Owlet of Bliss

Not blogging last night due to a last-minute flurry of emails with a friend I'd been critiquing for. He completed the story, and I'm so happy for his achievement. Loved the revised ending, too. Meanwhile, I had been making cookies for the Sparrowhawk. They were invented by our old friend Wol, back in the days when our families lived next door to each other, and we used to trade off dinners and desserts. They're based on a Tollhouse chocolate chip recipe, but with reduced flour, and extra egg, and added oatmeal and coconut. They can be a bit crumbly, but are crispy and then chewy due to the coconut. I hadn't baked them in years and was pleased to rediscover them.

Today it was over 80 degrees!! It's unnatural, I tell you. I finally got myself out to do yard work. I trimmed and bagged up quite a pile of dry stalks from the autumn clematis, so now it is semi-presentable again. Then I dug up a whole lot of thistles. But not enough. There are always more. I didn't do as much as I wanted to. I am unhappy because it seems that the Going Chronic process has taken another step in a bad direction. Lately my joints ache even when I haven't really been doing anything. It makes things like getting down to weeding level difficult. Also my hands have started hurting when I do things like unscrewing the coffee thermos or picking up a cast-iron pan with one hand. Meh. I shall blame it on the changing weather and maintain a stout belief that everything will be back to normal in no time. Also, Fitbit is convinced that I only slept for 4 hours and 44 minutes. I'm pretty sure that's not true, but if it is, that might have affected things as well. While applying leverage to one particular tough thistle root, I broke the end off my trowel. Oops. When I was a child, my father used to refer to me as "powerful Katrinka." I thought this was rude at the time, but I have to admit it was not without its logic.

The wind is rampaging through the trees. The frogs, undaunted, are trilling away in the dark.