Wine advent calendars

 

From the web: where I run there are few people to observe me and no thanks to the cold, not much is exposed but I've run in Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods in NYC during the summer where even my exposed hair is taboo much less my legs which attract dirty looks

A nice sunset through a screen as I was too lazy to go outside

How to amuse myself when Covid continues to rise (thanks to trump and his superspreader events and those who worship him by steadfastedly refusing to mask up)? Family dinners are out Meetings with friends are out except by zoom which I really don't find satisfying. I continue to learn languages, two thirds through Spanish. Netflix and its ilk at night. Just finished The Queens' Gambit, Biohackers and The Crown during the past two weeks. I have been buying wine advent calendars where you are given 24 bottles of different wines to open up each day. I missed out on the best calendar, the Costco2 which features obscure wines from around the world so I settled for the Aldi one, which are all California ones. This is by no means a cost effective way of buying wine, costs at least twice as much per ounce as the 'good' wines I usually buy but you can try stuff you normally do not and if you limit oneself to one little bottle per day, portion control.

We had our first snow Sunday which part of it is still on the ground. I tried to run in it but too slippery. True we now have a treadmill but they make me dizzy. I ran for more than 90 minutes the next day up and down very muddy hills to make up for my sloth. Once it gets above freezing, maybe at noon, I will bike. My toes are the most vulnerable. I have thick wool sox covered with baggies but still they are numb if I am out for more than an hour

I did get my covid hair chomped off. It hadn't been so long since Shanna was a baby and it was tangling too easily. I hadn't got a haircut since my stylist died. I tried a student from a high end school. She was nice and the hair looks ok.

How fast can we get those vaccines? At least Trump seems like he is conceding especially after his lawyer ranted like a crazy man in a press conference with his do it yourself dye job on his sideburns melted under the lights leaving black rivelets down his face. And then he blew his nose into a handkerchief and then wiped the snot all over his forehead. Trump's wining and dining of our top officials didn't buy him anything as our state certified the results yesterday.

So things are looking a bit brighter

covid continues

 

A covid activity of a friend copying Monet. Never knew my friend could paint

the girls out for a ride

Woodpeckers are back. This red breasted nuthatch is much smaller than the its white breasted cousin

still get nice sunsets and sunrises during these otherwise gloomy times

cow poop sculpture

mums are the last to die

Cases go up and up. Our governor just announced more restrictions for the next few weeks. Trump's 'medical' advisor urged Michiganders to protest (with their assault rifles and definitely no masks). What a crazy world we live in!!!!

If only we had a true leader back in February who was capable of understanding science. Of course he demanded the best medical care for himself. And he still won't concede the election, just encourages his cult followers to take up arms.

One of his ardent supporters did die recently, an old boyfriend of mine. Talk about the road not taken! He was one of the most intelligent people I ever met ( in understanding quantum mechanics and very advanced math) and has numerous degrees yet he loved Trump. I would read his diatribes and shake my head. What happened? He did think Covid was a hoax and less deadly than the flu (not true) I don't know how he died. I did know he had bad lungs and a few other comorbidities. He was so irritating, I was considering defriending him but recently I wondered how he felt about the election. He must have died the week before the election.

I recently had a physical and had one of those annoying dementia screens consisting of memorizing three words and then being distracted by having to draw 10:45 on a clock. Didn't want to forget those words and then being classified as dumber than you know who who actually bragged about acing his Alzheimer's test. Should have just drawn a digital clock. At some point, we will have a population that has no idea how to read an analog clock. I did get my flu shot, which my insurance company actually paid me to get though theoretically, if everyone is social distancing, how is it going to be spread.

So there is a vaccine that should start being used in a few weeks for at least health care workers and maybe the elderly. We shall see.

Meanwhile it is a bleak November. Not having the whole family over for Thanksgiving.

Hate the maskholes.

