Kaleidoscopic Topics

As I come back out to the balcony, having refilled my coffee, there's a breeze that makes me shiver for a moment, but it's supposed to go up to the low 60s today before raining heavily tonight.  Now is the window of opportunity in the weather indeed, and there are times lately when it can seem like the exhilaration comes only a few hours per year.  It used to be I could walk out of my house and see stars galore in a winter night, and so not even mind the perpetual darkness, but that was when Jamesie and I were in our 20s, young enough to live in a fixer-upper of a house and deal with repairs as they came (skimping on them, it's true, as well as scrimping for them).  Now I know we'll probably never get those stars back because we'll probably be stuck here in this Third floor condo which, while it has nice sunset views, really leaves me craving a way to view time stars during long winter nights because we don't have a way to view them that is safe from traffic, an...

I haven't blogged much because it seems like a lot of work to get photos downloaded onto my smartphone, then go over to the laptop to download them, and then back to my smartphone if I want to seize the window of opportunity to leave my actual balcony window open (with the screen door shut, of course) and sit out here, pink flannel nightgown to match the magnolia blossoms along one tree in a still mostly gray background of other tree branches - and bright yellow forsythia, and a little shy like green on a some trees in the background of a yard across the street.  The tree outside our bedroom window in the morning shows the first angles of reddish buds if I look closely, but most of all the birds are squalling and tweeting their conversation.  My cat hears it too, and lies rolling on the rug just inside the screen door, biting his toy fish, one of the few toys he has left that has the idea level of flimsiness because I haven't darned it too much.  It's the kind of day when...