This morning was the first one that really lit my "December" light up. It wasn't a touch chill, it was cold, with the nearby puddles frozen over completely and my (and all) cars covered in a moderately thick layer of frost. Now, in late February or early March, today wouldn't be considered cold. It'd be considered quite warm, thank you. A sign of Spring coming.

But in December, it's merely a sign that we have twelve days to the official start of Winter and we really ought to be dressing more warmly, don't you think?

Back in Fort Kent, by now there'd usually be quite a bit of snow on the ground, and I know they've had a good snowfall or two, but looking at the live webcam on sjv.net (pointed to a particularly ugly warehouse on North Market Street today -- ah, Fort Kent. Taste hardly knew ye) it looks like there's just frost and a bit of dust. A weird winter for the North Country.

Nonetheless, I found myself scraping today. A simple task. One that takes a bit of elbow grease and cold resistance (especially without gloves, as I was today) but is rewarded with the ability to see out of your car when you drive.

This one gave me what I think of as an attack. I haven't had one all week -- the medication has been doing wonders. I've even stopped parking in the handicapped spot, because I hate doing that, and the medication had made walking from the parking lot not a big deal.

But this was. A fast reminder that I'm at the start of the recuperating and recovery process, not the end. I won't forget again very easily.

Fort Kent looks grey today. Grey in that "storm" kind of way, though the weather forecast says that won't happen until Saturday. It's even colder up there, however. And that's not surprising.

Rewind a day or so, and let's see what we get? Well, I heard from more people, including Karen. Which was... hm. Not surprising. When Karen found out, hearing from her was inevitable. But it was interesting. See, Karen's the longest relationship of my life, in my early twenties. She's the one I would have married without hesitation. Things conspired against that, but still....

Hearing Karen's voice is a trigger to those times, in a lot of ways. Even though I've covered a lot of ground in a lot of places since Karen and I were together, there is something very much of me bound up with my idea of her, still. While Karen wasn't my first girlfriend, she was my first, most romantic love. The one that I was convinced I could fly for. The one who I heard birds sing about.

Trust me. My friends of the time thought I was insufferable when her name came up. Well, except Frank. But Frank understands these things.

Talking to Karen, I didn't feel nigh thirty-two with (as my friend Amy puts it) a bum ticker, job stress and too much weight to lose. I felt twenty-three, and stirrings of a part of my soul I'd kept on the shelf for a long time. (Largely due to the girlfriend I had after Karen, Jennifer. Jennifer was to romance as radiation is to blueberries. They still look sweet for some time, but they're dying and they're poison. Not that I'm bitter.) She reminded me in a lot of ways of how I saw the world back then. I was dead poor, no salable skills, no college degree, no nothing but a lot of temping. But I was happy. Sometimes deleriously so. Frank was one reason for that. We may have had nothing to speak of, but we had a good time with that nothing.

Karen was the other. I have poems from that time. Typical young kid's stuff. Not worthy of transcription. But reading them, they mean a lot to me.

It was nice to be reminded of youth when I was feeling kind of old.

The day before, Mason, Van and I all piled into the car and went to Portsmouth. We went to see Toy Story 2, which was fun. And we went out to eat, and bought some household appliances.

En route, we stopped at a convenience store, and I discovered the first strange thing about my new condition: There is nothing I can eat in a convenience store.

This is a good one, with a deli and a lot more food than normal. All high sodium. There wasn't a salt-free cracker in the place. Soda's a no no, so all the diet soda in the world was out too. I finally picked the only Diet Snapple they had (an iced tea) and a box of raisins.

I'm going to get mighty sick of raisins.

When we went to dinner, we went to the Olive Garden, which is always a fun time. And, they have lots of items on their menu with a fun green heart and an "LF" in it, for low fat. The heart friendly foods. At the bottom of the menu there was a "nutritional information available upon request" about them.

So I requested. And got a handy paper prochure listing all the LF foods.

Dear God almighty.

970 mgs of sodium. 1,090 mgs of sodium. 1,900 mgs of sodium....

I was appalled. There's nothing intrinsic about Italian food that requires salt. My mother makes a killer Spaghetti sauce -- the kind you mull for a week, with fresh tomatoes and the like -- and she adds no salt or salt-based seasonings at all.

That's not the Olive Garden's way. A single one of their normal breadsticks has over 400 mgs of the stuff.

So I turned into my father, right then. He's always ordered food in goofy ways. Asking a lot of questions. Ordering breadsticks with no butter, naked from the oven. No salad dressing on the salad, instead needing it on the side. That sort of thing.

And there I was, doing it too. I sent the salad back (they forgot and put the dressing on it. Lots of salt in salad dressing -- you'd be surprised). As I couldn't have soda, I had cranberry juice -- itself an interesting flavor. I had a chicken based dish with the lowest sodium content. Breadsticks with no butter.

I felt a weird sense of betrayal. The Olive Garden was my friend, and damn it it was trying to kill me!

I won't be back. At least at a steakhouse (especially one with fish, like Bugaboo Creek) I can order a custom grilled salmon steak, just lemon and no seasoning. But you can't customize italian food. It takes too long to season.

The same at the movie theater. If you can't drink the mammoth cup of soda, and you can't eat any of the food or candy or popcorn... you almost feel like you're missing a part of the show. You might as well rent a video tape.

They had Evian there, but I don't usually order bottled water. It offends my natural Maine tendencies.

Frank and John are definitely confirmed for the weekend. They're coming in on Friday. Karen may be coming for a few days the week after Christmas. Kate might still be coming up too. Clearly, I need to make sure the sheets for the fold out bed are clean.