Posts Tagged ‘poor air quality’
Ugly Air
I’ve lost track of how many days in a row we’ve been suffering under a “poor” and “low” quality air alert due to wildfire smoke. This morning, it shows up as “Moderate,” but the cumulative impact is lingering to the degree that we aren’t feeling much better. The lethargy I have been experiencing has helped me to avoid doing anything that requires heavy breathing, but we haven’t stayed indoors or worn masks while outside.
The horses and Asher appear to be responding to the nasty air in much the same way as we are. 
They are moving pretty slowly. I watched as Light stepped away from her bucket this morning and turned around toward Swings’ station. She then stood there for a minute or two, as if contemplating whether it was worth the effort to walk over there. When she eventually did, Light slid her nose into the bucket without asking, so Swings lifted her head up out of the way and chewed with her mouth open directly above Light’s head. Light ended up with a little crown of grains on top of her mane, where it covers her slowly healing head wound.
Horses are masters of taking things in stride.
Asher seemed to be looking for better air underground.
One complaint we don’t have during the bout of bad air quality is high humidity. It’s really sad that the dryer air that would otherwise feel so refreshing is being tainted by the smelly smoke particles.
When Asher was taking pauses between digging toward the center of the earth, he plopped down on the cool soil in hopes it would give him a little of that refreshing feeling that we are all longing for.
We are feeling a new level of appreciation for clean air and fresh breezes. If only they would arrive in a more gentle form than the hurricane-wind thunderstorms that seem to be joining wildfires as the new normal on the planet.
I’m afraid my lethargy has me feeling a little more gloomy about the state of things in the world this morning. Luckily, we have a lunch date planned today with friends, Rich and Jill. That will do oodles to bring me to my happy place of love and laughter again.
May you all find a way to spend some time in your happy place today, despite any of the gloom that may be crimping your styles!
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Unfortunate Crashes
This year’s Tour de France bike race has been entertaining but I do not enjoy the added drama of nasty crashes. The worst is when an incident is triggered by the carelessness of a fan as happened this morning.
I love having access to watch from home but it is sad when the motorcycles with the camera operators get in the way of a racer trying to break away from a competitor.
I’m soaking up the race while enjoying fresh-picked wild black raspberries on my yogurt with eggs and toast spread with Cyndie’s blackcap jam.
We are enduring the latest onslaught of dangerous air quality from Canadian wildfires that turns the splashes of color in the woods to an eery shade of orange.
You can see speckles of it on the fresh dirt Asher has thrown as he created a new canyon in a matter of seconds yesterday. He and I spent much of the day alone together while Cyndie attended a funeral in the Cities and then met with a group of her gang of high school friends who got together for lunch to celebrate a series of birthdays.
When Asher wasn’t napping, he demanded constant attention that had me kicking him a ball to chase and then I would need to retrieve it from beneath furniture where he pretended to “bury” it.
He’s almost a year and a half old and shows little indication of growing out of puppy energy any time soon. During this phase, I find I am much more inclined to ‘crash’ long before he does throughout each day.
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Plans Change
I changed my mind. I wasn’t going to show my latest sculpture project until I was done but apparently, I’ve used up all my patience trying to train Asher lately. I’m not waiting any longer. It may seem like an illogical time of year to begin an idle pleasure that has the potential to occupy many hours when spring growth is happening faster than can be managed in a day.
Since when is artistic whim logical?
The trigger for me was the accommodating weather allowing me to work outdoors on creating wood shrapnel and sanding dust. I decided to see if there might be a heart shape hiding in this Y-section of a maple tree we cut down at some point.
It’s lopsided, so I’m trying to decide if I’m feeling moved to compensate for that or let it remain imperfectly balanced.
I chose to give it more attention yesterday because the air quality was poor due to Canadian wildfires and I didn’t want my lungs to suffer from my panting away on a bicycle. Since the air made wearing a mask worthy, I figured I might as well work on something that is incredibly dusty.
I hesitate to reveal the vision I have for the bottom portion because I don’t have a firm plan on how I will accomplish it. Maybe if I state it, doing so will add incentive for me to keep after it, one way or another.
I hope to achieve the appearance of a melting heart. There are so many times when I feel moved to say that something melts my heart. A visual representation makes sense to me.
Somehow, I will need to try to fit the next level of sculpting in between mowing and trimming sessions, because if I stop now, I may never finish. It would get added to my trophy case of umpteen other art projects that I started but have yet to complete. I’m guessing this risk is why I was considering not talking about the melting heart until it was actually a thing.
Well, self, the plan has changed and the challenge accepted.
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Relative Something 