My life has been good during the past month, as it seems to pretty much always be. I have no astonishing or fascinating news to report. We had a huge wind storm and lots of trees came down, it rained hard and lots of rivers rose. My sump pump has been busy. A section of the boardwalk in the bog was upended in a most dramatic way:
The dogs have been traveling (BAD dogs)--they ran off one morning and ended up on the other side of the lake at a friend's house, nearly 5 miles away. I got a phone call an hour after they disappeared--my friend said "Are you missing something?" Boy am I lucky to have good, responsible and caring friends who keep better track of my dogs than I do.
I'm still an archivist. I'm still a thrift store volunteer. Both activities are still enjoyable and worth doing. In the Archives we've scanned and labeled more than 5700 photos in our collection and only have a few hundred left that haven't been processed. The routine for those images is to decide whether we keep them or "deaccession" them (they've been donated, apparently deemed precious and having redeeming value by the donors). Some are really good, many are pictures of scenes or people unidentified and unremarkable. So we look at each image, sometimes we giggle, sometimes we are impressed (in a good way) and we get them ready to be processed. The keepers will be numbered, scanned and described presumably for future use by someone some time in the future. We keep in mind images we've been asked for in the past, using that as a yardstick. Oh the poor images we don't keep! Like the seedlings I can't bear to pull to thin the pots in the spring... not
We had good weather for the rest of October but then things got ugly. We have about three inches of snow on the ground now. It's 29 in the middle of Saturday night, up from 15 Saturday morning. Sunday is supposed to be a warmer day but later this week temps will drop into single digits at night and refuse to rise above freezing during the days. In November? Really? This has made me reconsider my oft-uttered statement of "Oh, I like November, it's a month with no extremes in weather, it's just cold but not bad." The woods are naked so I have a barest of glimpses of water from my living room (you have to use your imagination to know it's water). I closed the boat house at long last but forgot to shut off the power at camp so need to get down there to do that. There's a threat of six more inches of snow in a couple of days so wouldn't I be wise to do that NOW?
The thrift store was incredibly busy this week. Apparently it's a Canadian holiday Monday, another version of Veterans Day, and apparently the way many Canadians celebrate is by shopping in secondhand stores. Wow there was a lot of French flying around. I still enjoy being there--I like the people, I enjoy the work but I get tired after a couple of hours and the store is open for 5 hours. I've yet to be there more than 3 1/2 hours at a stretch. I admire the other volunteers, they work hard and for long hours there.
The dogs are doing well. Bear's splenectomy became a non-issue once the incision healed. He's a great dog (but a BAD dog) and Treasure seems to appreciate him more without a spleen because they now play with each other. Treasure was never interested in chewing on him or gamboling around (good word, huh, gambol) but lately they do a little companionable gnawing on each other. Treasure is 10 now but doing very well, she's slower than Bear but that's always pretty much been true. Except when they run off, then she seems capable of a faster gait.
I'll go to Rhode Island for Thanksgiving, which will be here soon. One thing I am amazed by is how quickly time passes. On a Wednesday I'll say (to myself, thankfully) "How can it be Wednesday, it was just Monday!" I don't like getting older. This morning my mother said to me "So you're 69, right?" Well NO, I'm not, Mother dear, I'm 66 for another month. She's 93 so is excused for many things. We laughed and for the next few days she'll remember how old I am. She writes things down now and has many pieces of paper and notes in her living room and by the telephone. Whether she refers to these notes I don't know but it's a very sweet thing. She is in good shape and has a greater thirst for knowledge than I do. She was curious about impeached presidents so I had a good reference book on the presidents shipped to her. She was thrilled! "It even has information about their wives!" She says she likes to learn things, which I guess we all do, but I'm impressed with her ability to read and remember facts.
Life is good and so am I. I have my winter social life--different from my summer social life but satisfying and lovely. There are 2 couples nearby who like to get together--both around 5 miles away, and both have been visited by my dogs without being transported by me. I guess the dogs make the rounds of summer camps, discover there's no one in residence so keep going until they hit an occupied house. Oh dear.
This week I have an appointment to have snow tires put on the car. Apparently I'm not the only person with that thought, I've had to wait a week for the appointment. I get to Plattsburgh about once a week, have coffee with a good friend (well let's be honest, I don't have any BAD friends, just BAD dogs) and run errands in the Big City. It's very pretty where I live. I have good firewood for my good stove although yesterday I finally did turn on the electric heat in two rooms. rats, I've been putting it off. There aren't many birds at my feeder, just a couple of chickadees and a blue jay. What's up with that? Pass the word, birdies, there's good food at 58OHR.
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