Project 52, Week 49, Part Two – My Lovely Lake and Mathematical Knitting

It’s time for Project 52, Week 49!

49 weeks ago, on my 52nd birthday, I began Project 52. Since there are 52 weeks in a year, each week I’m taking one year of my life and blogging about it. This week, I’m covering the year I was 49 — June 14, 2013, to June 14, 2014.

In Part One, I covered ALA Annual Conference and talked about the steps I took toward healing that year.

That summer, I was still doing lots of walking and enjoying the great blue heron who hung out at my lake. I was extra excited in August when a great white heron (also called a great egret) joined the great blue heron!

I scared the egret to the other side of the lake, where it posed by the fountain.

I love the way the flowers by my lake seem to change every week. These ones reminded me very much of ones we used to have by our home in Gundersweiler, Germany.

And I used to see so many bunnies!

And I finished the Prime Factorization Blanket for my niece, Arianna!

I explain the details on my blog. Each color represents a prime factor, and it shows the prime factorization of all the numbers from 2 to 100.

Unfortunately, I had a 3-week migraine in August. A lot of it was “just” a vestibular migraine, which isn’t as painful. But it shook me up. I finally went in to the E.R. a couple different times to get rid of it.

And then Tim went back for his second year at William and Mary. I always enjoyed the trips to drop him off and pick him up. We’d have dinner at the wonderful sandwich shop, often sitting outdoors. I’d buy some Gin-Gins (spicy ginger candy) and fudge from the candy shop. Then came the lonely drive home and getting used to my Empty Nest again.

More walks around the lake. These pictures are from late September.

But in September, I had a 30-day migraine. And it got very bad, and it was centered in my neck, on the right side. Finally, the E.R. didn’t hesitate and admitted me and ordered an MRA and MRI of my neck. It actually soothed my fears, though – because my right vertebral artery was doing better than before. Didn’t help my headache, though! But at least I wasn’t afraid I was going to have another stroke.

That was when I finally went back on Zoloft – the only preventative that ever worked well for me. I had lost faith in it, because it didn’t work on the vertebral artery dissection, but when I went back on it this time, it really did help.

Autumn was glorious by my lake.

The tree out my office window glowed when the sun hit it.

That’s fun. October was when an article came out about my Dad and his brother – still working at 75 and 85 years old.

And November 29, 2013, was the first time I saw geese walking on the frozen lake. (Not the last.) Something about it cracked me up.

And in early December, we got our first snow of the winter. It was lovely to live in a condo where a service takes care of the roads and to have an attached garage! Also lovely to get to sit in my house and look out at the snow in the treetops.

But ice came first. When the trees look like this, my plan is NOT to drive!

That was December 9. On December 10, I got a snow day, and did go out in it to enjoy it.

I caught some birds out my window on the snowy branches.

I laughed when I saw the melting snow sagging off the branch.

At work, a group didn’t bring in their display, so my co-worker and I filled the display with Book Spine Poetry. It was really fun, once you started looking at book titles with poetry in mind.

Here’s one that feels subversive:

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
Monsters Eat Whiny Children

I’m afraid my favorite poem was autobiographical:

In case you can’t read the titles, they say:

The Liar in Your Life
Lies! Lies!! LIES!!!
Deep Deception 2
Pack of Lies
“I Love You But I Don’t Trust You”
You Don’t Have to Take It Anymore
Breaking Free
Free from Lies
It’s My Life Now

Yes! With another sign that I was slowly healing, I’m going to stop for tonight.

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