Belated New Year entry

Happy New Year! I meant to write something last weekend, but of course got caught up instead in last minute preparations for the start of a new term - it started on Monday January 4th, which I suppose is still vastly better than two years ago when it started on January 2nd.

I wasted a few weeks at the end of the year fretting and trying not to fret over whether I might have lymphoma, after a CT scan that showed enlarged lymph glands through my chest. I'm relieved to say I don't. Between Christmas and New Year, I had a lymph node removed from just above my clavicle (the swelling that had made me visit the doctor in the first place) for biopsy, and was told on New Year's Eve that it wasn't anything cancerous. It made for much better celebrations that evening. I'd contemplated the possible need to change my blog over the next few months into a lengthy account of cancer care in the U.S. health care system. I'm sure it would have been a good topic, but I'll be quite happy not to have to discover for myself how good that care is, or whether my insurance would save me from being one of the alarming number of people in this country who end up declaring bankruptcy because of medical bills.

We went on a week's trip to Asheville, North Carolina, in the first half of December. It's the second time I've been to the "South," and as on my brief trip to Atlanta, I was delighted by how lovely it all was. Before I came to the States, my imaginary South was like Texas in the movies - dry and dusty, with sinister white police officers in reflective sunglasses cruising around the deserted roads and passing long and searching looks over strangers in town. In fact, the south-eastern states are (at least in my brief acquaintance with them) lush and green, with woodlands and rolling hills and fields or yards with black and white cows, donkeys, sheep, goats, ducks, chickens - somewhat like lowland Scotland, but less miserable. They feel familiar and well-worn, like the big green bath robe I wrap myself in every morning and evening.


Of course, my experiences are entirely superficial, and people who know better than me tell me of the problems with racism and narrow mindedness that lie just under this beautiful exterior, so maybe it's not so different from Scotland after all; but for the moment I will cling to my first impressions. Colorado is so dry and brown most of the time, and the mountains are impressive but they're definitely not conducive to life; to go from here to somewhere that drips green from every branch makes me feel mentally like a shrivelled old sponge suddenly plunged back into water. And they had good food there too, which is more than can be said for Denver.

Word of the week.

While I'm here, let me add my word of the week, which was:

amorphous

I picked myself up using the same word multiple times in classes and in comments on student papers - from describing the work of the "Misty" poets to commenting on the state of the papers themselves.

When you spend your weeks continually grasping for words in front of an audience, you notice yourself forming new speech habits all the time. Some of them you can't get rid of too quickly - like my repeated use of "if you will" to end my off-the-top-of-my-head descriptions of poetic or historical tendencies in lectures this term - a habit that has irritated me but been difficult to shake off. Do the students notice? I doubt most are listening anyway.

Yes, some of my lectures this term have been quite amorphous. But just one more week to go.

Tree monkeys

The wildlife in my garden this summer...


Now the trees are bare, and my lawn is covered in leaves.

Sqnowcat

Squid in the snow.

Snow day!

We're having a large snowfall here that has closed the university again today (woo hoo!). Yesterday morning we all stared at our mobile phones hoping for that automated message, but it didn't come and we all dutifully trecked to work. When I came out of my first class and was gearing up for the always last minute rush for the second, longer one, I opened my email and discovered they'd decided to close after all from 2 p.m., the start time of that class. And there was great rejoicing.

Crazy woman across the street

I took my cat for a walk tonight. And he went with me, harnessed and leashed, quite happily trotting along by my side. I'd always suspected he might be suited to it, but was too embarrassed to try. Still, I'm pretty sure we've already convinced the neighbours that we're strange and foreign, since we've been taking the cats out into the back garden with harnesses and tie-outs for a few months now, and I’ve spent a good deal of time running in circles round the apple tree dragging lures behind me. It's a small step from that to final certifiable cat-walking insanity, though notably I still needed the cover of darkness to try it. It was an entirely lovely experience.

In fact, for the past two or three weeks I’ve been taking both cats out into the garden morning and evening without harnesses, having discovered that one isn’t too quick at working out how to climb over the fence (though he makes daily forays into the apple tree, from which he has to be rescued), and the other is generally happy to sit around watching things pass by. They like being out there, and I want them to get that exercise and stimulation as much as possible - but if I can find a compromise that stops them being squished by a car or rejoining that huge lost cat population we glimpsed when we were adopting, I’ll take it. Even if I do look crazy.

Storm

We had a sudden storm on Monday night. It's nothing unusual here - thunder and lightning is common on summer afternoons and evenings, though there seems to have been more this year than most. As a result things have been unusually lush and green, though the sun has begun to bake the grass yellow in the last couple of weeks.

Monday's storm came through at about 10 at night. We could hear the wind and sudden heavy rain, and then the lights started to flicker on and off before going out altogether. I haven't been in a power-cut worthy of the name since I was a child, so it was exciting to light candles and brush my teeth by torchlight and worry about whether the fish in the freezer would all have to be barbecued the next day and where I could possibly have put my battery powered radio. Unfortunately, it was a little too close to bedtime to enjoy it to the full. Lying in bed and watching the lightning through the blinds was fun, though. I woke up sometime in the middle of the night with the bedside light shining in my eyes.

Afterwards I looked at Denver Post reports about the damage caused, including this one this morning. I thought that they must be somewhat sensationalized, going on about fallen trees and windows being blown out of buildings just a few roads west of here - after all, the only effects visible in my garden were some extra bits of next-door's tree scattered around my lawn, and my tomato plant knocked a little askew. However, we learned otherwise when went for a bike ride along the Clear Creek Trail, a trail from Denver to Golden that passes to the north of us through a particularly nice wooded area by a small river - part of Wheat Ridge's green belt. The path was officially closed due to "hazardous conditions," and there were fallen trees everywhere - uprooted, snapped in two, lying over the path or in the river. There was one resting on the corner of some unfortunate person's roof nearby. At some points the path was carpeted with fallen leaves, giving a whole new meaning to the term "green belt."




There is a "no swimming" sign planted by some of the small lakes that this path goes past.


I like the way that it manages to look as if it's OK to swim, as long as you don't expect to be happy. Or, Beware of Octopus.