Hawk and squirrel

Josh and his family went to Chicago for Thanksgiving; Shanna went elsewhere too thus there were only four  us for Thanksgiving

pretty but deadly. One of the Cooper's hawks paid our patio a visit checking out potential food The birds usually see them coming though one time, we saw a sad blackbird get carried off

my color changing light up gloves If I become roadkill, it won't be because they can't see me

Every day I have to chase this one away from my suet cake. They don't come by in the summer but in the winter, it is worth it to go the long distance from their nest through hawk territory to raid my feeders 

my Christmas cactus likes to bloom a month early

Recently Nature had a special on squirrels. They were particularly impressed with tree squirrels such as the obese fox squirrel pictured above. Tree squirrels have to have an extra big brain to remember where it has cached all its food. They don't believe in having all of ones eggs in one basket such as the lowly ground squirrels (my pesky chipmunks are examples of these) so they will have thousands of hiding places. Their brains actually expand in the fall to make these mental maps. They ran an experiment giving microchipped nuts to squirrels. 90% of them were eventually retrieved. Did they forget about 10% of them? Maybe the 10% was security in case the winter was particularly harsh. They also showed how quickly they learn complex paths to food. Maybe I have a dumb squirrel. Sometimes I can buy some time moving a bird feeder to another branch, in plain sight of the birds who quickly find it but the squirrel repeatedly returns to where it was. Eventually he does find it and I move it again.

The Cooper's hawk won't eat squirrels preferring birds though we do have plenty of red tailed hawks that will. The two hawks are from different species. One soars above and then dives down on its rodent prey whereas the Cooper's hawk chases the bird.

They showed how widespread squirrels are though I don't think I ever saw one in Paris parks. When my son was entertaining his Brazilian co-workers, they were especially fascinated with the local squirrels. Must be rare there.

In Michigan, we also have gray squirrels that for some reason are turning black. You'd think that gray would camouflage better but on my runs, the population now is black.

Finally we have a few days with no ice on the road. True it was raining today but I might be able to do my big bike tomorrow. Fingers crossed. I really hate drab November. And with various bad news coming in, it is hard to be all cheery. I might escape next week somewhere.

Transparency

Hannah eyeing me suspiciously

I've been submitting some of my photos to a stock photo site.  Maybe I will earn enough to buy a cup of coffee

The two artists down the street make life sized animal mosaics

and large clay sculptures

my friend's photo of Ann Arbor

me

If you would have a choice of ordering the same medical  test for $5, $60 , or $2000, which would you choose? Would it make any difference to you if you knew the government would reimburse you for most of the $2000 cost ?

Of course if you had to pay for this out of your own pocket, you'd get the $5 test. The fly in the ointment is if a doctor orders it, you have no choice as to the test provider or any idea of the cost. At best, they will tell you if your insurance will cover it.

I got the $2000 bill for a test yesterday for a test I was told would be covered. As it turned out, the hospital made a mistake and confused what insurance paid with what I owed, which was $40 but this involved phone calls and a ruined day as Steve chose to tell me about it when I was out taking care of a friend.

I am annoyed though with the hospital or the test lab, not sure which one is responsible for the fleecing charging more than 400x the actual cost of goods. Since now I am on Medicare, it is the taxpayers. A small part of why health care is so expensive, hidden costs and absolutely no free market.

And the situation with drugs is so much worse.  I was at my cooking class the other day for cancer survivors. A man keeps trying different drugs in an attempt to stop his cancer complained about the price of the latest stuff they put him on. I am familiar with his drug that has been around for 50 years. And it is cheap and easy to make. More fleecing.