Hate the stupidity and blind loyalty to that tyrant

Happy Zoom Halloween

 

Cat faced Naomi

Maya Bo Peep

Josh's family

Steve's cousin"s granddaughter as Malala

Oliver

Tessa and Daniel

Halloween graveyard on my bike ride

Real graveyard adjacent to our subdivison

New sculpture over my 'bar' area

aster

skull cookies by Maya and Naomi

Who are these characters that my grandchildren were for Halloween  Just had heard of Bo Beep which I  am surprised that any kid knows about these days. I reread the nursey rhyme recently. It has a part about Bo Peep finding the missing sheep tails bloody hanging in a tree. Sweet dreams children

Little Bo peep fell fast asleep
And dreamt she heard them bleating,
But when she awoke, she found it a joke,
For they were all still fleeting.
Then up she took her little crook
Determined for to find them.
She found them indeed, but it made her heart bleed,
For they left their tails behind them.
It happened one day, as Bo peep did stray
Into a meadow hard by,
There she espied their tails side by side
All hung on a tree to dry.

Speaking of nightmares. The elections are very close. Again the polls were wrong. Trump called the election for himself late last night saying no more need to count the ballots. But Biden could still win the electorate. Trump will try to seize control any way he could. Why did anyone vote for him?

We have Indian summer for the next week but most of my flowers are dead to a killing frost last weekend. Not a fan of November with its drabness but at least I will be able to bike comfortably a few more times

Why we bob for apples and not pears

The lake near our house early morning

new house going up a quarter mile away

Miss Maya on our walk

In the nature preserve a mile away

our house and a sugar maple starting to change You a see one of my three Crimson Kings on the other side of the house

My first cauliflower that I grew  It is actually orange

the peanut mobile visited our small local market

They recently converted a farm into a park a mile away in a different direction

Another sugar maple

part of the farm park

Another pond on my running route

With covid on the rise again no thanks to covidiots fueled by trump, the moms no longer want to meet inside. It was 50 degrees when I hosted the other night, thus the fire and blankets  I made butter shrimp

No social distancing with my Granddog Kaya

Fall colors are especially nice this year though maybe they peaked last year while we were in Europe.

I start my run in semidarkness headed east for 2.5 miles trying to get to where I turn before the sun comes up to blind me. I run through a tunnel of trees that are especially pretty as the sun comes up. As it is no longer hot here, I've been able to run more but the increased winds and cold make biking not so fun.

When I Have Maya, I take her out for walks. Sadly the turkey flocks I come across early morning aren't around though we did see a dead snake on the road. She is still in Zoom school with no end in sight. Allie started her 2nd grade in person a few days ago only to be sent home because she had the sniffles. She wasn't allowed back until she had a negative covid test in hand. Shanna's 3rd and 5th grader go to school in person next week. No time line for the seventh grader. The university of Michigan students have been ordered to shelter in place as they are super spreaders. People are becoming more belligerent about their 'right' not to wear a mask and spread their germs around. Trump continues to have his packed maskless rallies. Does he win converts with these? I think not but he has an overriding desire to hear them cheering him on with every stupid statement and lie he spews. Until we get that vaccine, I see no end. Too bad, it could have been over in June if we weren't run by Idiots. And our mom meetings will go back to being zoomed which makes me sad.

Bobbing for apples. As some sort of camp prank I was blindfolded and asked to bob for apples, which I did. Then I was asked to do it again, and I put my face in a bowl of flour inside which stuck to my wet face. But why not bob for pears? I assume apples are cheaper due to their long shelf life though in many parts there are as many pear trees as apple trees. A perfectly ripe pear is the best fruit but rare. Apples and pears are in the same family (pomes) but one sinks and the other floats. Same gross structure inside, same amount of seed and seed arrangement, same number of cells but under an electron microscope, apples contain very thin arteries of air making them 25% air versus 8% for a pear.

