name is.  I shared that particular piece of information with my husband, who was super happy to go ahead and buy it for me.  After all, he loves buying, and he loves me, and those two things don't get to go together very often, so he celebrates when they do.

Maybe I'm drawn to holding an hourglass (10-minute glass ) because of Mrs. Flanagan's 10th grade English class, in which we read Return of the Native.  There's something in Thomas Hardy that appeals to angsty teenagers, I gotta say. I was particularly mesmerized by the character of Eustacia Vye, who wandered the heath carrying an hourglass so she could hold in her own hands the tangible evidence of her life slipping away, wasted in remote places, while she yearned for something better.  I've had a much more fulfilling life than hers, but I still think about the symbolism of carrying an hourglass.  

And so, ever since Christmas, I've gotten to carry my beautiful little sand timer into whatever corner of the house calls to me at the moment.  My sister has been a "sit on the floor every day" kick (getting up and down from the floor is an indicator of longevity, and we're a health-kick kind of a family), so I often sit on the floor.   I breathe in "Grace" and breathe out "Faith".  

A few years, I wrote to my running buddies:

And in these dark, cold times, there's still so much to be grateful for: warm houses, warm friends, warm clothing, bodies that warm up as we keep moving them around.  It's hard to get out there, and yet we do, because somehow we have faith that getting our swaddled bodies out into the freezing, dark morning is going to somehow end up bringing us joy.   We breathe in grace; we breathe out faith, and somehow we make it up that Duke Street Hill.

My body is gravity powered like that sand timer: I'm an amazing down-hiller, but I am often the first to walk when we turn around and head back up.   Maybe that's another reason I am drawn to this beautiful little thing.  

I love to see the little thread of sand stretching from the top to the bottom, connecting future to past or something.  The glass catches the light -- sometimes there's a mini-sunset inside the hour-glass that echoes the larger sunset I see through the glass of the window.  The sand that falls makes piles that do mini-landslides and shimmying downhill dances.  

And, since I promised myself I'd stop when I'd gotten to 10-minutes of blog writing, I guess I'll end right here and go do something else now.

Update with protests and purple and and a bit of dancing

Life continues to be rich and full here in Enoughsville.  My own life happens to be kinda full of noise still; most of today was tolerable, but as I sat down to write this letter I was reminded of how the ringing definitely still shapes how I spend my days.  I also still have a bit of stuffed-up pain in one ear, and I'm holding out hope that my upcoming ENT appointment (3 or 4 weeks from now) will diagnose that and miraculously solve both problems at the same time.

Our area had been under a mild drought (we'd instituted a burn ban, and local officials had started to urge people to conserve water), and so the thunderstorms and rains that have come through have been incredibly welcome.  We've had hard rains interspersed with bright sun, which is exactly what farmers had been hoping for.   The terrible temperatures that have been whomping the south haven't made their way here.  It does get hot and humid during the day, but overnight the temperatures have dropped back down nicely -- one morning I ran with my friend in 60-degree temps.   Alas, later in the week, the smoke came through and turned the air quality to red, which meant I canceled a bunch of other outings with my friends.

In these not-too-miserably-hot days, OfSnough is putting his protest muscles to work.  The group that calls themselves "Mothers for Liberty" is meeting in Philadelphia (ironically, in the same Marriott Hotel with another group -- the Federation of Jewish Men's Clubs, who was not particularly happy to find who they were cloistered with).  My guy has been part of the crowd outside asserting their support for . . . um, actual liberty and justice.  

Last week, I wrote that I *thought* Inkling was Square Dancing; turns out I was right.

"This year was my 22nd nationals!"

When she got back, she got to join our "Thriller Thursdays" group again.  By now, we've made it all the way through Michael Jackson's dance moves, and so we're to the point of just learning to put it all together and practice to get it smooth (if "smooth" is the right word for a dance about zombies).  At the end of this past Thursday's session, we ran the dance through at 50% speed, . . . and then 75% speed, . . . and then at 100% speed (with LOTS of laughing and fumbles, but still, 100% speed!).  Go, us!

This year's purple dress dinner was a lovely gathering.

And, that's our news, or at least as much as I could squeeze in before I go find a way to bathe my ears in brown noise and such.  (Drat this goblin who sits on my shoulder, hissing and squealing in my ear!  And thanks to those of you who've offered encouragement and sources of optimism.)