Magic House

My dog, Gizmo, is convinced our house is magical. She's really pretty good at catching small bits of food such as popcorn tossed at her, but you have to get her attention so she can see the toss. However, if it manages to hit the floor, it didn't fall to the floor, it popped up out of the floor. When the floor pops, she simply has to watch that spot just in case it pops again. Sometimes it does you know, though never in the same spot. She has been known to stare at a certain part of the floor for hours or until she gets bored and falls asleep.

That's not all this house does. Every once in a while it eats me up and surely it spits me outside somewhere, though she has never been successful at finding me out there. I'll go back to the bedroom and disappear into the bed for a nap. She'll then pace the house looking for me in the bedroom and then asking to go outside and look there. Then she'll come back in and look in the bedroom again and then back out. Around and around, whining and worrying until I get up from my nap. Only then will she settle down.

There is of course no way to know what she's actually thinking. Sometimes I wish I could, especially at times like these.

The Sounds of Silence

The Sounds of Silence by Simon & Garfunkel

Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence

In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone
'Neath the halo of a street lamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence

"Fools", said I, "You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you"
But my words, like silent raindrops fell
And echoed
In the wells of silence

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said, "The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls"
And whispered in the sounds of silence

You know how sometimes a song just springs up in your brain and sticks there? Well this one did that to me today as I was walking down to the boats to get a can of gas. Though the lyrics don't really fit the circumstances, the title sure does. Silence. The sounds of silence was everywhere. Not a peep. Not a squeak. Not a rustle.

When I go on these walks, I like to stop and just listen and look around from time to time. I do, after all, like my life and my surroundings. Most times there's the chitter of little birds as they fluttered from tree to tree in search of seed pods waiting to drop next summer, or those that didn't drop last summer.

The only sound I heard was the far-away hum of some sort of motor. It might have been a snowmachine, or a generator; it was too far away to tell - almost too far away to hear at all. I might not have noticed at all if it weren't so quiet otherwise.

Though I didn't see or hear anything, I did see a few tracks. A martin came down from the rough vicinity of the guest cabin, ran along the trail for a few yards and then was off further east. Then I saw moose tracks. Sometime yesterday or last night, he came up the trail and then circled around the edge of our yard, eating the small tree branches and whatever brush tips he could find, before wondering on, also in an easterly direction. Who knows how long either of them kept to that direction. Down at the boats, an ermine made lacy loops along the bank in search of a route down onto the river. It looked rather comical; I wish I could have seen him.

I do love my walks and taking in my world, but I do wish it would warm up a little. Or maybe I should say, I wish it would warm up a little more. I woke up to -28F (-34C). It was -11F (-24C) when I went for my walk and that was the heat of the day. For us to get a runway packed, it would be really nice if it would warm up above 0F for a few days. If this is Global Warming, I think someone needs to go back to the drawing board.

Bummed

As some of my long-term readers may recall, I tried to get into town last winter too. Mostly poor planning was the reason for the delay last year. This year, Mother Nature is purely against the idea of us getting out of here.

For the last many years, getting out onto the river before December has been one of the 'gee-I-wish' things, so I was thrilled when the river froze in November hard enough to walk on and soon to be hard enough to drive a machine on, all that remained was for there to be enough snow to shovel in a ramp down off the bank.  That happened soon enough and we were planning to be in town by Thanksgiving. I was excited, not that I like town, but I had plans to talk to people and get my book on some shelves, maybe have a book signing or two. Don wanted to get some firewood laid by for when we came back out and needed to thaw things out again. No sooner had we a couple standing dead trees in and were looking for something more dense than the temperature plunged and Don ran out of tobacco. He gets so dizzy and even ill when he's trying to quit.

The cold hung on and on, and it didn't look like we were going to make it to town anytime soon, so we ordered an airdrop of tobacco and continued our struggle with the cold temperatures. Those of you who are my friends on Facebook know from a couple comments I've made, that old folks and machinery tend to break when it's so cold, so we don't move around much.

It's been in the -20s for the last couple weeks, or at least it sure seems so; I'm not kidding about the temps though. And now that it finally warms up some (+8 this morning; +11 earlier), it's dumping snow by the foot. I bet we've accumulated two feet since this morning. By the time it stops snowing I'll be snowshoeing the trails again - back to square one, and we haven't even been able to pack a runway yet. We did make it down to the river, finally and Don has driven out, made a turn-around and made it back up the hill. The worst part is, Don's out of tobacco again.

We went down there day before yesterday to get gas and he spun on the switch-back coming back up. When it snows at these temperatures, the snow doesn't have enough moisture to pack well. It's like packing sugar. It'll pound down solid enough, but the moment you disturb it, it shifts around and becomes sugar again.

