recovering

enjoying the companionship of kittens, even if they spend most of their time swinging from the curtains and not cuddling with me.

it looks like the surgery was a success - the nerve pain is gone, the numbness in my left knee is fading fast and there's no pain in my left leg anymore, aside from a few twinges today which i interpret as a sign of healing. the only place that hurts right now is the site of my actual incision and it confines me more to my bed than i would like. i've been dutifully doing my assigned exercises and going for short walks. it was actually sunny today and it's a balmy 9°C/50°F out there.

i went out and soaked up some vitamin D and captured my long, tall winter shadow, before going back in and resting. standing is ok and lying down is ok, but sitting up is a challenge. as i type this, i'm more of less 3/4 of the way prone, since it's very hard to find a comfortable way to sit with my incision. but it's already itching, so i know that it's healing and it's only a matter of time.

someone is still trying to teach me that lesson in patience and maybe i'm finally getting it.

the winter (and the service) that wasn't

i was driving a small back road today, just for a change of pace and unexpectedly came upon the tørskind grusgrav sculpture park. we've been there before, so it shouldn't have been so unexpected. i was just coming at it from the other way, so i didn't realize i was on that road. it's dramatic enough, being out there in the middle of nowhere, but there was something even more dramatic about it on this dreary, snowy, tho' now drizzling rain, melting fast sort of a day (it seems real winter will never come this year). it also helped the drama that there wasn't anyone else there. i did make this picture black & white in iPhoto, but i very nearly didn't need to, as the scene itself was quite starkly black and white.

i tried to go to the tax office, new contract in hand, to file the changes to my taxes for the coming year and i found out that they do not allow visits anymore. you can actually no longer talk to a real, live person who works for the danish tax authorities in person without a letter from god. one of the nice employees came to the door as i was standing there, reading their microscopic sign, bewildered at the concept. she all but admitted that it was quite ridiculous. she said i could call and have someone help me on the phone. i asked if anyone would really answer and she said, "if you're lucky." i suppose it's a money-saving measure to save on actually staffing the tax offices with qualified people who are able to answer your questions. if you can just have a couple of phone answerers trained to do that, then you've undoubtedly saved a lot of money. but i find it yet another example of the utterly dismal attitude towards being service-minded in this country.  and it's rather disappointing because we do indeed pay an awful lot of tax.

mossy wonderlands

i know with the states in the throes of an extreme cold snap, it seems a little out of place to complain about mild temperatures (our forecast high for tomorrow is 10°C/50°F) , but i really think we could use a bit of winter. however, yesterday afternoon, when i went down to the forest to help husband load up a bunch of firewood he'd been working on, i was happy to have my camera along and happy the landscape wasn't covered in snow, because it meant these amazing little mossy wonderlands were there to see if you were willing to get down on the ground with your macro lens. i find them to be such impossibly magical little architectural constructions, it seems strange that they are plants. i do often wonder if i've just scared away the fairies or perhaps a pixie or two, but i never seem to catch sight of any, to my eternal disappointment.