The topic of our class was cooking with vegetable proteins (that aren't lentils or beans) as meat proteins come with meat fats that are linked to some cancers. Ditto for dairy. Also soy protein is out as many of us survivors (not me) are avoiding estrogens. Soy contains estrogen mimics though cultures that eat mainly eat soy protein have low breast cancer rates. As it was, a new person, a very young breast cancer patient closely examined ingredient lists. It turned out that one item was produced in a kitchen that was used to make soy products; useful to know if you have a soy allergy but not enough to produce cancer causing estrogens. And she is a young woman chock full of natural estrogens which are being partially repressed. But the item that really got her angry was seitan which is almost pure gluten. According to her reading, cancer is caused by inflammation. And in her book, nothing is more inflammatory than gluten. Yeah it is if you are one in a hundred with celiac disease, but she thinks everybody is and she is not alone.  Our instructor is a licensed nutrionist who also had two types of breast cancer and keeps up with all science food and cancer related, a good source.  She also objected to the fact that seitan is 'processed' though I pointed out that it is a primitive process, knead a mix of flour to form gluten, keep rinsing out water solubles and kneading. Eventually pure gluten or pure protein.  But if you consider that American wheat is sprayed with roundup to make the grain ripen at the same time, you might want to avoid it   I avoid white flour and white anything because it is empty calories with little nutrition, so I was able to lose my 80 extra pounds.  But I ate the seitan which takes on what ever spice it is cooked with and it tasted okay.  So what does this leave us?  A wild rice (technically a grass with more nutrition) salad that contained walnuts. Some burgers made with chickpea flour and zucchini (the flour was ground with equipment that might have touched soy)  She did serve the 'burgers' on mini whole wheat buns which half the people skipped due to the presence of evil gluten  I imagine that we won't see the young woman again. Not sure what she can eat.  I said that taking a baby aspirin a day reduced inflammation and is strongly linked to reduction of breast cancer recurrence.

 and the incidence of colon cancer along with strokes. She looked at me as if I was crazy. That is a drug!!!! I am not putting drugs into me. I could say that it is a natural drug from pine needles but she said it causes leaky gut, whatever that is

so very little fall this year. We went from unbearably hot to snow and ice just like that.. I was able to get a long run in just before our big snow storm of the other day. I am hoping that enough melted so I could go out today. Driving has been treacherous. I did take a friend out slipsliding away the other day which was fun.  Thanksgiving will be sad as two of my kids and theirs will be gone leaving us almost alone.  Want it to be spring now!

The Winter of my Discontent

My friend's photo of St. Thomas in Ann Arbor

What is this? A metal with rice paper sculpture? I can hang light objects on it (and lights) Not sure if this is the place for it but I wanted it

My friend's photo

Josh's girls and Maya and I met up at an indoor playground Sunday

Me in my Escada coat. It is probably close to 30 years old Still researching. On my feet are new shoes usually selling for $190. My price: $4

New bird here: red breasted nuthatch  My usual white breasted ones are MIA

the girls  Hannah is back to keeping her distance from me but she loves Maya

this morning  Pretty but annoying Will melt soon

My friend and an interesting worker at the good resale. He helped me yesterday with my Escada purchase. There is another coat there in eggplant that looks good on me...How many designer coats do I need?

No warm days in sight. I need it to be in the 40s to bicycle semi-comfortably preferably without gale force winds. I can go short distances in the 30s before frostbite starts setting in. For now I have the elliptical trainer and my weights in the basement. Both are boring. And I can run outside as long as things aren't covered with ice. With my geezer insurance, a gym membership is included, all which are quite far away. I hate running on treadmills. EMU's gym is covered with its running track and whirlpool but parking would be a problem. The best gym would be the community college's .

Now that I am not entertaining, I'm trying to organize stuff here. Did part of my closet yesterday.  had tried to give my friend who has similar tastes and the same height some of my clothes but she had limited space. As it was, she had extra clothes stuffed in her pants. But I moved everything that is too big for me out of my closet. Hopefully I will never need any of it again. I  keep thinking of my weight as a giant spring that if I let go for a second, it will all come back at once. It's been more than 2 years since I tackled this. I am 2-3 pounds higher than my absolute lowest but I think I am firmer now. So far so good.

What's on my plate? Researching unpleasant options. Burying my head in the sand seems easiest.Also I am obliged to tell certain people that MAY be effected. Not fun.

My friend of the many health issues can no longer walk so her friends are taking shifts. Doing this Friday. And a cooking class for me tomorrow.

