Thanksgiving

Today marks a week of living with Shingles. Our younger son arrived back home in Vancouver from his week-end canoe-camping trip along the Skagit River, said the temperature dropped to minus-4 at night, but it was beautiful out there, the ivy maples (whoever heard of ivy maples?) were bright red, and he picked up some fascinating 'rocks' on the beach, one of which, about two inches, and round, had a hole drilled right in the centre. He plans to take it along to the museum of anthropology, will send along a few others, included with his latest pottery.

Wanted to know how I felt. I told him that when last we spoke I felt like hell warmed over. At the present time I look like hell warmed over, and for a special bonus still feel like it, albeit slightly reduced. I have an idea now what it's like to live with a Frankenstein-face. Hard to look directly at myself in the mirror, and it's irritating beyond belief to have my husband peer closely at me to try to ascertain whether I seem to be improving. I have a kind of Mongolian look about me now; eyes slit, deep pouches beneath, forehead extraordinarily pronounced.

I give thanks that I am surviving. Acetaminophen has been of great assistance. I have one more day of medication, and then I'm on my own. Instead of cleaning the house, today, I only played at it, did the vacuuming, counted on the kitchen and bathroom cleaning I'd indulged in yesterday to count for today. Baked a pumpkin pie and got the spices just right. Cooked giblets for a gravy. Baked a really beautiful-looking squash, and prepared a mixture of garlic cloves, yam and yellow potatoes to go along with the turkey. We also had tiny fresh cucumbers, grape tomatoes and snow peas.

After our ravine walk in the early afternoon, I even managed to get out into the backyard to do two huge bags worth of compost collection, cutting back perennials, digging up annuals. Stuffing them into the bags, and sticking the bags under the deck, until collection day. The perennials are spent, the annuals defeated by the minus-four-degrees of frost we experienced last night. I hardly made a dent in the amount of work that has to be done, preparing the gardens for winter; just in the backyard, never mind the front gardens. Hoping that the following few days will be kind, weather wise, and feeling-wise, so I can get out there and do my stuff.

Hoping too that no one gets to see me up close and too personal for the time being. Because it's been cold and windy I've had to clap a cloche over the top of my head, and put on sunglasses - to protect my irritated, red and miserable scalp, the forehead area, and my eyes from the elements. The sunglasses and the cloche do a fairly respectable cover-up job as well. People have to really peer kind of close to get the shock of their lives; the visage of some disgusting troll run amok in the ravine. My energy level has been somewhat impaired, so that trudging up those hills takes their toll, and I've got to rest.

Because it's Thanksgiving week-end (yesterday we had a really terrific fish chowder, I put a real melange of shellfish and whitefish into the chowder; it was comforting and hot on a windy, cold autumn day) we've seen an inordinate number of people tromping through the ravine. Yesterday it was so cold and windy, despite sunny intervals that we had wool sweaters on Button and Riley, and we experienced freezing rain and some snow, whoopee! The rain and wind of the last few days has brought down an amazing burden of leaves, leaving trees looking kind of bare. The trails have been completely blanketed over with bright confetti-leaf-offerings; an autumn patch-work quilt.

All of which brings home to us the reality that life is good, and it goes on, and the seasons repeat themselves unendingly, and for all of this and much, much more we are extraordinarily fortunate.