An end to 2018

2018 sucked in many ways for me. I'd like to say I'm glad to see it go, but I know that, outside of some technical and legal points, the changing of the calendar doesn't mean anything much. Time will continue to grind by, burn away, and things will keep on happening, with or without our permission.

A few years ago, at one of the first "Kick Out the Bottom" open mics, someone (I forget who) read a poem that opened with a litany of warnings against seeking answers in the words of others. "Neil Gaiman doesn't have all the answers," she said, drawing an audible gasp from the crowded room. (Someone might have reflexively hissed "The devil you say.") Neil Gaiman's New Year's wishes have long been a favorite, little blessings full of wisdom and insight and kindness. He hasn't written one in a while, so he put together a post today collecting all of his past wishes, and explaining what a year 2018 has been, and how busy he has been, and how the is the first New Year's in many that he is away from his wife and child, and...

...and then he went ahead and wrote a new wish for the coming year.

Try to make your time matter: minutes and hours and days and weeks can blow away like dead leaves, with nothing to show but time you spent not quite ever doing things, or time you spent waiting to begin.

And with those words, Neil Gaiman has spun me around. Maybe I'll try not to be so pessimistic about the coming year. Maybe I'll make better use of my time. Make my time matter.

Neil Gaiman doesn't have all the answers. But this is something I'll take to heart.

Neil Gaiman's Journal: That Was The 2018 That Was (December 31, 2018)

Neil Gaiman's Journal: My New Year Wish (December 31, 2011

Neil Gaiman's Journal: As I Was Saying (December 31, 2007)

Bustle.com: 16 New Year's Wishes From Neil Gaiman (December 29, 2017)

2018: Almost over

Yeah. Another year in the books.

2018 was horrible in a lot of new and special ways. In May I told my supervisor during one of our periodic how's-it-going meetings that, after six years in the travel business, I was finally feeling happy, finally feeling like I was hitting my stride, finally making good money. So, naturally, within a week or so we were all called into a meeting and told that the company would be closing at the end of September. Our final client valued our work so highly that they invited the employees to apply for work-from-home positions - something that was simply not a practical possibility for me. So when September 30 came along, I found myself once again unemployed.

In late Spring a friend lost herself in an abrupt medical incident. I spent my final week of vacation visiting her in a hospital, hoping to aid in her recovery. Just when things were looking hopeful, her situation went from bad to worse to even worse. And that's where the year is ending with her.

As all this was happening things went sideways over at NEPA Blogs. We had been a part of WBRE's PA Live since the show's first week in September 2011. We had the odd skipped week and even the occasional multi-week hiatus. We also experienced several co-host changes, which meant that pre-recorded episodes with that co-host would have to be scrapped. I recorded my last session for PA Live! in late May, twenty episodes, enough to carry us through at least until September or so. But just a few weeks later, we were advised that the co-host I had recorded with would be leaving the show, very soon, meaning that we would be off the show until we recorded more. Unfortunately, this news came through as my friend was in the worst of her issues, and as I was losing myself in working as much overtime as humanly possible. We agreed that we wouldn't even try to record new episodes until a replacement host was chosen, something that didn't happen until early September. By then I was in the final weeks of my old job. And then, once the job ended, I plunged right into job search mode. I finally had a new job secured in early November, and reached out to the host and producer of PA Live! to let him know I was available to record with his new co-host - only to have him tell me that he was about to be leaving the station to accept a new job elsewhere, and resumption of the segment would be at the discretion of the new host.

As all this was happening, I was staying away from NEPA Blogs. I have not posted to it or updated it since - well, I'm not sure how long. But NEPA Blogs isn't just a site, it's a network of blogs and bloggers linking to each other and interacting with each other, joined by the bonds that run though Northeastern Pennsylvania. It was designed to get along fine without me. Still, I intend to resume work on NEPA Blogs in the new year, and to reach out to the new host of PA Live! sometime soon.

