We spend a good portion of our time, we humans, trying to identify and categorize all manner of creatures, including one another. (Is that a boy or a girl? What kind of accent/haircut/outfit is that? One of ours or one of theirs?)

And, even when we can't identify, we sort things as either "good" or  "not-good."  

Any little kid can tell you that dolphins are nice and good, while sharks are mean and scary. 

Anyhoo. ​

​Judging is arguably how we survived for hundreds of thousands of years of evolution: correctly id-ing food vs. non-food, sorting bad guys from among the good folk of the world, drawing clever parallels between similar things.

"What's past is prologue"* even with as spendthrifty a pen (keyboard) as this one.  

*This quote from of course, The Tempest. Act 2, with Antonio and Sebastian piffling away on shore.

And with the prologue passed, the point of my piffle:
While strolling through my tiny kingdom, I find myself not just trying to name the plants, but also sorting them by my lights as bad or good.  ​I spent a studious half-hour or so on figuring out what these four plants were. Each with a maybe yellow flower, each growing rampant on the Would-Be Farm. Each a familiar mystery.

Right to left: the nettle is easy, but as it turns out, it's not common nettle, but Tall Nettle. The second is Garlic Mustard, then Cypress Spurge. And finally, with the dandelion-y leaves, Marsh Yellowcress. 

Tall Nettle (Urtica procerea) is a stinger: tiny hairs on the stem will give you a dose of formic acid and histamine that feels a bit like the bite of a fire-ant.  Dried, it's used to treat scalp problems, while traditional herbalists would suggest applying the stings to arthritic joints –– sometimes the cure is worse, wait, no, it does in fact work.
Nettle also nutritious: steamed or cooked as spinach, nettle is full of Vitamin A and calcium. So while I want to say it's a bad plant, it's got its good points too.

Garlic Mustard (Alliaria petiolata) is a garlic-scented member of the mustard family. Shocker, I know, with a name like that. Pretty solidly a baddie, although it's edible from top to toe. I will be grazing on this plant next spring, knock wood.

Cypress Spurge (Euphorbia cyparissias) is a recent (1860-ish) immigrant to the country. It's an ornamental that spreads rapidly. Its seed-pods detonate and can broadcast seeds up to five feet. Whoa. It's poisonous to horses and cows (but not sheep. Go figure.)  
​While the milky sap is poisonous to humans, it has been used to remove warts. That's something.
Cypress Spurge has some other traditional medicine uses, but I'm going to keep my gloves on and pull it as a weed. 

Marsh Yellowcress (Rorippa palustris) is a mustard and a cress, which is all to the good. It's native, it likes the boggy wetlands that stripe the farm, and it is edible raw (ooh! peppery!) or cooked (add a little olive oil and balsamic vinegar. nom nom nom). 

Is it ironic that I am basically re-discovering the common knowledge of my hunter-gatherer ancestors?

On a sunny morning on the Lee Roy Selmon Expressway, a late-model muscle-car –– a Shelby or a Mustang (my apologies for blasphemy to whatever car-guy still reading after three paragraphs) –– almost smoked his tires stopping by the side of the road ahead in the distance.

Flinging open his door, the driver jumped out and assumed a classic shooter's stance: dominant arm outstretched, holding, with the other supporting, legs square, eye to the sight. The tiny, deadly, dark circle of muzzle pointing at me.

It's a testimony to hundreds of thousands of years of evolution that adrenaline hits the system quicker than the brain can process the need for it. I was already ducking a little (as if my steering wheel would offer any real cover!) before the thought of how fiddlestickingly stupid this was as a way to go: death by sniper.

Adrenaline grants the sensation of time dilation. My irritability about gun culture was accompanied almost simultaneously by a fleeting regret about the very LONG list of things left that I'd hoped to accomplish. And the lightning-flash reel of life highlights.

And then, quicker than a blink, I processed the shooter's details: a fit man in a tan uniform, sunglasses hiding half of his dark face, the light shining off what I really, really hoped was a lawman's badge. I hoped that he wasn't a man in the grips of mental illness, uniform or no. And then, the last thing I recognized: the hair-dryer shape of a radar gun.

Half of South Tampa passed before my heart stopped racing like a rabbit.

I am grateful to get that letter. It's a lucky day.

Even without a precedent to give my worry shape, it feels like this form-letter from my doctor's office is akin to a big red mark on my doorpost, telling the Angel of Death to pass me over once again. 

But another letter followed shortly afterwards.

​It said "Dear Amy. We have attempted to contact you on numerous occasions and have had no response from you. We are in receipt of test results that we need to discuss with you." 