The thing about going to town is, what do we want to leave here for the frozen months? What can we leave and what will be ruined? I ordered supplies to last until December even though Don said November would be enough. Past experience said November would never work. Now, here it is January and we are running out of everything, and I do mean everything. The contents of my freezer now fits in a cooler sitting outside on the picknick table. I have like a quart of cooking oil left. Vegetables have been gone for a while now, as have anything that resembles fresh food like potatoes. We're down to assorted Romin, various kinds of noodles, an assortment of gravies, canned fish and chicken, dehydrated hash-browns, and bread baked on top of the wood stove so I can stretch the propane as far as possible.

At this point, I'm so bummed. It's snowing my favorite kind of snow - all pretty and fluffy - and yet it's another set-back to us getting to town. For two winters now I've been looking forward to getting together with a few of my readers. I even started an event on Facebook offering my book on sale for $10 giving an address for a check or money order to be mailed to and I'd mail back a signed book. It looked so good for us to get in by the first of the year.

Ah well. So much for spending any quality time in town. It'll all be a rush once again. I've books to order, and maybe even NEW books to order. Here in a couple months, I'll have a new book coming out, and if I can, I'd like to have a box full out here to sell. Who knows, I might even have a third book published, or close to it. Just click on the sword tab to the right and you can read it. It'll be finished in April, but I'm not sure how long the publishing part will take. I'm looking into getting a cover made for it now. That's not all I need to do. Since I lost 50 pounds last summer, I need clothes for work this summer. Last spring, I bought three pair of pants - I so needed something. They now fit only because of the elastic in the waist. I also want to set up a PayPal account, but I don't trust my computing skill, not to mention my understanding all the paperwork wrapped around doing that.

My trip to town will happen even if I have to go by myself. I simply have to go. The worry now is, what with all the really cold temperatures, breakup could be really bad, meaning our boats might be in danger if left to their own devises. A few years ago I had to spend breakup down there in the boats watching the ice grind past (wishing I had a camera with me), keeping the boats from turning sideways and drifting half off the bank. The water was well over our bank. I paddled a tiny boat out to the other boats. Don came down at dark to check on me and he couldn't even wade half way to where I was in the boats and he was wearing chest waders. So that concern means we'll have to be back out here sometime in late March or early April.

I love my life out here, but planning a winter in town is such a pain.

Winter Snowfall

If anyone was watching the weather, you all know that night before last and most of yesterday, Mother Nature decided to dump a bunch of snow on us. A neighbor just up river from us reported an official measurement of 19 inches. I woke up yesterday morning to find 4 or 5 inches piled on top of previously cleared objects, like the snowmachine and it was coming down in huge wet flakes - my favorite kind. By the time I finished my advertising and other Facebook sidetracks, a healthy foot or more had accumulated. Since my battery had run out, and since we didn't REALLY need to start the generator yet, I decided to enjoy the day and shovel off the bedroom roof. Of course, I also needed to brush off the eye of our satellite dish - again.

When I shoveled off a spot on the roof big enough for me to stand on, I discovered that our total, disturbed only by gravity, snowfall for the winter was nearly waist deep - funfunfun. Actually, I did have fun. When I got the last crumbs shoved off the roof and was nearly ready to step off onto the ladder again, I looked back - our house is only 12 feet wide plus a few odd inches, and over there on the other side of the roof, already about an inch of fluff had accumulated. No worries though, it wasn't long after that when it stopped snowing and warmed up enough to sprinkle a little of the liquid stuff, fortunately not very much.

Today's task was to shovel off the other nearly flat roof we have here and to snowshoe some of the trails. By the time I was done with that roof, Don was starting up the snowmachine with some dread. Sometimes this much snow all at once can make packing trails a bit of a pain if not a total nightmare. Today, it ended up being a pleasure. The snow stayed where it was packed and it didn't suck the machine off the side or sugar away from under it and sap all traction and steering.

For me on my snowshoes, it meant I only had to lift my feet boot high most of the time. All this snow did cause one problem for me on my snowshoes. A couple years ago we decided to move the outhouse. When it was first built, it was nested on a bit of a hill. Nothing tremendous, but the ground in back was a handful of inches higher than in front. To compensate this, we put the little building up on logs. It's new home was more level and leveled even more by the gravel dug from the hole so we decided it didn't need a log foundation. Take my word for it, if you live somewhere where snow falls by the foot, you want your outhouse up on something. Today, as I was shoveling the snow away from the door, I was standing at least a foot off the ground on my snowshoes. The task was awkward to say the least.

