The Romance of the Early Unsuitable Match in Everyday Ramblings

I used a similar photo of this hellebore in my weekly reminder to my students last week. I took this one a few days after that one when I showed the plant to Mrs. Sherlock in person. The color is so lovely, that ruby red, and the useful positioning of the plant so one can see the flowers instead of them drooping over, as hellebores are wont to do. A few blocks later on our walk we saw some black ones.

That would make a dramatic early spring display, a mound with them.

My garden plot does not have a mound. It is an idea perhaps for future years. I have planted things this early here in prior years but no way this year.

It is still too cold. Close to freezing this morning, no rain or snow though. Yet, how would I know, the statistics that have been publicly available for years and years on our local rain gauges placed all around town are no longer being updated.

Thanks Elon.

Having gone to all the trouble to get rid of my black plastic spatula after reading the alarming article in the Atlantic during the holidays, and buying a big beautiful cast iron skillet so that I could use a stainless steel spatula safely and not be as concerned about microplastics, it turns out the study the article was based on had a major math error and black plastic spatulas aren’t that bad after all.

Mine was getting kind of grotty after more years than I dare mention, so it’s all okay, and I love the way tortillas heat up in the cast iron pan but still…it was quite an influential article to have that kind of error in it. Glad someone is checking the math. Eventually.

We do the best we can with the information we have, I guess. The cast iron folks are happy and there will be more skillets to hand down to the next generation. And a sub-measurable amount less microplastics in the environment.

I have been staying away from Facebook (and Instagram) since Zuckerberg started getting cozy with certain individuals and was disconcerted to check yesterday to find that my 76-year-old ex-husband had been quite ill. In ICU on a breathing tube ill.

They were able to take the tube out day before yesterday and he is talking, so there is hope but wow, he came close to not making it.

He is a wonderful guy. I know that is an unusual thing for an ex-wife to say but it is true. I don’t regret marrying him, I learned a lot. I got a new last name. The big thing I learned was that I wasn’t suited to be a more traditional wife. He was interested in me because I was a nontraditional person and yet when it came down to it, I thought I could make it work, and he realized more traditional is what he wanted.

Ah, the romance of the early unsuitable match… it lingers for him, so I keep my distance as he is much better off where he is, and I have managed a not dull life. He has a ton of friends, so many people love him and that is a magical thing.

It was shocking to see a picture of him this ill. But then at the same time, feeling deeply for what his current more traditional wife and the mother of his son is going through there is some “there but for the grace go I” thing going on in my head.

Been there with Mr. Finch. Done that. Over it.

We both smoked when we were together. I wonder how long he kept it up. I stopped 38 years ago and am so grateful that I did.

I wish them all well. This must be so hard to get through. It sounds like he is getting good care, and I hope that continues. He is very engaged in liberal politics, and I am not surprised that the news of the last six weeks may have pushed his health over the edge.

The saying that elections have consequences seems like rather an understatement lately, it seems to me. The stories of lives cruelly upended are only beginning to come out now.

As I prepare myself for more shocks, I am also preparing for the garden year. There is solace to be found there, truly there is.

I’ll just carry on being unsuitable with my hands wrist deep in the warming earth.