Frost has killed two thirds of my annuals. I filled up 8 large bags with their carcasses, sad. But underneath the corpses, I found asters that I had planted but I didn't think they grew. Well they did. My mums are started to bloom so it won't be completely flowerless here. Petunias and snapdragons are more frosthardy

We do watch more TV now. We have been watching Babylon Berlin which takes place in 1928-29 Berlin, a very turbulent time with various political groups vying for power. Well we know which group ultimately came on top though that started in Munich. But they spared no expensive for the sets including extremely well choreographed cabaret scenes. One feature that particularly  interested us was in their huge police station, they had a continuously running loop of no door elevators connecting the maybe eight floors in a device called a Pater noster, so called as it resembles rosary beads. One starts the rosary prayer with Pater Noster. This thing is also called 'the elevator of death'. It moves quite quickly giving you little time to decide when to hop off or on. Do they still have pater nosters? Well yes, especially in Eastern Europe. One is in Prague City Hall which we were actually in but I didn't notice it or knew to look. Steve remembers as a child panicking about when to get on a descending escalator. His mom had gone ahead. He just stood on the top crying. So falling down an escalator would be no fall but being crushed in between floors would be worse. I do remember being at the top of the Dupont circle subway station escalator in Washington DC thinking it wouldn't be good to trip now. It might be the country's longest escalator.

My quotidian covid life

My bunny has doubled in size in the last few weeks Here he is munching on a zinnia

At least we have nice fall colors to run and bike through  I've been doing this a lot lately

We had two mild frosts that killed maybe 20 % of my plants though a worse frost is coming in a few days. This is my giant pot of coleus

lots of dahlias. I will buy more next year

We see her a lot. Ann Arbor will not have in person schools until next year. Meanwhile Allie starts today and some of Shanna's kids begin half days in a few weeks

 sadly my photos don't show how nice the colors are.   I go through tunnels of color

I don't blog much anymore. I started blogging in the summer of 2008 as I had a summer abroad in Abruzzo Italy and I thought blogging would be an efficient way of documenting my stay. After I returned I included reports from my trips to England and Spain..

I started a new blog not long after I returned when I found I had triple negative breast cancer calling it Sue in the Land of Cancer. It was a whole new world and not very pleasant. I naively thought only those who I had sent a link to could read it but no, it was where anyone could find it. This would later get me in trouble for my over sharing. I am much more careful now. But the plus side is  I found ladies going through the same experience as me; a lady in Chicago, another in Seattle and one in Olney Maryland. They have moved on. I later became friends wih a lady in Niagara Falls an, one in LA and one in Portland. I've met the latter two in person Sadly one took her life 8 months ago.

As I had seemed to survive, I got strong hints that it was time to move on. Why was I still obsessed with cancer when  I didn't seem to even have it? People who never had cancer were especially fond of telling me this.  Though my type of cancer has a high chance of recurrence, it happens sooner than later and although I had some (expensive) false alarms, cancer was a smaller and smaller part of my life until two years ago when I found out I have the bad gene. I have tried to minimize my risks. I hope I truly\\escaped cancer though I have watched friends die with it.

My life is not bad. I can stay away from Covid hotspots and my finances are not dependent much on Covid causing shut downs. I am frustrated that this did not have to be. If only our Government wasn't run by science hating idiots and although he was quick to take credit for medical advances that he had absolutely nothing to do with. He is what he is. No lessons learned by his alleged bout with Covid. Some say he never had it. It is his blind adoring fans I can not abide with.

So how do I wile away the hours? I have to wait longer for the sun to come up these days and out I go for at least an hour running or biking. I rode my bike yesterday morning for 33 miles. I am gardening less now but in the spring and summer, this took up several hours. I still study languages, currently Spanish but go back to Italian and French to make sure I don't forget them. Where do they speak Hoch Deutsch? Not in Bavaria where I was and where I will be in my next trip when the vaccine comes out and if Europe ever lets us in. I don't blame them for not trusting us as collectively we are idiots though your average antimasker probably has no ambitions for world travel. Attempting to kidnap our governor and then execute her for daring to say you should wear a mask is more their cup of tea. How did we come to this?

The humming birds left two weeks ago. Some migratory birds are paying a short visit.

I did vote already dropping my ballot in a locked dropbox. Not at all confident Trump will ever go away.

