not smoking...

February 13th, stop day, so March 13th., April 13th., about two months and two days...no smoking!

Long winter has passed. Spring here, everything blooming. I bought tomatoes to plant, heirlooms...some peppers and chilis and flowers. Work, bad weather, laziness keeps the garden mostly unplanted, but I'll get to it.

smokeless

Hyacinth, February, 2009




Valentine's Day, more or less, marks the end to cigarettes. Chantix, restarted, today at 17 February, it's four days without, not excruciating; I'm thinking I've quit. Time will tell.

Bumpy at work, it's not horrible...

winter view

Inside~Outside






Law, say the gardners, is the sun...

Below Zero Ain't Pretty!



Hard Winter, It Seems Endless....

Long time gone from here. Barack Obama is president of the United States! I voted, I saw that happened, I watched the inauguration on TV; it real! The change is estatic but terribly complicated, the economy in free-fall, hard times, the depth of bleak winter.

I'm not sure where I've been, or, one day seems like the next. I had two weeks of paid vacation and did very little. Some hope of a plan to see my kids in California, maybe in April. Goals had been, yes-to stop smoking, to paint my bedroom, to make some oil paintings: I did none of that. The winter has been very cold, minus degrees, down to minus 28 F.,a record low for the Quad Cities...I lived through that.

Matt phones me as he drives home from work and it cheers me greatly. We talk of orchids amd grandkids and grand food. It came up that maybe I should end my Prairie Exile, come home, and the complications of that still abound, money mostly, it's so expensive to live in California; but it works, it should happen, foggy notions of transits, out of here, back to there. The problems I escaped--essentially isolation and lonliness--would, could reinsue, but maybe I'm more apt to deal with it now, Lexapro, philosophical shifts--as I age some insurmountable things seem more do-able in the sense that karma allows the unthinkable to become likely, inevitible.

I made Shrimp, Brussles Sprouts, Ramen noodles


Some sense of winter upon us; I got up on Friday and the back deck thermometer read 13 degrees F. Since them some coolness out. Today, Sunday, sunny, maybe 50 degrees, a day off from work, Jim at home, too.

Wednesday evening, after work, out with Joy, Alan, Vicki to a red-neck bar in Lyndon, Illinois (population 600) for food and beer; then, Thursday, the day off, turkey at home for Thanksgiving with Jim. Time whizzing by in increments of weeks, paydays, come and go. Plants, tender ones, have been moved inside to sunny windows; a trial to find enough sun for Helenium seedlings, doing the best I can.

Not much from my kids...a quick chat with Lauren on Yahoo from time to time but no depth and she often wanders off, parental duties, so I mostly give up. Matt phones from time to time and that's nice. Odd calm--like bordem--this weekend off. The kitchen sink leaked so Jim fixed it, leftovers for dinner because the sink was in the repair. He's so quiet it's like being alone, only a constant din of tv in the living room, crime drama, doctor shows, me at my computer, the day goes by. To bed early tonight as I will get up early to get off to work.

near mid-November, a day off...rain coming

Ascelpias (butterfly flower) seed fluff

The second of two days off from work in a row. I raked then hosed off the back deck, a clean slate, moving this year's pots to the garage...it looks good. A second, rare second cup of coffee just now, normally only a wake-up cup. The sky is slatey, grey, rain coming, not brrrrr! cold, about 60 degrees F.

Not so depressed today as idle. Some "exile" sense again, strongly, my southern Californian connections rearing up. Lauren's Meg is four years old today, a party for her on Sunday; it'd be nice to be there...or on a beach, some place with vistas.

Minor dilemma: I planted Helenium seeds in September, they sprouted, but I'm not sure they can survive outside; inside, difficult to find a place for them with good light. I planted three Lowe's bargain, end of the season daylilies yesterday, called "Final Touch" pink, yellow, green throat.

what happened to October?

Obama Elected! I'm so used to waking up from election eves to utter dissapointment, it's an unusal, even caustious feeling I have. Stem cell research, a belief in global warming, some possible curtailment to wars, inclusion, global community, they seem within grasp.

The first snow flurries today, some vast, plentiful, as I entered Hy-Vee super market; winter's here. My tender plants have been brought indoors, squished in the few bright windows available...orchids and epiphyllums from Matt, others, geraniums, I hope they find some comfort and prosper.

Work as always, weary just now from a string of openings, up at 4:30am to awaken, have coffe, get to work by 6:30am.

Kids afar, Lauren and her family are just back from Orlando DisneyWorld, a sort of annual Rosenbaum Family reunion; Matt, built a new elegant greenhouse for his orchids, his enthusiasm so pleasant when he talks about his plants, their color and fragrance; that's good for me to hear. All of them voted for Obama, Lauren for sure, but my feeling that for Matthew it was "iffy" but he did it and did it for the right reasons.





Last month a trip to Chicago, the Art Institute, the "Bean" at Millenium Park, Frank Gerhy Pavilion, too, with Jim, the roommate, a very nice trip via Amtrak from Galesburg to Chicago, roundtrip.