TheCapeBlog

Woke up at 5. Tried everything – omeprazole, pepto, baking soda, alka seltzer, ice – was still hurting six hours later.

Ron heated up some soup for lunch. Drank some oat nog. Fingers crossed.

Fortunately, I have no chores today. Hoping we can make a jazz combo concert this evening at Williams College.

Weather has been exceptional: mild with no wind.

With the leaves gone, we have our obstructed mountain views back.

We stopped by the Bike Exchange last evening. They were closing early but stayed open long enough to let Ron see the Schwinn that interested me. We were invited to make an appointment to see it before the next open house in December.

So we will suffer with Project 2025 because millions of non-college graduate Americans had their feelings hurt by people they don’t know and will likely never meet.

I wonder how many of these boat-owning, SUV-driving not-so-juvenile delinquents with bleached blond wives could buy and sell us multiple times over.

In other words, where’s the beef?

Today I brought 10 bags of leaves to the transfer station in two trips.

Also stopped at the Food Pantry for produce and peanut butter.

I raked and bagged the leaves off the yard on the right side of the house and did a minor sweep of the driveway. Also vacuumed the living room and kitchen.

Chopped up veggies for soup, hoping Ron will cook. I’m beat.

The roofers were here for 5 hours and left around 2.

In addition to the leak they intended to fix they found another: the cap sheet hadn’t been run up the wall of the garage. Their supervisor spotted that one.

They built a cricket to deal with the first diagnosed leak.

Ron made an excellent main dish of Delicata squash and quinoa.

I cleaned roof detritus from the deck and finished leaf removal from the back yard.

I was able to give blood today. Ron was anemic, first time that happened. He took an iron pill when we got home.

Not much outside work today: I swept the driveway and the front walk and that was it.

No cooking, either. I tried to tie up loose ends, clean up emails and follow election news.

Received a check from my health insurance company. Now, that’s a new one!

I set the clocks back an hour.

When I got downstairs around 7:30, the temp in the house had dropped to 60.

I found the furnace reset button. Fortunately, we have good instructions for the controller. I held the button down for 15+ seconds and the furnace turned on.

We’ve been denied fuel assistance again. I’m trying to figure out how much we lost but can’t get that info from the LEAP office. We can get something from the Salvation Army as we did last year; anything helps although being disqualified is a blow because it would have come with other assistance.

We spent the afternoon “doing” leaves. Ran out of gas so Ron took the truck to Cumby. While he was gone, I emptied the lawnmower bag but didn’t put it back on securely, so it fell off just after Ron got the machine restarted. Of course he couldn’t crank it back to life again and was not too happy with me. He took a break, then got it going and finished the front.

A lot of work over two days. I’m very happy about that and amazed at how much we got done.

I was in a lot of pain last evening, left shoulder hurt, but am in better shape tonight.

Split the last enchilada and a salad for lunch, cauliflower pizza for supper.

We missed the South Williamstown brunch this morning. Ron was having bowel problems and strangely, the clock in the bedroom was an hour behind. Seems to have “fallen back” early instead of at 2 am tomorrow.

We picked up veg burgers and some nice pastry at the Williamstown Farmer’s Market.

Ron made scrambled eggs and I made a fruit salad for lunch. This was consolation for missing the brunch.

I raked the top of the driveway and then we went to the Store at Five Corners for the second anniversary of their current ownership. They’d set out a nice spread, hors d’oeuvres and hot mulled cider.

Ran into a member of our writer’s group and her husband. They saw some people they knew so I thought it was prudent of us to leave them to their friends.

When we got home, Ron mowed the whole left side of the house and over half of the back yard! I did more raking. Left shoulder hurt like the devil this evening, so Ron applied a salve which seems to have helped.

We will try to finish tomorrow, but honestly I’m amazed at what we, especially Ron, accomplished this afternoon. We hadn’t touched the left side yard and only raked the back yard once.

by Robert Frost

My sorrow, when she’s here with me,

Thinks these dark days of autumn rain

Are beautiful as days can be;

She loves the bare, the withered tree;

She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.

She talks and I am fain to list:

She’s glad the birds are gone away,

She’s glad her simple worsted grey

Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,

The faded earth, the heavy sky,

The beauties she so truly sees,

She thinks I have no eye for these,

And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know

The love of bare November days

Before the coming of the snow,

But it were vain to tell her so,

And they are better for her praise.

We have oil and the furnace is back in service. Paid the balance of what we owed. It took a year, but we/I did it.

I never knew that heating oil is dyed red.

Halloween came and went. Our next door neighbors were our only trick or treaters.

After two days of trying, Ron gave up on installing gutter guards. We had a massive, noisy fight about it.

I don’t understand how you can love someone and continue to hurt them when they’ve asked you to stop.

Yesterday the president of Williams College sat at my table at the Log Lunch, but there was no time to talk. I was surprised that the speaker’s table hadn’t reserved a seat for her.

I picked up a prescription at Walmart and got half-price deals on Snickers and leaf bags.

Swept the deck of leaves. The trees around us are almost all bare and we can see the mountains again.

Ron did a transfer station run to recycle five huge bags of paper!

I attended writers group and checked in at Town Hall about our property taxes, which are due on Friday.

Visited the Bike Collective in North Adams. I couldn’t balance on the first bike, so they attached it to a stand. Had difficulty pedaling, right knee hurt. Great people, beyond helpful and kind.

Picked up our produce at Wild Soul River.

Hard to think about anything but the election next week.

The prompt for today’s writing session was “It was an ordinary day until it wasn’t.”

As I recall, everyone else wrote about a day that ends badly: an almost drowning, an almost hunting accident, a son becoming very ill, a terrible accident resulting in multiple surgeries, an abusive father exploding because his daughter spoke her mind.

Ever the contrarian, I wrote about a cousin-by-adoption who won a million dollars on a scratch ticket and the more or less happy dilemmas he must have faced once he recovered from the initial shock.

It occurred to me that we have so many opportunities here for creativity: writing, drawing, songwriting. And that’s just a sample.

Yesterday I picked up Matt’s last check in Pittsfield and explored a couple of roads in New Ashford on the way back. There were people at his shop so I left the check with a gent who’d worked on our driveway.

The inspection by Modern Pest went pretty well, mice in only two spots, the basement and the garage.

Sent Matt photos of the rhodie and the fence.

We enjoyed a couple of hours of open mic at Studio 9. Rained a bit.

Signed us up for a songwriting workshop on November 9.