To which the only response is, "Oh crap."

There was more in the letter, but I did not read it until I was waiting on hold with the doctor's office.

Side rant: I don't know why they call it "voice mail." It's more like voice-maze. As it turns out, a week later, my messages seem to have been awfully stupid mice, never earning me the reward of a call-back.

​In the back of my mind, the refrain: Oh crap. Oh crap. Oh crap.

I began to grow irritable (default setting, perhaps, but that's another story). I re-read the letter again: 

"It is important that we discuss these results and possible further follow-up and/or treatment options available to you. Since we have tried to contact you by phone and have been unsuccessful, this letter will serve as notification that you may need further evaluation and/or treatment." 

And "We will assume you do not wish to discuss this further and/or will seek treatment elsewhere."

It closes with "It is our desire to continue to provide you with informed medical care."

And another thing –– I fill out form. after. form.

​Every time I go to the office, I jot down my contact number about seventy-neenty zillion times. In the ten days since I had last written those digits, there had been zero telephone calls from them, so this "numerous times" that s/he tried to contact me? Bullcrap!

​Eventually, after leaving half a dozen tremulous voice-mails and entertaining my insomnia with a fresh new crop of 3-a.m. anxieties, I pressed some mystical combinations of buttons to reach a live human at the doctor's office. 

​Four transfers later, I reached my physician's assistant's assistant. Or something. ​

To celebrate both the turn of the season and my own return to full ambulatory powers –– she walks![Let us pause for a moment while the saga of the putrid toe remains untold.]

Phew. Even when a thing is remarkably astonishing and revolting, it does not always need to be told in full. 

Now, back to the celebration...

A beautiful day at the start of the new year, my husband and I taking a walk before breakfast in the park that recently opened its gates. It's not a "park" park, but a buffer zone for wildlife, separating coastal mangrove wetlands from the recently sprouted Homes from the $200's. There's a signboard, dirt parking, and a sandy path in the watery space between the Homes's PVC privacy fence and the big wide open. 

When it's warm, the mosquitoes and gnats will pretty nearly carry a human away.  Even when it's cool, bugs lurk in the lee. A cool and breezy day, like this celebratory first hike of 2016, is ideal.

And though there's a long list of wild Florida wildlife we didn't see, we did find evidence of what happens in these parts while we aren't looking. 

After about three-quarters of a mile, the path ends and we are both ready for breakfast, so we retrace out steps, the rich, muddy-smelling air buffeting us as we go.

And the silly white pelicans –– so skittish they must have been mistaken for ducks by some hunter in 2015 –– spook again and flap noisily past. 

​*That quote would continue something like "...a miniature sled and eight tiny reindeer," as I am not quite over the hump of Christmas. And it's not an exact quote, but my inner pedant will have her way from time to time. 

Another entry in the series of stopping and reflecting on what's wonderful in my corner of the world.

What's worse than some smug bastid brag-complaining about everything that is wonderful in her life? 
...Only some lucky so-and-so who doesn't even recognize her excellent good-fortune, that's what. 

So here are yet more things for which I am grateful:

1. Daisies. The Platonic ideal of a flower. And so darn pretty.
2. The ability to smell things. Consider the scent of ripe pears, of roasting circus pretzels, of green hay drying in the sun. Ahhh. 
3. Pecorino-Romano cheese. Hello, sheepsmilk. Will you permit me to introduce you to some pasta? And perhaps you would be interested in a short dance with bacon and eggs? Yes? Let us then create carbonara!
4. Cousins. How many other people do you know for the whole length of your life? In addition to sharing history, they offer an alternate look at the genetic mix. Not to mention, in my stumpy family tree, they supply a next generation of family. Thanks cousins!
5. The awkward, heartfelt hugs given by children. See #4. 

I imagined that it would be easy to list a dozen things a day that make me happy. Two dozen. More –– I recognize that I live a cheerful and lucky life. But as it turns out, it's often the same things each day. Here are a few:

1. Having people in my life who remain good friends no matter how we drift thither and yon.
   
2. My small dog. 
3. Cashmere. A cliché perhaps, but every time I yank one of those bad-boy thrift-store sweaters over my head on a cold morning -- I'm just glad.
   
4. Bookwormy genes. I suspect that having our collective noses stuck in a book kept the family from visiting criminal mischief upon one another during those long North Country winters of my youth.
   
5. A bird-feeder. For $10 in seed, I am the benevolent Seed Goddess to a flock of house finches and cardinals and an assortment of their feathery pals.