2018 is almost over. It sucked in its own special ways. I'd like to say I'm looking forward to 2019, but in truth, I expect it to be every bit as uniquely horrible.

Pulling up the stakes

"Pulling up the stakes" is a euphemism for moving, especially changing one's location. I'm not doing that. Today I pulled up the stakes in a much more literal way, finally removing the tomato stakes from my garden and putting them away until next planting season.

Objects tell me stories. When I touch or sometimes just see or even think about an object that is associated with a traumatic or otherwise significant event in my life, I can recall that event in vivid detail.

The tomato stakes I pulled up today were all newly purchased this Spring. This was a hell of a Spring, and Summer too. I had carefully positioned a week of vacation in early June during what, based on my records of the previous few years, would be the last week before tropical weather settled in with unrelenting heat and rain.* I wanted to get a long-postponed home project done, which would optimally involve three rain-free days with temperatures in the mid-70s. Instead I found myself dropping everything to make a daily visit to the hospital where a friend was being kept after a series of unfortunate incidents. Seeing her in that place, it was all I could do to hang on to my own sanity. Each day, every day of my vacation, I would stop there at the designated time for the allotted hour (or was it a half-hour?) for visits. Every day after leaving, I would try to find something fun to do, to remind myself how sweet freedom truly is and, for a few minutes, to take my mind off the friend who had lost hers due to some malfunctioning brain chemistry. On one of those days I stopped at a nearby home center and picked up some stakes for my tomato plants, both wooden and plastic-coated steel.

Those were the stakes I pulled up today.

My friend is still not completely recovered, and may never be. Unfortunate incidents tend to spawn additional unfortunate incidents, and when those are complicated by some really bad decisions, things get worse very quickly. I don't even know if I will ever see her again.

But next Spring, when I pull out the stakes for next year's tomatoes, I will be sure to remember her, and everything that happened with her in 2018.


*My weather forecasting was pretty on the mark: this would be the last really nice week of the "Summer," despite taking place in Spring and having a destructive tornado touch down in the middle of it.

2018 so far

This was from back on November 25:

Facebook posted my "2018 in review" video yesterday, and a friend commented that it had been a wild ride. Then I realized there are still three weeks to go.

What the hell will 2019 have in store? No,don't tell me. I want to be surprised.

Too short a season

Autumn came late after a long, hot, wet summer in Northeastern Pennsylvania. Usually the leaves begin to change color in mid-October, and the trees are mostly bare by early November. This year, many trees were still fully green after the third week of an unusually warm October.

Burning Bush, October 16, 2018

Nanticoke from Holy Trinity Cemetery, October 30, 2018

Then, suddenly, everything happened at once. Overnight temperatures dropped, a key factor in allowing color to develop. Rain fell, but the wind was gentle enough to not strip the trees bare. On October 30 most trees were showing at least some color. But then the skies cleared, the sun came out. By October 31 the landscape had been transformed, and Northeastern Pennsylvania was at peak color.

Burning Bush, October 30, 2018

And by November 2, it was past peak.

On November 4 I took my trip to the Lands at Hillside Farms. Along the way I passed mile after mile of trees mostly bare, or covered with dried and shriveling leaves. I wasn't expecting much as I took the left from 309 onto Hillside Road. But as I approached, I saw that Hillside Farms was still at peak color. I quickly realized I wasn't the only one who knew this: the parking lots were packed, and there was a line to get into the Dairy Shop.

The Lands at Hillside Farms, November 4, 2018

The Lands at Hillside Farms, November 4, 2018

By November 10 heavy rains and strong winds had stripped most of the remaining leaves from the trees. I filled three large bags from the leaves that fell from our Japanese Red Maple, which turned from their summertime maroon color to autumn shades or crimson, orange, and gold.