I keep busy I see my family and grandbabies and my friends at a  distance. At night Steve and I stream various shows currently Babylon Berlin

Backyard camping

Steve's cousin's granddaughter a few ears back dressed up as our heroine Ruth Ginsberg. If onl she could have survived a bit longer. Her grandma passed away last weekend. She had collapsed at her husband's funeral in February and never recovered

New angel

Doesn't he look menacing? He is only about the fourth one I have found in my life

Josh bought a teeppe for the occasion. The other tent is mine though I slept inside the house

the kids roasted hot dogs and sausages over our portable fire pit. Later smores and fruit pies in cast iron sandwich makers

Maya had to go to her father's right after this photo was taken but she enjoyed pounding in the tent stakes and seeing her cousins

My world has gotten smaller since this covid disaster. The farthest I have travelled is 25 miles from home No world travelling for me despite all the plans I had made. If it weren't for our inept idiot in charge, this would have been over or perhaps not even started had he not dismembered the pandemic team but it will go on and on  in part because he insists on his ego massaging in person rallies. If only they would keep the virus to themselves!

Josh was going to take the girls camping in a friend's backyard but the friend backed out. Shanna and her daughter were invited. It was a warm night and calm. He had some ghost stories on tape. We kept a door open to our house for potty breaks. I had coffee, homemade pancakes  and bacon ready in the morning.

Mother's group the next night. It was still warm for our social distancing outside. My dessert: rhubarb pie, the plant that keeps on producing.. Still toasty for my long bike ride the next day but by Monday, the weather went bad. met a friend for lunch outside on what was supposed to be the warmest and driest day. It was cold and rain though I dressed for it. Still it was a nice break from my daily solitude.

Ah the debate. I could not watch it. It was obvious and predictable. The plan was to bait Biden until he exploded. Anyone could see this coming especially Biden and his handlers so he was prepared. Did the debate change any ones mind? Probably not. Are there any undecideds left n the country? I doubt it.

We can agree on one thing: we are truly divided. I run by a Trump sign daily (actually many signs but this one is special) Aside from the usual Keep America Great (really? all those dead) this one in big letters says Stop the Bullshit so kids passing by can associate these words with the president.

I continue to run and bike though the temps are getting lower and lower. The leaves changed overnight. We had one mild frost that killed about 10% of my plants but it is going to be harder to avoid more frosts.
 

Zoom school

 

Of all the grandchildren, only Hannah has in person school. There are 5 kids in her pre school class

She is excited about her first day of school

The west coast fires caused the ash to diffuse the sun such as we can look directly at it. Some mornings it is a huge red ball

toad lily

first mums

On my long Sunday bike rides, I go by this David statue which is often dressed for the occasion

Have 4 frogs in my pond now

Allie's work station. Usually the dog is on her feet

First day of Covid home school Shanna keeps them in one room. They wear headphones to not disturb the others

We had them all over for Labor day, the day before 'school' began

tomatoes

They changed Blogger yet again. So annoying.

86% of the Michigan school districts opted to have in person classrooms. Despite numerous precautions, many of them had to close down. The three different school districts my grandchildren go to have only on-line learning. The colleges that opened are now Covid hotbeds, especially large state schools. All you need is less than 10% irresponsible people and the virus goes haywire.

Again, how badly has this been managed? He opted not to tell us because he didn't want the country to panic. So if a house  is on fire, do you not tell the residents to get out because it would upset them? Such illogic. And he continues to have his self adulation rallies unmasked..they do sign a waiver not to hold him responsible. Could they sign one saying they will not go to the hospital if ill?

Virtual learning is especially hard for Maya. Naomi has to monitor every movement. They have to click on various links, many of  which do not work so Naomi is constantly trouble shooting. Some of the kids thought they could just use their parent's computers. No, the Chromebooks are especially loaded with the necessary programs. I did watch Maya's virtual gym class in which the teacher shouted out instructions for the kids to do various calisthenics and yoga poses. And we have internet and computers? What happens in other places?

Again this would have been over if we weren't 'led' by an idiot.

Aside from our hazy skies, we can breathe. Not so much on the West Coast. And then there is the Gulf coast ravaged yet again by floods.

I've been biking with only a rear derailleur for 2 years. Doesn't matter much with the mild hills around here though going up some of the big hills up north last summer was a challenge. But for the past week, I rode with both derailleurs broken. A single high gear. I definitely got a work out muscling up the hills here. Finally my official repair appointment was Tuesday. A zillion dollars later, everything is working now.