Trails to the outhouse, the dump, and to where I dump our compost all finished, and the day was rapidly waning so I hitched a ride on the snowmachine to the top of our hill so I could pack the trail out to the river before it got any colder than it was. The day was in the upper 20sF (that's barely below freezing C), but it was clearing off and it was best to take advantage of the warmth and get the snow settled down on the trail down the hill and on the ramp out onto the river, even if only by snowshoe. Tomorrow's plan is to brave that trail with the machine. Going down is the easy part, it's the coming back up that could get interesting.

Once again today, I was thinking about winters past plus my fifty pounds, lost but not missed this summer. What with my night-owl husband keeping me up until the wee hours of the morning every night, I still wake up with daylight, which is around ten in the morning these days, and I still have energy even now after shoveling snow and snowshoeing trails. It's just awesome. Thank you HCG!!!

Winter

Like last winter, we are planning to spend time in town. Things are much better set up for it this time around. We have gas, and thanks to an incredibly bitter cold November, we have ice on the river. Also, thanks to those -20sF (which is -30sC), it was nearly impossible for us to move around and get some outside things wrapped up and battened down. Then, to top off our troubles (nothing is ever trouble free) Don ran out of tobacco, and he gets nearly sick and rather disoriented whenever he tries to quit. Because of that, and though we really wanted to, we missed a delightful Thanksgiving dinner cooked by my daughter-in-law.

In an effort to celebrate the meal without all the fixings, I heated up some canned chicken, made some turkey gravy and a box of instant rice pudding. I also opened a can of cranberry sauce. It was a pretty thin dinner but it was fun in a funny sort of way.

Now that the weather has let up, we've gotten a couple feet of new snow (fortunately not all at once). It even rained one night, but though it was warm the next day the snow packed really nice rather than turning completely to mush.

Though we have the ramp shoveled in so we can get down on the river with the machine, we haven't actually driven it yet. It's rather steep and it's important that it settles and hardens before we try to abuse it with the machine. There's nothing more frustrating than trying to dig a fairly heavy machine out when its been nosed directly into a vertical bank.

What I like to do is walk up and down the ramp as we are shoveling; it serves to push the snow down where it is needed most and pack it into place as well. I deem it good enough if I can walk up and down without slipping much, and certainly without landing on my duff. This year I did the initial walking up and down without snowshoes, but recently doing so with snowshoes to keep new snowfall packed down.

Today was my second trip out to the river with snowshoes. Since the trail to the river was already packed, I didn't put them on until I got to the top of our hill. It's awkward walking in a snowmachine trail with snowshoes; the track is too narrow and the skis are too wide.

As I walked down the trail, it was very quiet. No little birdies twittered in the trees; no bigger creatures trudged through the deeper snow off among the brush. My own noise was muffled by soft snow as I shuffled along. I never did walk like my mother thought I should, and big, heavy boots are just plain big and heavy. My method of walking is most noticeable when I'm in town, say at the mall. I've always worn my boots essentially unlaced and they do flop. This makes walking with snowshoes easier, but it's a really sloppy stride on a hard floor. It's not so noticeable with shoes, but I've finally succeeded in wearing them all out - I bet you can't guess what one thing on my shopping list is.

A few days ago, when we were out and about packing trails, I was snowshoeing the hill and carrying a can of gas up too. Don was waiting for me at the top with the machine. After several trips up the ramp, and then trudging up the hill, it being the first time this year for me being on snowshoes too, I was coming up the last stretch quite slow. Also, I do much better pulling my kiddy sled behind me than I do carrying a can full of gas, so I was setting it down frequently - it seemed like about every ten steps, but it really wasn't that bad. Don commented that it must be nice being fifty pounds lighter. Oh, man, you have no idea how much nicer it is. Yeah, I was pooped, but always, walking up that hill, summer or winter, I used to take old lady steps. Now the only time I take old lady steps is when I'm purposely shuffling in order to pack the snow.

I Really Must Laugh

I have never been one to worry about my clothes. How well they fit. Whether they match. How worn they are, or stained. Not unless I'm going to work anyway. Now that I've lost over 40 pounds, most of which is gone from my butt and from my belly, things fit - well - differently. It is only to be expected of course, but sometimes something will take me a bit by surprise and I have to laugh about it all.

Back in 2008, when I was in Fairbanks publishing my book, I bought a few clothes. One thing was a pair of pajama pants, they were hard weave (not a knit fabric) and they were comfortable enough, but a little tight for sitting. I hardly ever wore them. Recently I figured I better start wearing these clothes I'd bought way back when or I would completely un-grow them and miss my chance. It was a near thing with those pants. A couple more inches from around my middle and they would be falling off. I'm going to have to shorten the elastic in the waist. haha

Another thing which struck me today. At the same time, in Fairbanks I found a jacket, and I've worn it a lot since then. It's a very nice jacket with fake sheepskin lining and a nice brown cotton shell, with a hood too. It is my winter jacket 90% of the time. I bought it because the sleeves weren't a foot too long AND I could zip it up. Something very important to me, especially for a winter jacket. I put it on today for the first time since last winter. The waist is now very loose, though not so loose that I won't continue to wear it.