Burning Bush, November 10, 2018

Japanese Red Maple, November 10, 2018

Japanese Red Maple leaves, November 10, 2018

There were still some trees here and there in Nanticoke that were still holding onto their leaves. I don't know how much longer this will be the case. Just a few weeks ago, it looked like we weren't going to have any leaf color at all. What this season lacked in length, it made up in color.

Two irons in the fire

...and about to put in a third.

The job market locally is very different than it was six and a half years ago. At that time very few places were hiring, pay rates were low, and hours being offered were lousy. (I had two real job options back then: night shift quality control at a paper cup manufacturer thirty minutes from my house, or a shift somewhere between 8:00 AM and 12:15 PM at a travel agency ten minutes away. Both paid the same.) Most companies were sitting on their cash reserves or squirreling them away in secret overseas tax havens. But even before the current administration came into power, more businesses were opening and hiring, or at least on the drawing boards for construction. Today there are lots of jobs available - primarily in call centers and warehouses (or "fulfillment centers," places where the things that you've ordered are pulled from inventory and boxed up for delivery to you), and primarily at low wages.

In the end I was making fairly good money at my last job, after five and a half years of essentially working with a negative cashflow. Several opportunities exist that pay comparable amounts, like the two that I am proceeding with. This third would possibly pay a good deal less, and would be temporary and possibly only part-time, but it would be a chance to do something I've always wanted to do. Knowing that there are other opportunities out there means I won't be locked in with whatever I end up with.

Hazy, crazy, not-so-lazy days of summer

Summer is about to come back with a tropical vengeance.

This summer has been a bit of a mixed bag. It got off to a late start, but was fairly pleasant through May and June, with only the occasional horror storm putting a shingle through our front window or tearing shingles off our house or sending a tornado right through the heart of our shopping district shortly after the shops had closed for the night. But aside from those incidents, and a few flash floods, this was really one of the nicest summers I can remember in a while..until mid-June, around the time of the Osterhout book sale, when temperatures soared and humidity spiked.

That's where things have stayed since then, mostly, until this past week. We've actually had a few cool, pleasant days with low humidity. It became possible once again to do lawn work or even just walk around outside without fear of dying of heatstroke while drowning from simply breathing the air.* But in the next few days, temperature and humidity are both expected to soar. I will be glad to be at work and have a good excuse for not being outside doing things.

This has been a very busy summer, and a very strange one. With our dryer broken, I've been hanging the laundry out to dry or taking it to the laundromat, both more time-consuming than simply tossing it into the dryer. I have a friend who has had some issues that have involved two extended hospitalizations and a hell of a lot of fear and stress for all involved. I'm dealing with the impending loss of my job. I'm trying to not completely disappoint my mom for her eighty-fifth birthday, which is coming up in less than two weeks. Oh, and a major open-secret sex scandal in the Catholic Church is now suddenly the topic of conversation for everyone. And Donald Trump and his gang still occupy the White House.

But, in any event, here's hoping that the weather cools off a little bit, at least before we plunge straight into the jaws of another Fimbulvinter.


*A side note: I noticed an educational "weather station" in Nanticoke's city park today. One panel explained the water cycle, and noted that water that falls as rain into streams and lakes is then heated by the sun, turns into steam, and becomes clouds. I'd be more comfortable if they called it water vapor - steam forms when water boils, and the sun isn't causing that to happen just yet.

On the line

This Summer I have been line-drying clothes whenever possible. It's the first time I have done this in - well, forever, really. My mom used to hang laundry on the clothesline quite a bit, but that was long ago, and she isn't able to do that sort of thing anymore. But I can, and the weather has been quite agreeable this year, so I've been taking advantage of our "solar powered clothes dryer." The method has some disadvantages - mechanical drying is better at removing lint, and if the wind isn't in your favor, many clothes come out stiff unless you use fabric softener - but you can't beat the smell of clothes that have been dried on a line!

Poem: While driving home from seeing a performance of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" last Sunday

I wrote the original of this poem on February 26, 2018, shortly after the actual incident. This is a true story, and a sequel of sorts to another poem I wrote a few years ago. 

