l-o-n-g winter (and still smoking!)

oh please come soon springtime!




Lauren finally got the results of her thyroid biopsy--initially, from her doctor, it was "inclusive"; so the specimen was sent out to Stanford Medical Center, and two weeks later came back as "negative", good news!

I'm still smoking! Still taking Chantix; one day it may click, come together, with some effort from me.

A cold, long winter, most of it twenty degrees below normal, lots of snow(!), the Rock River--under ice--swelling over it's banks; the I-280, the commuter freeway I take to and from work everyday, has been closed twice due to flooding. I ordered a couple of bareroot roses from Jung Seed online--a white, fragrant rugosa called "Blanc Double De Courbet", one of them, and another, a super hardy Buck's shrub rose called "Prairie Sunrise". Simple plans for a better garden this year, a new strip for perennials, annuals, tomatoes, baby watermelons, etc., sunnier than the garden beside the garage. There's an abiding inner-conflict about planting things here, mostly despised by Jim, and my sense of needing to move on, elsewhere, back to California, maybe to New Mexico, or Arkansas. An orchard-fruit and nut trees, elsewhere perhaps, someday; somethings, walnuts, pecans, hazelnuts, fecund beyond my lifetime...it causes some thought! Like--if pecans takes 10-20 years to make nuts, do I want to plant them, and maybe I should have done that ten years ago?

Phobic longtime distant buddy Jesse Gayer, Wilmington, California, emailed yesterday to "go to hell," over my having sent him an email to support Hillary Clinton's campaign. He supports Obama. This is not so much about political differences as it is about Jesse's sense of control, an almost meglamanical aspect to his personality--it isolates him from all but his family and a sort of one-mindess to them. I put Jesse on the "spam" list to thwart more emails and guess that's enough of him. He was never a good friend in any sense, exclusive, conditional, gay and in a very odd and protracted denial. But...like the deaths of old, people I know disappear, Walt vanished into unfathomable nothingness, Sal parts company, Ron, long gone, Roy dead, and more...I find myself more isolated, incommunicado, narrow and alone (especially living with Jim) and lonely. No major regrets with parting company with Jesse, but I do so little to cultivate friendships and new champions are not on the horizon. Work-busy helps, maybe painting or hiking would, too, but I tend to stay in, not wander, or connect with women not men. 65 at my next birthday, a daunting task to make friends.