It’s the last week of summer in the United States. The autumn colors are showing more. Yellow and red, some falling around me.
Fresh leaves collect with the brown.
Acorns accumulate. Continue reading The fall
It happened.
On a Friday.
I got hit in the head.
By a falling acorn. Continue reading Before the fall
So I’ve been falling behind on the blogging front again. I attribute it to the national news, the negativity and lack of confidence in my voice even though I have enough I’d like to say.
Gotta post some day, so here goes.
Last Saturday wasn’t particularly eventful… in Maine, I mean. I was invited to a BBQ, but declined because it entailed more sitting around doing nothing. It’s kind of funny because, despite not going, I saw tiki torches— something you’d see at barbecues— anyway, with the news. (Not much was funny about what happened in Virginia.)
Participation or no, I needed to get out of the house. And it goes without saying: most of the opportunities in life are not going to be online.
First stop… and without much choice (because I can’t drive): timely photos of Crescent Beach, and with the better camera. As you can see, the beach was populated. (With people.)
A park ranger at the entryway toll booth asked whether I was native to the state. Maine gets a fair amount of tourism.
I saw a few animals before I even put my feet onto pavement. (As always, click to enlarge a photo. …And sorry for the traces of bird poop on the windows.) Continue reading Summer update
Half of the season is already over. (In the U.S., anyway.) And I checked, mathematically: the midpoint was August 7… at around 2 in the morning.
The yellowing is more apparent now in the second half.
To update you on things, I’m still having trouble sleeping. But I’ve had good days. Seven hours total this morning.
No squirrels in the ceiling so far, thank god. Maybe they finally “got it” that it’s not worth it. This one—above—barked at me; later, two barked at each other. And, on my daily walk, I hear little chipmunks hiding from me… into the cracks of the side of the house. Continue reading Midsummer vegetation
Well, it’s one of those weekends. I got up early Saturday, and walked in the morning. My body said, maybe it’s best you go back to sleep. But I didn’t. I offered my support as someone to talk to… on twitter… and then the day went by, and I became the one who needed social engagement. I’m thinking about signing up on Reddit, but can’t think of a new screen name. There really isn’t anything I can do locally.
So. I might as well get into what happened Tuesday.
The day’s notes and events included fallen branches in the driveway… and the Senate’s first day trying to “skinny-repeal” the Affordable Care Act. (I’ll note that the law, what many on the right call “socialism” is the conservative version of legislation that has been taken to the floor for decades to finally pass. The proposed healthcare reforms under Nixon was more “liberal.” But I digress.)
Tuesday was a day scheduled to see the counselor. We went over the report aimed at enabling access to services regarding my disabilities, and the fun paperwork that entails. However, I didn’t tell him how I felt that morning. He knows about my sleeplessness, my isolation, but he doesn’t quite know how I’ve changed.
The day began with a bit of a breakdown. There’s a big difference between “this sucks, I need to do something” (where I tend to fall back into complacency), and… “I am broken.” Crying entered the conversation this week with N., my practitioner friend; she said she cries almost every day, to cleanse the heart and reset the emotional state. I did, briefly. I got only one more hour of sleep before departing.
About half of 3 p.m., my mother pulled into the parking lot for Crescent Beach. Troubles of the day aside, before me was the opportunity to get some summer photos.
So I managed to attend Saturday group. It seemed more welcoming this time around, and I responded to questions from across the room, though few. I know it doesn’t sound like much of an accomplishment to speak up, but it was better than not responding at all, which happened in a past month… probably last year.
God, so much time has passed so fast.
Time becomes a blur when you avoid the difficulties of the day. But I know time isn’t lost; the memories can become compartmentalized, harder to access when less involved or interconnected.
During break, virtually everyone left the room. Some walked outside; I did just that. It was an opportunity to get better, newer photos of the park area. Continue reading Ratfish
I wish I could say I’ve been busy all week, but I haven’t. It rained, and there were a few thunderstorms. The rodent(s) in the house — particularly squirrels, given how loud and forceful they are — are sometimes eating, scratching away material in the ceiling (and I have footage and some lost sleep to prove it). I wrote a little, but mostly I felt sorry and empty for myself… What’s new? Lol. Continue reading The end… of a rainy work week
Nothing good happens at 2 in the morning… but here I am, a zombie. My sleep schedule is… not so much a schedule. But I am getting some sleep.
It’s hard to get anything done these days, tired in some way or another. And then… I have nothing to do. For days on end.
But that’s not true. There are still things I ought to take care of; I just hate being alone.
Life is tough, but it is never pointless. It’s going the same direction too far that winds up a dead end. I’m in need of interaction, and with substance, but I lack substance. Either everyone’s busy or I seem to mess up the equilibrium of things.
Nevertheless, it is officially summer in the U.S. And a mild summer so far, hitting maybe 84°F in the week, and getting down to the 60s at night. Continue reading Summer zombie
Summer solstice is less than a week away, and my Friday was filled with rain. And I don’t mean crying when I say rain, even though I have plenty to cry about. I upgraded my mobile plan (more for less), and got back into programming, rewriting expansion sound in the console emulator… and my sleeping habits have turned to crap again. I didn’t quite feel like living yesterday morning. But enough about that.
Thanks to the magic of photography, you can virtually go back in time to when there were blue skies.
Nothing says summer like your front yard looking like a jungle. Every year looks like this now. Continue reading Restlessness… and flowers
It was a thick cloudy day, Sunday, with some blues and rain earlier, and it’s looking to be a cloudy Monday… and I’m seeing rain. The above photo reflects the last mostly-blue day; so, mostly gray since.
There have been a few thunderstorms entering June. They tend to come when the temperature rises— something about the thermodynamics of it, as warmer air moves faster than cooler air; thunderstorms are after all, produced by unstable air, lift and water vapor.
