It is overcast this morning. 8am and I’m happily ensconced on my patio with journals, pens, coffee, temp hasn’t reached 80 yet.

There’s only one mosquito tormenting me, even for New Mexico (glorious leader say ‘New America’) that’s sparse; speaking of climate change though, while a mosquito-less world might not seem so bad, the disappearance of songbirds is mourned by everyone. You do know the corporate geniuses developing, manufacturing, and selling us various brands of bug-be-gone are among the songbird disappearers also. That’s okay, isn’t it? I have aps on my trusty devices that reproduce bird song just fine even in the dark of night, even in an arctic January. And no poop on the car. I do love progress.

It is Labor Day 2026. Ho ho ho…whoops, wrong holiday. Not the big important shopping extravaganza to come—although Halloween and Christmas things are occupying a shelf, even an aisle, here and there in the stores already. Go Capitalism!

As you know, I am not good at holidays. Yesterday I moped. No combing of hair, making of bed. Just alternating between couch and bed (so why make it?) with book and TV. I finished Middlemarch (I’ll explain later) and made it through season 5 or 6 of Call the Midwife. I managed to fill an interminably long Sunday and feel all the while like I wasn’t wasting time. In the case of Middlemarch, it is part of one of my Big Projects and it is truly excellent and also…a touch ponderous. Sorry to those endless lit classes I took whenever near a campus…obviously not enough focus on young/old white English speakers. And Call the Midwife; honestly, I could provide birthing services to an entire Nebraska covered wagon community or a 30-story NYC tenement building. Although I’m glad we’ve moved past those days because giving birth looks to have been extremely messy. When my children were born, we were past homesteading days on the prairie (barely) and Air Force hospitals moved in the opposite direction from messy: no family (certainly not men relatives, like husbands) members nearby, and mother-to-be were at least partially knocked out, so who knew the process was less than pristine. Well anyway, I made it through what was one of those hide-under-the-bed kind of days. Stories are always the answer. Books, television, audio, or even storytelling humans, on stage or drinking coffee with you.

Tomorrow, I return to real life: gym, helping friends…oh yeah, and showering, brushing teeth, dressing in out-of-the-house clothes, perhaps even watering the plants. Most importantly though, I must return to my Decades project which I began back in May/June and dropped while in Minnesota. It’s the one among my ‘plethora of projects’ (similar to saying ‘flock of birds’) where I write some posts about each decade of my life, including what was going on globally in relation to the actual experiences of my own life. The intent is to utilize notes, letters, documents, and books from those times to touch on my times.

I began with writing about my Norwegian family history, including the arrival of grandparents in the US. Even though I wasn’t born until the fourth decade of the twentieth century, the environment and family into which I was born were being formed and/or explored much earlier.

Although, I am only one-eighth Swede, I will pick this project back up with a post about what I know of that part of my heritage—giving me a chance to talk about traveling to and in Sweden.

Back to ‘work’ then, starting tomorrow on a proper Decades post.

Meanwhile…happy holidays and a photo or so from last week.

Son Steven (of the bad manners) who is my plant doctor and quite good at it, but doesn’t reflect well on my parenting.