My boss gave me a summer jacket a couple years ago. They had to guess at the size and it turned out to be too small in a way. The sleeves are a bit long but the waist was like three inches short of zipping. Since it was a summer jacket I wasn't too worried about that. If it was raining, I had a poncho to wear when I drove the boat. Otherwise it worked well enough. It too was plenty warm enough for summer's chilly morning boat drives. By the time summer's rainy season started I could zip it up and now this jacket too is a bit loose around the waist. haha I'm not giving it up though. It's a great jacket and it has my name monogrammed on it.

There's another laughable thing I wear and smile about. For years I've wanted a new pistol belt. The one I have was getting too short. Even on the last hole, it was tight, and I had to wear it up around my ribs. Now, though I still wear it on the last hole, it now hangs loosely down around my hips where I like to wear it.  If it weren't for my pistol making for a lopsided weight, I'm sure I would lose it entirely. My pistol sits down on my thigh out from under my elbow; all I need is a tie-down for it to ride like any good gun-slinger's pistol should ride.

There are other things I've un-grown - things I never thought to have trouble with. Yeah, I'll surely have to go shopping when I hit town.

It is what it is

My life is what my life is, and this time of year there is nothing to it but to wait for the seasons to change. I pulled one of the two boats we had in the water today. I'll keep watch on the water level. So far, it's raining enough to maintain things, but that's got to end soon. There is one thing going in my life right now that I'm rather thrilled about. I'm losing weight for the first time in a long time and I feel great - greater by the day.

I consider my body like unto a machine. A well-cared-for machine operates well and lasts long. This 'machine' however has been overloaded for a long time, and we all know that can lead to problems. My problems were sore feet, a stiff back and poor sleep. Poor sleep can also lead to problems but to date, I'd managed to avoid them.

Now that I'm shedding all those extra pounds, my feet aren't sore anymore and I'm sleeping tons better. My back is still stiff first thing in the morning, but then I'm no spring chicken anymore either, a few aches and pains are to be expected when you reach my age. My age - well back in June I felt about 80. What did I know what 50something was supposed to feel like?  My weight gain had been gradual over the last 30 years, and over the last five or so it would fluctuate from five to ten pounds as I went from winter's quiet to summer's work and back again. That didn't mean that I still didn't end up a couple pounds heavier at the end of it all.

July 24 was the last day of my first session with the hcg drops and I had lost 30 pounds over the 40 days previous, ending at 173 pounds. No longer did I feel like I was an 80 year old grandmother badly in need of retirement. Now I felt like, heck, I say I felt ten years younger, but I'm thinking I felt better than that - younger - nearly like a kid again - haha - well almost.

There is a six week break between sessions and during that time I continued to lose the weight albeit at a slower rate. I was at 160 pounds when I started my second session ten days ago and already I've shed over five pounds. It's been a long time since there has been a 5 as the middle number of my weight.

My husband keeps saying little things like, "There's a lap between your knees and your belly." and "I can feel some ribs now." Course that's not all he says, but that's all I'm willing to put on here. hahaha No I'm not getting bony. It's just that it's been a long time since ribs and hip bones have been findable without some digging.

My goal is somewhere in the 130+ range, hopefully less than 140 pounds. It's where I was way back when. It looks like I just might get there. This old 'machine' is more than ready to unload all this extra weight. It's certainly not doing me any good.

The biggest question I get is, "How do you deal with eating only 500 calories?" I don't understand calories and I don't count them. Heck, it would take me an hour just to weigh or measure what I eat to figure it out and I am too lazy to put that much effort into what I eat, plus no one ever counts all the extra calories that are floating around in your body already - that's the fat I'm talking about - that unwanted extra weight. These drops tell you body that they count too. So what if I only consume only 500 calories or so, I've got plenty to spare. I just don't eat what the diet says I should avoid and gestimate how much I am eating. It's working so who am I to complain. The people who have been, or are on, this diet have gone to great lengths to invent recipes to satisfy all you cooks out there but I haven't tried them. They look and sound really great. You could probably feed your whole family from these dishes and you'd all eat better. After all, you don't really need oil or sugar. I'll email a list of those recipes to anyone who wants to try some. Heck, I'll send anyone the whole pdf and you can read up on the study if you like.