Little Wooden Table and Little Wooden Stool
December 9, 2025
This has become my favorite winter spot, in front of the fireplace. I sit here probably hours a day (I hate to admit) doing whatever it is I do on my laptop (this blog, for example, at this very moment). My butt can get sore sitting on that little wooden stool, as it has a hole in the seat, designed, I think, to function as a handle. It’s a very hard and irregular surface. Matt claims to have made this stool in high school wood shop, nearly half a century ago (Note: he actually made it in junior high in Mr. Riopelle’s wood shop class, I am so corrected). I scooped it up in the process of emptying mom’s house back in 2017. I’d always admired it. And I got that tiny table from Aunt Ellie’s house in 2019, same home-emptying process, this time after Aunt Ellie had died. Two of my most treasured (if funky) pieces of furniture (“furniture”).
Well.. okay. Let me take a couple close-ups..
Here’s the stool.. see.. that hole is placed right in the butt bone zone.
And here’s the table. The second shot shows the little shelves that pull out. My aunt had described this as a plant table, so maybe it was designed to display an assortment of potted plants on the four pullouts. I use it to hold my smoothie, my phone, and as a place to make notes if I need to write something on my todo list, say. Handy!
Anyway… I sit there a lot, being on my laptop, warming my back. Heavenly. That was a bowl of vanilla yogurt with raisins. I was likely doing a NYT puzzle.
Have I mentioned, it’s extremely cold and dreary outside these past weeks. The Tule fog has crept back in on its little cat feet and is socking us in but good. Excellent excuse for long stints in front of the fireplace.
Bulbs are Bulbing
February 24, 2025
A few days ago, I noticed a speck of purply blue on the mound.. and sure enough, the first bulbs are coming out (not counting the narcissus that started blooming before Christmas). Mary planted dozens, and maybe dozens more, in the fall.. excited to see how many come up. We have a regular crop that’s been regularly blooming for a few years now. If the plan holds, we’ll have a riot of continuous color for the next couple of months.
Game Changers
January 22, 2025
For just a moment, allow me to put aside my raging political angst (the list of angst-inducing news items on this, day two, of the new administration, is long and frightful) and my concern for the LA fires (another took hold this afternoon and is spreading rapidly thanks to another round of hurricane force winds) and share two most amazing developments from the past couple of days.
Development #1:
Prednisone. I was prednisone-ignorant. My limited research suggests there are definitely concerns with the use of corticosteroids, but when my PCP offered a 5-day burst of steroids to treat some stubborn inflammation, I was hesitant, but also desperate. I decided to try it. Today, I concluded my 5-day course and hooboy! I feel like a prednisone queen, the poster senior citizen of steroid users, a member of the cast of Cocoon (remember that movie where a whole bunch of seniors discover the fountain of youth and enjoy a new lease on life?). I just cannot believe that last Friday night — five days ago — I was suffering through my fifth solid month of misery, pain and immobility, and by Saturday morning, just hours after my first 50mg of prednisone, I was damn near free of that same misery, pain and immobility. Today, Wednesday, my walk around the Arb with Janet was epic. I mean: no limits. In my workout this morning, I was cycling through stretching exercises without a care in the world. My stuck shoulder? Full mobility. My knees? I can twist, bear weight, kneel, drop into a sublime Child’s Pose. If I’m honest… it’s like 95%, maybe not quite 100%. But still. Game changer.
I can’t seem to get my mind off a book I read (we all read) when I was a kid … remember Flowers for Algernon? The story of a developmentally disabled man who, through an operation, increases his IQ, enjoys the riches of life, falls in love.. and then.. the mouse upon whom the experiment was first carried out dies, signaling that Charlie’s newfound joy will not last. Yeah.. that’s my fear, too.
For now, I’ll enjoy. We’ll see what this prednisone experiment holds.
Development #2
Cordless, rechargeable, wall mounted vacuum cleaner. It’s no secret, I’m a bit fussy when it comes to a clean and tidy house. Matters a lot to me. Order keeps me sane, cleanliness makes me happy. Some years ago, Jim replaced our regular old canister vacuum cleaner with one of these water-filter contraptions, reported to do the best job on floors. I don’t dispute that. Thing is, it’s a bear to use. Requires a relatively complicated assembly each time you use it b/c you have to remove the tank, fill it with clean water, then reassemble it. Frankly, it’s tricky, and awkward. If I did it every day, maybe. But as infrequently as I vacuum (because: Miguel), the learning curve’s remained steep. It has long been a major disincentive to hauling out the vacuum for jobs big and small.
I broke a glass the other day, which shattered into shards of all sizes and spread far and wide. It was spectacular. Cleaning this up was a nightmare. Took probably an hour with lots of hands and knees, a few cuts, and then just nervousness that I was leaving some behind. I couldn’t bear getting out the water vacuum, so used a little portable unit we got a couple years ago, which is a step up from a dust buster, designed to be a quicker picker upper for small jobs, but is a hassle when the task is shattered glass. This was a sign to me that I needed a better vacuuming solution.
It’s my birthday this week, so I announced to Jim that an easily accessible, easy to use vacuum cleaner was at the top of my gift list. And here it is, accessibly mounted in the laundry room, just steps from future glass catastrophes. I shouldn’t be this happy, but I am.
Life of Wry 