Tag: Life

Keeping a clean desktop?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Here’s one filing system I used, back when dealing with piles of paper:

File

Toss

Act

Delegate

Haven’t quite figured out an alternative for online “piles” yet. Guess they’re “files” on the screen that’s erroneously called a “desktop.”

Last time I looked, my laptop was sitting on the real desktop.

And I’ve still been getting by without a printer.

Any ideas on how to keep those incoming emails and texts from getting lost in the clutter?

 

A big comfy place for reading?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

As we anticipate the renovations to our new old house, one of the big touches I realize I’m missing is a really comfy place to sit while reading. I’m admitting I never really had that in our old place, not until we got the lights above the pillows in bed, but even those were too hot for comfort and the lack of back support took a toll.

So here are the specifications:

  • The seating has to be comfy, for starters. A puffy chair with good backing heads the list, likely with an ottoman.
  • It has to have a small table or other service to hold a cup of coffee or glass of refreshment, plus pencils and maybe a notebook.
  • Lighting is crucial – my wife hates table lamps, at least the ones with lampshades, as well as floor lamps. I hate overhead lighting, in general. So I want something that brightens the page while making the space intimate. We’ll see what we come up with.

I’m assuming it will be in the parlor where the wood-fired stove will sit. The big question now is just, where, exactly they’ll fit.

~*~

I do wonder, by the way, why nobody sells dental chairs as home furniture. These days, they’re quite cozy and seem to contort themselves to everyone’s fit. Any ideas? I’m not sure they’re exactly what I envision for reading, but in front of that giant home screen? Or just for a snooze?

In case you’re considering a pet rabbit

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 6 Comments

You’ve been seeing our duo, Salty and Pepper. Before that were Boo, especially, and Widgeon.

Now, for some details on the species.

  1. Officially, they’re lagomorphs, though we find their chewing habits resemble rodents – you know, beavers, when it comes to wood. You’ve been warned.
  2. Existing as an animal of prey, meaning a food source, makes them skittish. Boo, though, came to be a lap rabbit, sitting for hours in her someone special’s lap.
  3. In short spurts, they can zip along at up to 45 miles an hour. As ours do when they’re first out of their cage in the morning.
  4. In general, they’re silent. They don’t bark or meow or anything like that, though Salty has a whiffling snore while dozing. You’d think she’s in pain, but she’s not.
  5. They’re meticulously clean and can be potty trained, like a cat.
  6. Their ability to jump straight up, from all four legs, and twist and spin about in the air is called binky.
  7. Born covered in fur, they can run from the start.
  8. Their teeth and nails never stop growing.
  9. They cannot vomit, which requires us to be careful in what we feed them. Even when they seem to eat almost everything we offer them. That, by the way, has been an incentive for more attentive weeding on my part. Those weeds suddenly become bunny treats, and watching those greens be so assiduously devoured is quite amusing.
  10. They’re cute and soft, mostly.

 

Looking at the closet

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

First off, I should explain that few old houses in New England actually have much by way of closets. So I’m actually talking today more about personal wardrobe and style.

One of my long-term planning notes was this, for my shift into retirement:

Focused look: new jeans (black/green/gray); sandals (fewer socks; also, they travel better); blazers for the pockets.

What actually emerged was quite different.

I shifted from denim jeans to tan cargo pants, for their pockets, especially.

Instead of my customary oxford shirts, I wore turtlenecks in winter, and Aloha shirts in summer. (I still largely avoid T-shirts.)

Instead of that blazer, I rely on a messenger bag to hold my reading glasses, cell phone, emergency cardiac prescription, choral music scores, and so on.

My style, such as it is, has emerged from yard sales, mostly. These days my focus is on wearing them till they give out while also downsizing. You’d be surprised how many compliments I get.

Oh, Jody

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

after three months I recognized the true nature of dining hall menus in their two-week cycle of institutional perdition now I’ve revolted by way of vegetarian practice and straight from the garden gratitude for herbs and spices, sauces, flavored vinegar, pressed oils, the religious dimensions of feasting and fasting as well as prohibitions, there are reasons apart from snobbery no wines accompanied those dinners, after all, what do kids know and who would teach of goodness : as in what God saw as good, as in good to eat? and so it was, grace before vittles / sweet tasty dreams

So much for one game plan

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

As I’ve been revisiting my earlier planning for retirement, I started to scold myself for not looking more carefully at finances. Then I remembered something I had anticipated but never noted: adding an overtime shift or two each month during my final five years of employment.

For years, management always seemed to have those openings, and the pay was good – time-and-a-half, often with a nighttime or weekend differential.