Once, while I was writing at the coffee shop in the Barnes & Noble Bookstore, I noticed a crowd slowly gathering. And gathering. And gathering. Then a gal plopped down at my tiny cafe table and said, by way of apology, "My feet are killing me." She flashed me a look at her ticket –– "Number 437  if you can believe it!"–– and, perhaps recognizing my confusion, she added, "I don't read anything except I just LOVE this Janet Evanovich and Stephanie Plum!"  She was waiting to get a book signed by the author.

The old-fashioned term dipsomania –– from the Greek of thirst + excitement –– seems wasted as a way to refer to alcoholism. There are dozens of other colorful options:  call someone a rummy, a wino, an alky, a drunkard, a soak; say they are soused, pickled, zonked, pissed, impaired, tipsy, hammered. 

I wish there were a parallel Greek term for the specific greed that certain writers engender in their fans. Bookthirstia, maybe, anyway, the kind of appetite that makes 400+ ladies of a certain demographic gather in a bookstore waiting for Janet Evanovich to arrive with her police escort. It's not limited to any demographic, I know this. The hordes of Harry Potter readers, the legion of Dickens-fanciers and Brontë-ites –– you can't guess who it's going to strike.  

Papa Joe was rendered gleeful by the addition of a Louis L'Amor in his Talking Books package. My mother amassed a complete collection of Gene Stratton Porter, and re-read the oeuvre at least once a year.  She also tried for the whole Andre Norton, but I suspect she missed a few. 

Looking at the bookshelves across the room from this glowing screen, it's clear that I, too, have a galloping case of whatever-it-is-itis:

There are so many things – big and little both – that remind me I live a lucky life. Here are a few more things for which I am quite grateful:

1. Chicory coffee with coconut milk creamer. 
2. Motor skills. As in moving freely about. This is a lesson I learned after a brush with paralysis as a young person. Vastly under-appreciated is the ability to stand up or pick up a pencil or speak.
3. The comforting natural truth that Huntsman spiders live on the other side of the globe. (Hi Katie!)
   
4. Laptop computers: communicator, filing cabinet, hi-fi, television, photo album, and wallet all in one spot.
5. My sister. Who else will chime in on the 97th retelling of the Shetland Pony Reign of Terror?

When first considering acupuncture, I vowed not to look. 

It's a habit: I never glance down when donating blood, and while I can stitch an open wound closed, I'd prefer never to do it again. 

Piercing makes me queasy. Talking about piercing makes me queasy.  Needles. Punctures. Ugh.

But of course, some five or six visits into acupuncture treatment for a long-standing shoulder injury, I really really really want to look. 

The Chinese doctor who punctures me is a bright woman with a PhD, whose accent moves the English words just a bit too fast and loose for me to follow her the first time she explains. Except of course, when she tells me, "Sorry! You not gonna like this."

Right she is. 

Having attached alligator clips with color-coded wires between a small device and -- I must assume -- the needles inserted into my arm, she begins running a mild electrical current. She asks if I can bear some more. 

I can.

Taking deep breaths, focusing on relaxing the muscles that want to jump up and run, I soothe myself by contemplating electrical shockings of my past...These pulses sting, sure, but, it's not as bad as the shock from an electric fence or that faulty plug in a socket or the time I zapped myself across the kitchen trying to clean the fan over the stove. 

Still, the cycle continues for a long while, at precisely my sorest spots. There's a scent of burning herbs, rubbing alcohol, and the faint, regular tzeet, tzeet, tzeet of the machine at my elbow.

Curiosity, meet cat. Cat -- curiosity. 

I lift my head from the pillow and take a long look. 

A line of four or five thousand slim needles lead a meandering course from my shoulder to the base of my fingers. 

Gulp.

Second look: there are maybe 18 needles, set in pairs along the same pathway that is marked in red in the medical poster on the wall above me. I didn't feel the needles go in, and only sense them now when the electrical pulse squeezes the muscles along the way. Maybe muscles. Maybe nerves. Maybe chi. Chakras might be implicated. I don't know. And I am okay with this ignorance. 

I'm rarely okay with ignorance. Beyond reason to me is the comfort of research, data, trivial facts, theories, original sources. 

But for the little I know about acupuncture, let me counter with a separate and equal lack of understanding of the chemistry of aspirin or the architecture of my own ulna.

What I do know: in a week or two weeks, something will change. I'll be able to stretch this arm without this creeping heat of irritated nerves or tendons or chi or whatever it is that has been sending a jangling bolt of sensation -- radiating from this shoulder. I'll rotate my hands and stretch my wrists without wincing. I'll put fingers on the keyboard and type about it, not thinking about what hurts or how much.