There’s a terrific piece in this morning’s San Francisco Chronicle by Hazel White about how gardens keep us connected to “body time” — that is, how gardening keeps us in tune with earth time, the rhythms of the earth and our bodies, as opposed to “mechanical time” — the kind of clock-driven time that all too often has us running to accomplish things according to some external measure. We fall into “mechanical time” when we allow ourselves to be driven by “shoulds” — when we allow ourselves to be driven by plans we’ve already made and wind up all thrumming…
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The boys were downstairs last night, goofing off in the basement guest room (which they’ve sort of colonized) when I heard Owen yelp, and then he came running upstairs on three legs, holding his left hind leg hitched up behind him. He jumped on the couch, and I felt all along his hip and knee and hock, looked at his pads, and nothing seemed to be overtly wrong so instead of panicking and calling the Vet’s 24-hour emergency number, I waited until morning. This morning, he was still gimping around on three legs, so we didn’t go to the dog…
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Sunday I built the Patrick Shrine — or, as I alternatively call it — the Wall of Dead Brothers. Right after Patrick died I ordered a set of those crown moulding shelves from Pottery Barn but I haven’t had the energy to figure out how to put them up. My walls are very old, very fragile, very bumpy but wonderful real plaster and so, putting up these moulding shelves was going to involve a lot of measuring, finding studs, and careful use of the drill. Until Sunday, I just didn’t have the energy. It all seemed too complicated. And frankly,…
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I’m still not the cheeriest bunny on the block these days, but I have to say I’ve been glued to the TV and San Francisco Chronicle website all weekend watching with tearful glee as the city by the bay stands up for Love. Big L Love. As they turned their gorgeous City Hall, truly one of the most elegant buildings around into a great big old wedding chapel and not just married any and all gay people who showed up, but married them with pride and joy and tearful wonder. Mark Morford’s column sums it up this morning, sums up…
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My Apple AirPort base station came today, and in about an hour, I had the card installed, the base station plugged in and configured (including setting up my printer on the base station so I can print from anywhere) and now I’m free to roam the hacienda! And it’s warm enough (42.5 degrees reads my fancy new wireless thermometer) that I’m sitting out on my front porch, enjoying the first late afternoon porch cocktail of the new year. A little buffalo salami, a little cheese, a little glass of lovely Pouilly-Fuisse, the dogs, a cat across the street, some sunshine,…
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I always swore I wouldn’t be one of those fancy-pet-food people, but over Christmas Hope and Matt turned me on to this stuff called the Missing Link. It’s a supplement for dogs and for cats that’s full of omega-3 oils and freeze-dried liver and things. Because everyone was having issues with their coats, I switched all the animals from Science Diet to California Naturals, which Hope and Matt also raved about. Then I bought some Missing Link as well — and I discovered that they also have a formula for cats.The dogs have hair issues sometimes — Raymond is nervous…
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So, I’m starting to cook again, which is a relief. Although the Albertson’s frozen lasagna and mac-and-cheese did see me through the worst of it, I always liked cooking, and not being interested was strange to me. Last weekend I made a soup (I blogged it but then lost the entry in a small snafu) from leftover duck stock I found in the freezer, lentils, sausage and a mix of kale and turnip greens (also from the freezer and last summer’s garden). It was great — the unctuous duck stock is the perfect foil for the slightly bitter turnip greens,…
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Blogging has been slow lately, in part because I’m writing again. I’d been having a really difficult time figuring out how to proceed with this memoir-thing I’m writing. Memoir implies that the writer has some sense of perspective on events, or some inkling of what events “meant”. Since I’m still in the middle of this whole grief thing, I really didn’t feel that I had any idea of what my relationship with Patrick “meant” and hence, I was having a really tough time getting started. So, inspired by Andy Goldsworthy’s method of just going outside and making something every day,…