blurry around the edges?

Dreamscape. That's what it feels like, the bubble I'm living in, ok in the morning, achey and sometimes painful in the afternoons and evenings. Each day I take on one or two things. Yesterday, I made bread for the first time in a while. It hurt to move the cast iron dutch ovens in and out of the oven...but the fresh whole wheat bread was satisfying. Good tasting, and I haven't been that into eating, so that was worth it.

This morning, it was running errands...on a very small scale. I went to pick up our vegetables for the week. During the winter, we're lucky to be able to buy locally grown, fresh vegetables that are grown under large hoops, sort of like cold frame farming. It's the opposite of buying from the grocery store, driving 5 miles to a farm just outside of town, visiting with the farmers, meeting their cats and dogs, and writing a check for something that was grown right near by, without pesticides or chemicals. I came home with several heads of lettuce, 3 lbs of new potatoes, tatsoi, and broccoli. Sometimes I'm in the rotation to get some of the coveted winter eggs (hens don't lay a lot this time of year) and if I'm lucky, I'm offered a bunch of baby carrots, a couple of carefully nurtured tomatoes or another treat...rare because it hasn't been shipped from anywhere, sheltered from cold and grown right here.

By the time I stopped for milk, and went to the drug store, that was it for the day. Whew. Wiped out. The day feels hazy, warm, blurry around the edges. At home, I submerge my nose in the fur of my dogs as I pet them, that special musky smell that each dog has. The smells of each are distinctive, different. They smell the "invaders" who I visited with on the farm on my pants' legs. The greens, brightly irridescent in a way that only just picked produce offers, glimmer as I put the bag in the refrigerator.

Writers are supposed to read a lot, and that's what I tell myself as I dive headlong into Diana Abu-Jaber's new book, Origin. I drink milky tea, fondle yarn, wool, and dogs' ears as I walk by, to cuddle back into my bed clothes. My attention span is pretty short, so I knit just a bit in the evenings, and my spinning wheels are idle until it isn' t such work to treadle. I'll keep working during this break, and keep editing and writing things to send on to my editor, so that Fiber Gathering is a reality in just over a year, but maybe just not today. My brain hasn't stopped. The rest, the body? is on a bit of a strange journey. Home feels ok, and an hour's worth of errands seems about as far away as I want to physically go.

My heart feels light when I think of all the kindnesses sent my way, thoughts, prayers, and messages, while I retreat here. I look at the comments, look at those dots on the map, and feel connected to all of you, even while things here are quiet and I'm resting with dogs, alone.