In the last five years, the kids would be on their own, for one thing. We would really build up our savings – by 25 to 50 percent, as I’m now calculating.

What happened instead was that the newspaper found itself increasingly financially strapped, to the point our pay was actually being cut. Officially, I was the copy desk chief, except that in the end there were no longer copy editors. They were all wearing other hats as positions consolidated. As for those overtime hours? We agreed to allow the hiring of part-timers.

So much for the big plan.

At least the stock market hadn’t crashed when my wife and I closed out our IRA to purchase the house in Maine.

I might as well get out of bed

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Once again, another disturbing dream pushed me out of a restful sleep. It kept returning, with new twists.

It’s been nearly a decade since I last designed and paginated a newspaper page or faced its deadline pressure or even dealt with kinks in the paper’s latest computer system, but the game keeps popping up in my slumber – a game I’m also always on the verge of losing.

Why that and not, say, invading armies or insects or storms when it comes to anything verging on nightmares?

What are your repeated dreams?

Ways this move was easier than others in my life

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I’m not counting the few times I relocated across town. I mean the big moves, from one state to another, even from one part of the country to another.

You already know my fondness for Dover – and I have been intensely loyal to some of the locales I’ve made home but not others – yet this transfer of fidelity has been rather startling in its speed.

Dover? That was the address I had longest anywhere, edging out my native Dayton. Yet the 300-mile leap from Dover to Eastport was a breeze in comparison to the others I’d done. It’s rather perplexed both my wife and me.

Here are a few factors.

  1. We needed to downsize, and our house and garden and stuffed barn were more than we could keep up with. Quite simply, they were weighing on us, not just emotionally but especially when we looked at our bank balance.
  2. I had been to Eastport. Apart from Dover, where I had been worshiping as a Quaker, the previous moves had dropped me in as a total stranger. I hadn’t even visited Indiana University until showing up as a student in the middle of my sophomore year. Well, there was my return as a research associate, this time with a wife and a duplex rental on the other side of town. I hadn’t even been to Binghamton, New York, for a job interview.
  3. Eastport had a few things I was anticipating. Quoddy Head State Park had rekindled a sense of wilderness I’d left behind in the Pacific Northwest 40 years earlier. And the local choir had a repertoire much like our Revelsingers in Boston. Plus, I had been to the small Quaker Meeting and worked in projects with one of its outstanding members.
  4. I wasn’t alone. Eastport started out as my elder daughter’s wild dream, soon supported by my wife. Where else could we afford to live so close to the ocean? Back to downsizing, but as a whole-family venture. No more Lone Ranger sans Tonto, even if I was coming up as the vanguard. Their visits were festive occasions.
  5. We weren’t doing it all in one fell swoop but rather in stages. For the first four months, I was commuting back to New Hampshire almost weekly as we prepared our old house to market – meaning largely decluttering and cleaning. On this end, we still need to make renovations before filling this place with goods now in storage. Frankly, I’m enjoying doing more with less.
  6. Emotionally, Covid had already distanced me from many connections. I wasn’t swimming daily, for one thing, so that part of my routine wasn’t severed. I hadn’t even seen my pool buddies or the lifeguards for the better part of a year. We Quakers were worshiping and conducting business by Zoom, and I could keep that connection going a while longer. I was even getting together monthly online with Dover’s religious leaders and a Seacoast writers’ schmooze.
  7. Being in the middle of a big writing project gave me a crucial focus and meant the solitude on this end was welcome. Normally, access to libraries would be essential to what I was investigating, but I found rare resources in my computer searches and downloads. Yes, times have changed.
  8. There was no accompanying sense of failure or betrayal. My job hadn’t been terminated or taken an unacceptable turn – gee, that could lead to another Tendrils! (You know, the modern American workplace – see my novel Hometown News for examples.) I didn’t even have a new job to confront – what a relief! My lover hadn’t just dumped me or failed to reconnect when I arrived, and I wouldn’t be searching for love, either. Nor had I left paradise for an industrial or suburban wasteland.
  9. I’ve enjoyed exploring with an eye for what I’d introduce to the others on their visits. And meeting some fascinating new folks, likewise. I still feel I’m living in a real-life Northern Exposure.
  10. Well, there were moments of feeling exiled, like “What have I done wrong,” but they were soon countered by reclaiming some of my independence. I’d gotten spoiled, as far as food goes, and not really cooked anything for two decades, other than lighting the grill or popping something in the microwave. (Well, there was a fried rice that impressed one of our Chinese guests.) But now our morning phone calls have included cooking advice and insights. That sort of thing. I’ve been pleased with my dinners, even the ones I wouldn’t serve anyone else, should I have to. As for exile? Nah, I’ve never felt more comfortable anywhere.