When I was thinking about moving here, almost two years ago, I called my cousin Elizabeth for advice. This house, the one I bought, was on the market and they’d dropped the price into the range I was looking for. Problem was, it was April, and I couldn’t afford to move until our lease was up in August. I couldn’t afford house payments and my half of the rent. Now, Elizabeth was a realtor for many years, which is one reason I called her, but she also practices Jin Shin Jyitsu, and has become, over the years, a pretty spiritually…
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I bought a new car. My old car was originally Patrick’s. He bought it in a fit of uncharacteristic fiscal responsibility — a 1998 Honda Accord. I was still living in Salt Lake, finishing my PhD. Patrick called me up and said he was thinking of selling his big Ford 150 4-wheel drive truck and buying a car. For anyone in a similar situation, services offering cash for cars in Bondi Beach make it easy to sell an old vehicle quickly and profitably. Many dealerships offering used cars in phoenix provide certified pre-owned options. These vehicles go through rigorous inspections…
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Home in Livingston tonight and so grateful, that like the Pope in his spryer days, I got off the plane and wanted to kiss the very ground. Instead, I threw myself into the arms of Wendy-the-Buddhist, who came to pick me up, and surrendered to the comfort of a good friend who was there when I arrived exhausted and brewing a viscous cold (I sound like a frog). So now I’m on my couch, both dogs sprawled asleep beside me, the cat in my face purring in her semi-aggresive “where did you go for a week” kind of way. The…
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Ordering a Lamb Well, I ordered a lamb yesterday. It “won’t be ready” for a couple of more weeks, which means it’s still out there at the Schilling’s ranch, eating and growing and being a lamb. Which not only doesn’t bother me, it reassures me. It’s a happy lamb. It lives in my neighborhood. It’s being raised by responsible ranchers. And it’s a meat animal — that’s its purpose, so I’m not sad it’s going to die. I’m just relieved to know how it lived. When it’s big enough, about 60 pounds, it’ll go off to Big Timber to the…
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Box of Fish Yesterday I bought 25 pounds of salmon from a guy on the other side of town. He fished for it himself, in Alaska, and then had it processed, boxed, and shipped home where he sells it out of his house. I love buying food from the person who actually produced it. I paid six bucks a pound, which seems like a bargain to have one of your neighbors go to Alaska and catch wild salmon. So in my basement freezer is now enough fish for a year. Clean, wild, sustainably harvested salmon — salmon that never lived…
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Summer is really over I finally spent some time on the Yellowstone River this weekend — went boating both days, actually. Unfortunately, summer is most definitely over — We got rained on both days. Saturday was just sort of gloomy weather, with little sprinkles, and Sunday was gorgeous until the thunderstorm blew up. Oh well — next year I’ll have to try a little harder to get on the river in that short season between the time the floodwaters recede and the weather turns cold. Saturday my friend Wendy-the-Buddhist, who has just returned from a year’s exile in California (they…
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Summer’s Over Summer appears to be, rather suddenly, over. The temperature dropped early this week, and this morning my (highly unreliable) thermometer reads 50 degrees. Highs have been only in the 70’s and with the light rapidly receding, well, I’m not feeling hugely optimistic about all those green tomatoes out there. We had hail on the solstice, and here at the end of August I would estimate a hard frost is only a couple of weeks away. The challenges of short-season gardening. Sigh.
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Granny Got A Brand-new Hip My 93-year-old grandmother had her hip replaced on Monday because she wants to ride again. It’s been three years since she could sit a horse, and since riding is her greatest joy, she willingly went in and let them, well, cut her leg off and put it back on again. (Although my cousin Jason tells me that her old horse, Ben, died last month. He swears he’s not buying her a new horse, but I have a hunch there will be one in that barn soon.) And since she’s 93, they didn’t want to risk…
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Pink! Over the weekend I renovated my office .. it is now a deep, bright, wonderful raspberry pink. The trim and the ceiling are bright white, as is the new desk, and the shelving (although I painted the cardboard backings for the shelving units the same pink as the walls). There’s a sort of spiffy-looking track light that gives me these dramatic pinspots and the whole thing looks like something out of a magazine. It makes me inordinately happy to be in here, which, since I work at home and spend most of my time in this room, is a…
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The Burning Season Sometime in the night I realized the wind must have changed, because through the gurgling of the swamp cooler I could smell smoke. It’s disconcerting to smell smoke in your sleep, and I might have been more worried but that even asleep I knew there are two large forest fires in the area, and the smoke just means the winds have shifted. And this morning, it’s true. The air is a hazy apricot and the usually-clear outlines of Livington Peak are a soft grey. There’s a big fire behind the peak — 300 acres by last afternoon’s…