So contemplate for a moment the non-existence of god. Contemplate a materialist worldview, “above us only sky.” Everything you perceive with your senses – that’s all there is.

What has been gelling for me lately during silent non-verbal moments of contemplation is: Tom + Vera = Me. That’s all there is.

It’s not that putting the nail in the coffin of the Mystery answers the nature/nurture question for me so much as it renders it moot. How much does our environment shape our personality? Well, what is a “personality”? Contemplate for a moment the possibility that there’s no such thing. There’s just a bunch of stuff people do.

If “this” (squeezes bit of skin between fingers) is all there is, then I know now precisely “who I am.”

And incidentally, behind the scenes during all of this drama and contemplation have silently stood two people: John & Barbara. And it occurs to me how none of this has the slightest bit to do with them. It seems unfortunate that we do not have separate words for “the woman who gave birth to you” and “the guy who fertilized her ovum” vs. “the female primarily involved in raising you” & “the male primary involved in raising you.” They are just mother and father, at best modified as “biological” mother & father and “adoptive” mother & father. But they are so entirely different.

There’s a funny black wasp in this picture; shiny with some blue going on.

I’m supposed to go back to work tomorrow & I don’t remember what I do for a living.

What does CBDC stand for again?

From the department of “Well I Should Hope So,” a perfect day drinking blood-orange gose with the cedar waxwings out back at Hogback Mountain Brewing, then biking the awe-inspiring Bristol-Monkton road, got my mojo working again. The Vermont biking just stones me to my soul. Stones me just like jelly roll.

Today I’m prepping for weaving school – trying to get a head start on what the warp will look like, even though I know they will spell it all out for me when I get there; and refreshing my memory on some of their tips and tricks. Glad I bought the handbook.

Look forward to some gorgeous weaving pix this week!

So X has been taking apart the Prius bit by bit, because there is a terrible mouse smell in it. We brought it to the mechanic to see if they could remove the dash and clean the vents, but they told us it wasn’t coming from the vents, so we don’t know what to do. Since in this state it is a total loss and probably a health hazard, I told X he could just rip it apart, take an axe to it if he’d like, and get his frustrations out and maybe solve the problem in the process if we’re lucky.

Today is a stunner of a day – dry, high sixties – and we are going bike&brewing. I’m in the middle of a 2 week vacation. Life’s perfect and yet I’ve had this low level depression. X has too, maybe more than usual. He suggested maybe we should get tested for covid. Then he nixed that idea when I started seriously considering it. I don’t know, the ennui of everything being perfect? The ennui of being 52 and having no more mysteries left to solve? Being old? X says there’s nothing more to look forward to. Just tiny joys. I know that when you get old you have to make sure that you still have goals and things to live for. But nothing you can come up with seems important anymore. Struggling to earn a livelihood and gain a footing in the world, that was important. The sheep & wool fair, I don’t know.

Couldn’t resist that.

I know to everyone else this is just a really fun story, but for me, it’s my life. Just show some gentleness with regard to my emotions.

The Italians have a saying, I recently learned: “A fat pope follows a thin pope.”

A good sleep night follows a bad sleep night.

A good neck day follows a bad neck day.

A happy day follows an unhappy day.

So if you’re happy, be happy. And if you’re unhappy, be happy, because tomorrow you’ll probably be happy.

Even on a drizzly day (yesterday) we manage to pull a great outing out of Vermont including biking, brewing, & beauty.

Imagine there’s a parallel life where you didn’t spit in the tube for ancestry at all. Imagine another where you did but wasn’t able to track anyone down. Imagine another where you tracked people down but nobody answered you. Imagine another where you did not have somebody pushing for you & biodad to meet next week. Imagine another where he refused to come.

Imagine one where he backs out next week. Imagine one where he comes and you hit it off beautifully and you gain a new friend and some great new stories. Imagine one where he comes and you can’t relate to him at all. Imagine one where he comes and he stinks (thanx Sara) or he asks for a kidney (thanx Ruth). Now imagine one where he comes and everything is just kind of middle of the road.

So, this is the parallel life you’re in right now. All the dominoes clicked to have you very close to meeting your sperm donor very soon. Which life will this turn out to be?

My garden is now an adolescent – pretty much able to take care of itself.

String beans, a row of green & a row of yellow…

Cherry & grape tomatoes, various… I forget what I ordered…

I know it basically looks like a jungle, but that’s the way (uh huh uh huh) I like it (uh huh uh huh).

The view from Bent Hill Brewery. This is a great place, but talk about the middle of nowhere – Braintree, VT, way up a dirt road with no commercial activity around for miles. I find that you cannot throw a rock in Vermont without hitting a beautiful place. Every place in the world has at least little pockets of beauty. We have rolling hills and mountains of it. I was drawn to want to try this brewery when I heard about the great variety of styles they have (an appropriate number of IPA’s – maybe 3 out of the dozen offerings, thank you!), and that their taproom menu was fully vegetarian. It is still my preference to eat low on the food chain. However, as I’ve been telling people, I’m finding it harder to do lately – Xopher recently got some blood work results telling him to lower his saturated fat intake, so there goes all the cheese I like to put on things. Dairy fat & refined carbs are usually what make vegetables a meal, and they aren’t as healthy as certain birds and fishies. Finally, it was a lot easier to cook solely vegetarian at home when it was winter – surprised, since it’s summer that offers all the fresh vegetative matter? Well, three reasons: split pea soup; black bean soup; and mushroom barley soup. These were all great go-to veg meals in winter, but I just don’t want to make soup in the summer.

But I digress. Back to beauty. I tried to find an official kind of bike, rec, or rail trail in the vicinity of Braintree to no avail. So I just used a map and found a loop we could do that was 8 miles and didn’t look too hilly. It was in fact too hilly but I am better at hills than I used to be. And it was such a beautiful and peaceful ride, on the Randolph-Braintree border. It’s so amazing to be able to just pull out the gazetteer and make your own journey and trust it will very likely be fabulous. I love you, my state!