Two days in a row now... could be the start of a return to regular blogging.  Who knows?  I am obeying impulses, serious about recovering from the current spate of lung disorders.  I'll do whatever seems appropriate at the time.

I was asked about supplementing our woodstove with a kerosene heater.  That reminded me of a comment some time ago about the wood smoke's being hard on my lungs.  I tolerate wood smoke better than just about any other kind.  Auto exhaust, and diesel in particular, is awfully hard on my breathing and always has been.  I have problems around kerosene lamps, so I suppose a kerosene heater would be similar.  This trailer is equipped with an oil furnace, which we used for the first few winters we were here.  It broke down and we decided not to have it repaired because the emissions from it, and the dust and mold circulated whenever the blower kicked in, made it hard for me to breathe. 

We have several small electric space heaters.  We also have some problems with the elecrical circuitry, and hesitate to overload it.  We do what we must to stay warm, striving for comfort but sometimes settling for just keeping the drinking water in a liquid state and my house plants alive.  This morning it is five below zero outside.  When I awoke, the fire was blazing cheerfully and it's 52 degrees in here, so I assume that Doug went to bed not long ago.

Yesterday's weather was bizarre.  Mid-morning, it went from near zero up to about thirty degrees within less than an hour.  It was a little windy here, but not nearly so much as it was farther down the valley.  Greyfox was doing a holiday bazaar in Big Lake.  He phoned to say that the wind was so brisk that the flagpole was bending with the force of it.  Down there, a tree blew down across a power line and caused an outage for an hour or so.

I was also asked about water runs.  Twice since this latest illness began with pneumonia in October, I have driven the car to the spring and Doug has done all the dipping and schlepping.  Usually, I kneel by the spring and fill jugs and buckets while he carries them up to the car and then unloads them at home.  The first of those two runs was a glorious fall day, with berries and rose hips covering the slope behind the spring and some real warmth in the sun.  The latest one was timed just right.  It was snowing as we were there, and during that day about a foot of snow fell, which would have made the job much tougher if we had waited another day.  We have enough water now to last a while.  How long it lasts depends on how successfully Doug procrastinates in his dishwashing.

A major contributing force in his procrastination is his new X-Box 900.  That's a 360 that had to be returned twice before they finally sent him one that worked.  He seems to spend most of his time playing Oblivion, but also enjoys Portal... or maybe it is Portals.  For some relaxing diversion, I have been going back through Final Fantasy Tactics, an old favorite.  I'm not up to the stress and challenge of any new games right now.

Somebody wanted to know what I have been reading lately.  Largely, it is whatever I dig up from my own library, supplemented by things that Greyfox brings with our other supplies on his monthly runs.  I have ordered the second volume of Jack Whyte's Templar Trilogy.  Amazon will ship it when it is released later this month.  Shortly before the pneumonia laid me low a couple of months ago, I had put in an interlibrary loan request for some audiotapes and a book on quantum physics and string theory.  Doug and I had a great time listening to the lecture tapes by Richard Wolfson, from the Superstar Teachers series.  The book, Cosmic Landscape, by Leonard Susskind, informed me on a branch of science where I really needed some updating, and intrigued me as well.

I was slightly surprised to learn how many aspects of the new physics aren't so new to me because I have encountered corresponding ideas in my meditations, and in my study of Tarot and New Age metaphysics.  On some level, it is all One.  Then a day or two ago I started reading a book Greyfox brought to me, Oliver Sacks's Anthropologist on Mars, about how various patients have adjusted to grave neurological disorders.  In his discussion of  an artist who became totally colorblind after an accidental concussion, he goes extensively into Clerk Maxwell's work on optics and color, which had been covered from a different angle in the tapes by Richard Wolfson.

Thanks,everyone, for the good wishes and concern for my health.  I am serious about taking care of myself, seeing that as the preferable option with not much of anything attractive as an alternative right now.  I have had many questions from magdalenamama, who has been reading my memoirs.  I intend to pick them all up from my feedback log as soon as I feel able, and answer them.  She brings up some things I hadn't considered, and a few things I had been thinking about expanding upon anyway.  Recently, I recalled the name of one of the bikers who raped me, "Ob", which was short for Obscene, since the man's real last name was pronounced, "seen."

This is sufficient for today.  I'll be back, whenever....

It is nearly 5 AM here.  I have been up since about 3:30 this time.  Since I was awake, I decided to go online and pay some bills.  Since I was online, I decided to check Xanga and read my new comments.  Since I was here, I decided it was a good enough time to blog.

Halloween and Thanksgiving have passed almost without our noticing.  Nobody stopped by for treats on Halloween, no pumpkin was carved... no big meal for Thanksgiving, no celebrations or overindulgences.

Since the last time I checked in here, Greyfox has made another of his supply runs.  He decided that as along as I am incapacitated, he will come up here about once a month to bring groceries, light bulbs, and such.  This time, the "such" included some discarded clothing he scrounged.  I now have a pair of polar fleece pajamas, with feet, in a warm off-white with big blue snowflake designs, and some sweaters I'd never have been able to afford to buy.

It is cold here, finally.   Between now and the time I took the last bunch of snow pictures, it rained for several days, leaving only a dirty, icy crust of snow on the ground, and nothing much on the trees at all.  Then, a few days ago, it got down around zero and hasn't gotten much above that since then.  It was 3 degrees outside and 56 degrees (F) in here, last time I looked, an hour or so ago. 

A fifty degree temp differential between indoors and out isn't bad, but it won't be enough when the outdoor temp drops to twenty or more below.  We have the woodstove going hot enough now that the water in the pot on top is boiling, which is sorta unusual.  I was warm enough while I was in my bed with the radiant heat from the woodstove, but this desk is in a cold corner, so I'll keep this brief.

I'm still having a lot of breathing difficulty.  I guess I'm mostly over the pneumonia, but have had a series of respiratory infections.  I'm fairly inactive, and still seem to overdo it every few days.  It's a lot easier to overdo my capacity than to actually get anything done.  My capacity is laughably little.  I watered a few plants, picked off a few dead leaves, and it was more than I should have done... set me back.  I know I would be up shit creek if it were not for Greyfox's supply runs and Doug's everyday assistance.

Doug has been polishing his cooking skills.  He has, among other accomplishments, perfected the over easy fried egg, not an easy feat.  Yesterday, with me sitting on the kitchen stool giving instructions, he put together a couple of sugarless wheat-free pumpkin pies for me.  He doesn't even like pumpkin pie when it is the usual sweet kind with flaky crust.  After one bite of the marvelous pie he baked for me, with an unorthodox crust made from garbanzo, fava bean and sorghum flours, he left the rest for me.  Yaay.

My hands and feet are cold.  I'm outta here.