While driving home from seeing a performance of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" last Sunday

My hand went to the spot
where your hand would be
when you and I used to ride together

Instead
I found the program from the play
I had just seen with a friend.

Tulips at last

I mowed the front part of the yard today, which was a lot thicker than it looked. It took a lot longer than I expected, since I had to keep stopping to empty the grass catcher.

Yesterday I noted that there were no tulips in bloom yet. Today, as I mowed around the ones surrounding our long-disconnected gas light, I noticed three tulips just starting to open up. With each pass they seemed to open more and more, until by the time I was done - about fifteen minutes after I first noticed them - they were mostly open.

No photos today. I'll try to get some tomorrow, if it's sunny enough. Tulips tend to overbloom very quickly, so I'll need to get my photos in the next few days.

Lilacs soon, I think. Then blueberries. Or maybe azaleas...

UPDATE, May 2, 2018: Pictures!

Obligatory high-contrast monochrome image.

Blooms and blossoms delayed

It's April 24th, 2018, and my cherry trees aren't in bloom yet. My irises haven't bloomed either. Nor have my tulips. The daffodils are nearly spent. Once they are, I'll be able to dig them up, divide them, and spread them around a bit.

I just had frost on my windshield yesterday, but already my lawn could use a mowing.

The tomato seedlings are coming along nicely - whichever ones have survived. I may have mostly Roma plum tomatoes, or none at all. I sort of last track. We'll find out in a few months, I guess. It's probably not too late to start a few more seeds...

Romeo on a Snow Day, March 7, 2018

I have a bad habit of not posting about my animal friends until they have died. That's not the case today.

Romeo was one of three pets that we inherited from our next-door neighbor when she went into the hospital and never came out again back in September 2011. Romeo had been one of four cats she had owned: Tinker, Baby Boy, Romeo, and Juliet. Romeo and Juliet were longhairs, Romeo, a bright ginger, and Juliet, a deep, dark brown. Tinker, a plump Calico, had a habit of running away from home. One day he ran away and never came back. The other three cats also ran away on a regular basis, but usually came back home. Baby Boy once somehow wound up in the ceiling of our basement, years before we took him in. Juliet ran away and never came back, as far as anyone knew; when our neighbor's sister was having the house made fit for human habitation after her sister checked into the hospital, the workers found her mummified corpse amidst the junk on her back porch. Whether she came back there to die or somehow got trapped there and starved to death, I do not know.

Romeo had also run away at the time we took the neighbor to the hospital. But he didn't run far, and I frequently saw him lurking in her back yard. When we decided to take in Hershey and Baby Boy, we also brought Romeo over.

Romeo was covered with ticks, huge, tan things, maybe the size of match heads, maybe the size of corn kernels. I carefully plucked them off, one at a time, and stuck them to pieces of tape, which I then folded over to encase them while allowing for inspection. Perhaps as a consequence of this, Romeo developed a nasty case of intestinal worms.

It was while Romeo was being treated for these worms that we made an important discovery. Romeo had been a nasty, disagreeable cat after we took him in. He would often hiss and swat at the other cats whenever they tried to eat. I warned the vet about Romeo's disposition so they would not be surprised when they began treating him. Instead, Romeo started to purr as they handled him, and rolled around in near-ecstasy during the examination. Romeo wasn't being nasty; he was being insecure. He wanted to be the center of attention, not just another cat in the house.

Lately, Romeo has been showing signs of wanting to try to get out of the house. This concerns us, mainly because a desire to run off and hide comes upon some animals when they are nearing death. Romeo is up in age, sixteen or older. He shows no signs of illness, but cats are good at hiding these things.

Today, I found Romeo gazing out the front window at the falling snow. I grabbed my camera and snapped off a few photos. Even though the snowstorm didn't live up to the dire predictions locally, it at least made a pretty backdrop for these photos on a Snow Day.