white pebble

  

Azalea bonsai, at my doctor’s office, originally uploaded by niehoff.

Update: Today I visited my oncologist due to increasing dizziness, wobbliness, etc. This is all due to the onset of the vitamin B12 deficiency I was/am due to develop because of me missing parts of my stomach.

Got the shot, extra fluids, etc. and just got home. Am doing fine. But I just wanted to share the above picture with y’all. This is an azalea bonsai, currently owned/cared for by my oncologist, who is also president of the local bonsai society. He says it’s about 70-80 years old. I don’t know about you all, but I take it as a definite benefit to have these aged, miniature flowering shrubberies (there was another, smaller, one in the treatment area) surrounding one.

Tags: bonsai, Cancer, flickr, health, picture

I spent the weekend having fun with my newfound B12 deficiency. No, it’s not serious yet, but I get out of breath easily and wobble a lot. I head out to the doctors this morning for a vitamin shot. They intend to look at my Vitamin D levels too, which leads me to think this is not a terribly simple problem.

I was promised this deficiency — I no longer have the part of the stomach that processes B12 — but am a bit unnerved by its actual appearance.

Fortunately, it’s May, and the weather can cheer me up. It promises to be a sunny day, but we’re also close enough to the river to be covered with fog as I write. Some of the sunlight filters through it already, and hits the sycamores’ bark. Things look almost better in this fog than in sunlight.

As long as it’s sunny, I’ll pretend I am broadminded and like all sorts of weather!

Tags: Cancer, fog, Monday

“Quarter Moon in a Ten Cent Town” (Emmylou Harris)

Happy dock at Antwerp, originally uploaded by niehoff.

The dock at Antwerp was happy to see us.

Patti at the Musee D’Orsay, originally uploaded by niehoff.

I visit a museum and see lots of paintings that I wish I could have in my very own living room. Oh well.

I also try to explain the camera’s workings to Buck, at the same time he tries to use the thing.

Musee D’Orsay, originally uploaded by niehoff.

We visit the Musee D’Orsay in Paris on our recent barge trip, and take the camera along. Other people had the same idea.

I think we here in Cincinnati are having a blackberry winter. Warm air has arrived, the daffodils are even mostly over, and most importantly for my breakfasting, blackberries have bloomed a bit wherever it is that they are (not here in my yard, unfortunately).

Now we have our cold snap. The boiler is back on, and 30° nights have returned. No more open windows, so at least the oak pollen doesn’t get to sneak back in.

Blackberry winter. A good thing to read.

Tags: spring, winter

Excellent article…

The sexist differences between the sexes - Telegraph
It is time, says Pinker, to stop thinking of men as the ‘default’ setting and women as variants of the norm, when advances in brain imaging and genetic mapping confirm fundamental genetic, neurological and psychological differences between the two sexes.

Nothing woke me up at this hour, and of course, I can’t figure out which particular nothing that was. Maybe it was the noiseless neighborhood coyotes sliding through the neighborhood, waking Sophie and causing her to bark. Or it could have been the raccoons who taunt her from the porch sometimes.

I have lain awake for a while, listening, but no good. Not even attenuated highway noises are reaching the windowsill.

Saw a warbler yesterday, briefly, which Sophie tried to attack. Hope it’s still nearby.

But here I am left, just before dawn, with no noise, no coyotes, no nothing.

Tags: nothing

The cats woke me up starting around 6 this morning. They did so, of course, solely so I could be out blogging early and bright, just like I am now. Doling out cat food to 2 separate dishes had nothing to do with it.

This is also the beginning of windows-open weather here in Cincinnati. I now have fresh air, birdsong, and load upon load of oak pollen wafting in to me here at the keyboard. Far more birdsong than I can identify at a casual listen. Enough oak pollen to leave a dusty film over everything.

Cats now back asleep.

Tags: birds, cats, nature

Boats in canal, Delft, The Netherlands, originally uploaded by niehoff.

This is one of many pictures from my recent trip. I took this from a bridge crossing one canal in the city of Delft, where they make the famous china.

I am far enough into the second bottle of antibiotics that I can feel human and do normal things. I can eat breakfast, for instance, or write a blog piece. All this feels wondrous and new to me.

Spring is well underway here. It had barely started 10 days ago when we got back from Paris. Only a very few trees showed leaf buds, but buds are all around now, thickening out the trees around the house.

I think I might try and take a picture or two for y’all later.

Tags: spring

Cancer doctor visit last Friday; all is good there, but he gave me an extra antibiotic for the lingering cough from my bronchitis. This particular medicine is doing the trick, and I was healthy enough today to get my permanent veneers installed. They look like teeth; they are teeth!

My smile is creeping up on that of Angelina Jolie, She better watch out.

Tags: Cancer, dentist, health

I have not been writing just because I was jet-lagged, but because, since our day tour of Bruges, Belgium. Now I have to say that Bruges is a wonderful little town that could benefit from some sunshine and lack of rain.

However, I froze half to death. If we had not ducked into a souvenir shop for a sweatshirt, I wouldn’t have made it through the end of the tour. Since then, I have never been quite well: a slowly drawn-out process involving fevers and coughs and muscles torn from coughing so hard.

Now I start to feel human, so now I can get back to my usual antics.

Tags: colds, flu, travel

Where I am right now: Paris. And no, not Paris, Kentucky
We spent a week on a barge in Belgium and Holland with some friends, floating around and, for me at least, trying to eat too much. I don’t want to start losing weight. No, we can’t have that, can we?

Then, Buck wanted to run in the Paris marathon. He ran the last half of it, got his medal, and is very pleased with himself, as you can see in the picture in the post preceding this. Now we just hang out in Paris, thinking of things to do.

Today, we went to see Sainte Chapelle, which I have wanted to see since around 1975 or so. I kept arriving at times when the place was closed, or with cranky teenaged boys in tow, or both. Today, we corrected all that, and I spent a long time staring at the best windows in the world.

So, how was your day?

Tags: Paris, travel

I shall be offline for about 2 weeks. I’m taking the laptop, but have no idea when/where I’ll be able to connect. I’m not even sure I brought all the right adapters…

Tags: travel

Don’t you just love it when I put up a seasonal header image? I do like this one of all the narcissi lined up just so. Makes me wish I’d grown them myself, it does.

I have similar goings on in my own garden, but with daffodils. Not quite the same thing as in the header image, but bright and yellow and oh how I missed them!

So, enjoy the narcissi, and the springtime where you are. I’m listening to some David Byrne and Brian Eno — “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts”.

Tags: blogging, spring

Easter arrives cold and gray, just like it usually does around these parts. I figure that the weather is here to spite the fact that at least one of my daffodils has bloomed, and my friend up the street’s orange crocuses are in full flower. Nevertheless, spring is officially here now, with Easter, according to my personal calendar. And fun must be had. Too bad that Peter, at 22, is too old for an easter egg hunt.

What do I propose to do today? I may slink off to church for an actual service. Yes, for those who have been paying attention, that’s not something I’d normally do, which would be to figure out if I have any chametz left in the house.

Current state of soul right now: undefined, of inconclusive directions, given the clues available. That’s usually the state of things, though, when the rabbi you’ve been working with for years turns out to have been a crazy, mixed up, lying little bugger all along.

But enough about me… How is your day shaping up so far?

Tags: confusion, nature, religion, Spirit, spring, thought

OP, Sally & I go shopping, originally uploaded by niehoff.

Tags: Boulder, photo