Old friends

Josh and daughter

Maya

The Moms and I went to a play the other night. One of them provided dinner and this tasty bourbon cream

I got all dressed up

A childhood friend came  to stay for a few days. Another friend from cross state visited for a day

much to my southern friend's delight, the first snow came here. These are her photos of my sad lawn

We went exploring. She loved my resale places. This is her in the middle of The Wave Field

we went to Graffiti Alley

She got that hat in a resale shop here

UM students

UM utility box

100 year old Nicols Arcade 

The kids provided us with a spray can  I am photographing our handy work

me

I have had some welcome distractions from the scary news I have been receiving over the past few weeks. Much to everyone's surprise, my news was only coincidental to some other extremely upsetting news though that will be shortly confirmed. Again, I can blog about my travails but not when it involves others. Lots of upsetting news

Election day left me hopeful as more and more people are fed up with the tyrant in the White House especially in our state. The good people won here. Our area uses the local schools for voting. Some idiots insist on carrying weapons openly into schools though I think our school system had that barred. But kids and guns should not mix so they close the schools down thus we had Maya to entertain. We over 60 folks can vote ahead of time which I did last week.

My friend from elementary school flew in to stay for a few days. I haven't seen her in 15 years though we are in contact. A pair of bluebirds came to visit my yard a few times but I've been too slow to photograph them or the lone buck that walked across yesterday. I've had herd of deer come through but I don't see bucks often. We had fun going to resale shops where I bought even more stuff and going through my closets for stuff that she might want to wear. She could fit into my old pants but only a few tops but I'm glad that at least some of my clothes have a new home.

She had wanted to see fall colors. That would have been fine last month though this was a sucky color year. And now my gardens are so sad looking. Months ago the Moms and I arranged to go to a local play when it turned out, this week was the only time my friend could leave work. I tried in vain to get an extra ticket so instead I arranged for another friend from 150 miles away to stay with her. Not easy to schedule that either as she just had surgery that would make her trip difficult but at least all worked out and all had fun. And I had a good time with the Moms at our dinner and the play.

Now to make up for the exercise I didn't get while having guests.

Skeletons

Shanna's boys and a friend

the whole town of Northville is decorated with skeltons

this was my favorite

lots of elaborate pumpkins. I liked this one though

Even the little ones got dressed

I took Tessa and Maya out

the gates of hell

lots of fancy scary effects

Josh's girls

I ran early Halloween morning in the drizzle once the lightning stopped. By evening, it was ideal for trick or treating. Fairly warm and dry. During the day, my friend and I visited my favorite resale store in Northville and then admired all the Halloween displays before having a good Italian lunch. I seem to be in the middle of Northville, Plymouth and Ann Arbor.

I picked up a very excited Maya at her after school care. She couldn't wait to get into her costume which was a character from the Disney movie The Descendants. She said Halloween is her favorite holiday besides pajama day. Shanna's neighborhood has houses on small lots but lots of communal parkland. Most houses contain school age kids and everyone decorates their house, some with laser light shows and holograms. Most home owners just sit on their porches to hand out candy or combine forces with their neighbors. And the streets are crowded with neighborhood kids and even more from other neighborhoods.

Shanna and I started out with five kids, hers, Maya and Daniel's friend. This friend and Maya kept sprinting ahead at top speed. We split the kids up: she had the boys and I had the girls. Eventually Naomi got out of work and found us. The girls didn't like the chainsaw guy who chased kids  or Mike Meyers and his club. It didn't take long for Tessa's bag becoming too heavy for her to carry. We had an auxiliary bag for Maya to dump her 2 quart size pumpkin into. Lots and lots of candy.  I was good though. A home owner left a bucket of bite sized Heath bars for all to grab. These were my favorite as a kid. I didn't think they made them anymore. Alas, not as good as I remember. Maya reluctantly shared an Almond Joy with me. I reminded her that she didn't even like coconut but now she says she does so no more Almond Joys for me. It was a fun night.

Due to  recent disclosures, I've been too upset to eat. I feel queasy which could be a sign of disease but most likely, nerves. Lots of things to find out.