I’ve joined something called the “Vermont 251 Club.”  The goal is to visit each of the 251 towns in Vermont.  There are no rules.  If you pay dues to join, you get to use their not-very-good website.  Here’s my home page.  I paid extra to buy a scrapbook.  It’s spiral bound and lined and lists every town with a quarter page or more for taking notes.  I’m printing out actual physical copies of my pictures and pasting them in.  Yeah, with glue!  I don’t know, I’m down on the entire Internet these days.  I didn’t want this silly little project to be just another collection of selfies floating around.  I wanted an artifact.  And not all the pictures are even going to be selfies.  Was a time when people just took pictures of what was around them.  I don’t have to prove to anyone I was in each town.  I know I was there and the project is my own little game.

 

 

OMG, as per my paperbound page-a-day journal, last year I ALSO resolved to smile more and do otherwise no self-improvement whatsoever in the year ahead!  This proves what BS self-improvement is – you can’t even improve yourself by resolving not to improve yourself!

 

1.  Spend less time with people.
2. Ignore your weight.
3. Enjoy the best of everything.
4. Follow your passions.
5. Ask yourself constantly, what if this were enough?
6. Smile in public.  You look less like a miserable old lady.
7. Journal.

I did the whole tree today including the lights.  X has done the lights for two decades.  I guess he’s retired.  I did them.  They look fine.

I don’t know how to describe my mojo today.  Low mojo.  But not an existential crisis.  Just low mojo.  It’s like having a cold.

We went to Simple Roots Brewing for beer & Pie Empire Pie.  Then downtown, bought a couple of gifts.  Then dessert downtown.  Too much inedible buttercream.

I love going downtown.  We used to go nearly every weekend.   Now, there are so many other choices.  Maybe I love being downtown because I was young there?  Or because I’ll always miss an urban environment?

And so largely melancholy today… but we came home, with the tree lit up, and damn it looks nice.

 

A cat I’m taking care of.

I sat down to work as usual this morning, and after about a half hour, noticed that the tip of my right ring finger was half-numb and tingly.  It bothered me enough that I looked up numb finger on the internet, and I was assured that it was most likely carpal tunnel.

As lunchtime approached, I had thoughts about digging out my carpal tunnel wrist brace, but couldn’t help but notice that finger looked blue between the joints.  I don’t think my finger should be blue.  Carpal tunnel is about nerves; this looked to be about blood flow.

I had lunch and went out and fed goats, and the cold made my finger even number.  When I came in, whereas the rest of my fingers and me were rather red from the cold, this finger was white.

I went down and walked on my treadmill for a half hour.  This eliminated all symptoms.  But they gradually came back over the course of the afternoon.

I have been wearing a ring on this finger for over 20 years.  I obviously took it off at the first sign of trouble this morning; but it wasn’t at all tight.

I also have had this feeling in this fingertip before, now and then, briefly; but it was generally when out feeding goats in the cold; and coming inside was enough to make it go away.

In the past I’ve chalked it up to most likely damaging a blood vessel in my finger from carrying pails of water.  The pails that don’t have ergonomic handles, that are just a wire handle, can really dig into your fingers when the pails are full of water.  But I haven’t lifted a pail of water all week.

Still, I suppose I COULD have damaged something somehow without realizing it; and it’ll heal within a day or two.

I wish that it were easier to get medical opinions.  What if your health insurance provided you with a phone number and a pin number; and you could call the number, provide your pin, and you would be validated and your co-pay charged.  Then you could tell a doctor or nurse your long sad story, and they could give you their opinion.  And the whole thing would be about 20 minutes long.  Wouldn’t that be great?