Bleak Landscape

The point of this photo may be a little obscure. If you've followed the RiverDog and the RiverHag, then you know that I love the little arbors, the woodsy havens that I find around the river banks.

So this is not a photo of just anything, it is a photo of something missing. At the top you can see a little inlet; it's one of Ellie's favorite spots.

This is how it looked a few weeks ago.

But the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation has ruled: there can be no trees within 15 feet (5 meters) of the levee. People are losing trees from their backyards, due to this ruling. It's for our safety, in case of overflowing riverbanks.

I feel for the homeowners, but also felt that they would have to take the hit for the rest of us. I still believe that.

But right now, I miss my beautiful trees. The herons used to hide in them, and we hikers could find a tiny bit of shade on a sunny summer morning.

All gone.

pb
Little Pond

Better now. Update: Not.

We (and I mean all of us here) have started to feel better. Boy, we managed to pick up everything that came along last week. Upper respiratory, chest cold, intestinal distress and fever.

As of Saturday, we are on the road to recovery and beginning to return to the world.

Poor RJ had to run up to Rochester to accompany his dad to a procedure to ease an aneurysm. I can't believe they do one-day surgery for that sort of thing, but there you have it. They are both back. The FIL is on the mend, but feeling his age (80), and RJ is somewhat better and looking forward to his birthday Tuesday (58). We both just need rest, somewhat drained by the bug.

RJ doesn't want a cake, he wants salmon. We'll see if the girls want to go to Red Lobster, or if I should just cook up a couple of fillets here. My guess is the girls will over-rule the toned down version.

Update: note to self: not over it yet. Ate fish with wine at Red Lobster and tossed it all later that evening. A waste of a delicious, expensive meal.

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Little Pond

ps: I am noticing the "Followers" thing, but haven't been up to learning anything new yet. This week I'll look into it.

Something old, something new.

This summer ushered in a brand new sign of old age: my feet hurt. In fact they hurt so much that I am hobbling, at times, to get around.

For the last decade, I have not had any authentic feeling in my feet. Neuropathy, I think it's called, most of the time. The rest of the time the feelings are distorted: feeling wet and cold in the middle of summer and hot and swollen (feelings only!) at times in winter. None of which were reliable indicators of what was actually their status at the time.

So aching, smarting feet strike me as something new. They tell me that my feet are losing their padding, and that is caused by aging. But why are my feet hurting these days?

Understand me, the pain is not distressing, except--you know--it's pain. Hurting feet curtail my activity; that's bad. Hurting feet means I can feel my feet; that's good, I think.

Is the ongoing loss of padding exposing the nerves in my feet?

Why do they hurt?

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Little Pond

Should I have known?

My sister and I had a (literally) painful conversation today. She called to discuss our Thanksgiving plans and we chewed the fat on a variety of topics.

Our conversation was punctuated by fits of coughing, at both ends of the connection.

We began to compare notes, and--get this!--we are sharing the same symptoms. Hers started weeks ago with the nasty, scratchy, painful, dripping sinuses, that then progressed into her lungs.

She is currently on antibiotics for bronchitis. Her doctor suggested that the very heavy allergy season began the whole sorry mess. Her description of the postnasal drip: felt like strep throat, only at the back of the nose. A perfect limning of mine.

How could this happen? She lives in Eastern Massachusetts and I live in Upstate New York.

I have no answer, except that now I am firmly resolved to get an early flu shot this winter.

This is just a gawd-awful illness that hurts my chest, tires me out, then ruins my sleep and, lastly, makes me a disgusting, coughing and grunting, drippy vector of the first real bug of the season.

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Little Pond

Oh, bloody hell...

IT's gone down into my lungs. They feel singed. This is always a bad sign.

Still, painful lungs can go to work, as long as there are throat lozenges to quell the coughing. Will do, in fact. A quick stop at Dollar General on my way to work.

At least the nasty post-nasal drip is almost done. That was weird, snot and salt and watery, all at once. Geeee-ross! If I looked up high enough, another huge glob would slip down back and into the throat. Gross again, but entertaining, except for the time it started me coughing, as if I breathed water down the wrong tube.

Oh wait. That's how the whole lung mess started, no?

At the same time, the skin is going to hell, with tiny painful boils. And the cold sweat now and again, to mix things up a bit.

But I'm going to work, anyway. No doubt I caught it there. Let them deal.

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Little Pond