THINGS I DON'T DO ON THE WEEKENDS

I don’t check my email on the weekends. I have two gmail accounts, one is the original that I got locked out of for a few weeks. I created a new account when that happened and now the old account is mostly spam/ads/trash with the occasional reminders for a bill or a receipt from Google Fiber. My work email used to be attached to my phone but I never had that set up when I swapped phones two phones ago. In order to get to work emails from home, I have to pass through the security gauntlet that is not unlike getting through all the booby traps to get to the hidden treasure. So I just don’t bother. The gmail account I created while I was locked out of the old one was meant to be a cleaner account but this one has started to get a little junky with the spams. Every Monday morning I open up the email accounts, select everything unread in the promotions folder and delete without thinking twice.

And it feels really good.

I also do not even look at the news until Sunday mornings when CBS Sunday Morning does their little snippet of news at the beginning of the show.

I don’t think I ever made a conscious decision to ignore my email accounts on the weekends. I didn’t flash a meme of sitting on the beach with a cold beer and a notice that reads “slams laptop ‘ill Monday” up anywhere. I just stopped checking my email. During the weeks, I am continuously answering to someone in email and/or Teams (stupid Teams). I much prefer face to face conversation and sometimes will ignore a work email and just go find the person who sent it so we can discuss the issue. This continued answering to people doesn’t just apply to work. There are doctor’s notices, Vet visit reminders, bill notices and the countless daily things that must be taken care of to keep the lights on. When I’m not answering to people, I’m keeping my self accountable by staying informed with worldly news and checking to see how my representatives are representing me with bills they are voting (or not voting) on. In my case, it’s about 50/50 on which rep is doing a decent job for this state. (I did just have to send out an email to our Attorney General, defending Planned Parenthood).

A Chookooloonks newsletter was waiting for me in my inbox this morning and in it Karen Walrond wrote of the importance of self compassion. Treating yourself with compassion should be a daily practice, not something you do when you’ve completely depleted yourself. Karen is not talking about spa days. She writes of small, simple actions like dancing or stopping to take pictures of wildflowers and how these actions help sustain us in our activism, particularly when there is so much that needs doing right now (any one see the recycling segment on CBS Sunday Morning this week?). The state of things is overwhelming and reminding myself that change happens in micrometers starting with my own community is my daily mantra, but I never really stopped and thought about the little actions I take daily that gives me the energy to write the letters and make the phone calls.

I often stop to take photos of flowers and it is not uncommon to look over at my cubicle and see me dancing like banshee. The no emails or news on weekends are just two small things I do as self compassion. I just didn’t realize it until now.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Sunday was for lawn work. I bought some plants for my tiny backyard garden that ends up being a mix of herbs and tomatoes every year. I purchased some decorative plants for the front, including a hosta plant called Queen Josephine (because, of course). As Michael and I roamed through the large plant center, our cart started to fill up and I was juggling cost, durability and beauty while reaching for this or that. I kept asking Michael “Can I get this?” and he would say “yes”, but I don’t think he realized that I was asking because I wanted him to keep me in a budget. At one point I said that he could not just let me buy and buy. Then he said “But it makes you happy.” And that is why we can’t stick to budgets. Sure, buying plants makes me a little bit happy. It also stresses me out because I am neglectful and just not into the continued maintenance of plants. I want easy, tend-for-themselves kind of plants.

Tulips came up in the front area this year, but only one bloomed so I pulled all of them out of the ground. I’ll plant new bulbs in the Fall. I trimmed back the hedge that had slightly gone wild and would try to grab you as you walked up the front path and I pulled out all the weeds. This is when I discovered the perennials I had planted last year and the year before. I was like “Hey you! I remember planting you there!” The hostas I had purchased at a plant sale in OK three years ago were also coming up and they had multiplied. I split them and redistributed them around in hopes that the whole front area will be nothing but hostas. I never would have wanted a hosta in my yard if I still lived in OK. Every time I saw them planted in someone’s landscape, I’d wince. They were sad plants. They were sad plants because they prefer a muggier climate. The hostas I have seen around my neighborhood have been large leafy green things with beautiful blooms. The first time I noticed them, I was stunned. I’m not a gardener and hostas are the easiest plants for me to work with. I told Michael that next year I am not allowed to buy new plants for the front yard, only something nice for the pretty blue pot I keep on the stoop. I can honestly say that as I prepared the front bed for the new plants and discovered the plants I had planted from previous years, I felt some joy.

I wondered for a moment if this is the reason my mother tends to her flower beds.

While I have said that I am not the gardening type, there is something about planting things permanent in the ground. One of my mother’s biggest laments when she sold and moved out of our family house in Collinsville was about all the plants she was leaving behind. She had multiple beds filled with irises and various trees and shrubs, all plants that she had tended to for more than thirty years. The soil and how the sun hits the house she lives in now is totally different then it is at the old house. A smaller yard also meant that she couldn’t just dig up everything and take it with her. She had to leave them behind for the new owner to do whatever with them. I haven’t been by the old house since we helped moved my mother out, so I have no idea if those irises are still blooming or if the magnolia tree we gave mom for mother’s day one year has survived. And while the house Mom is in now is different (her front door faces directly east), she has planted new plants in the ground and spends her time caring for them and fussing over them. Gardening seems like an activity my mom does truly for herself and because she loves it.

There is satisfaction in planting things in the dirt and watching them grow, but the real joy comes from seeing those things come back year after year.

I’m meeting my mom and sister this evening in Manhattan, KS so we can go to the tulip festival happening in Wamego which is close to Manhattan. I’ve not been to any of these places before. Wamego is a tiny town known for an eclectic Wizard of Oz museum and apparently, tulips. I’ve been told that the museum is more like someone’s personal hoarding collection of all things Wizard of Oz. There a little Toto statues all around the town and a Dutch Windmill. I am excited to see the tulips and seeing my mom and sister. The weather is predicted to be sunny and warm. I’m looking forward to spending my day in the sunshine, basking in the bright colors of the tulips, something I am not sure I would have appreciated as much if I hadn’t spent years watching my mother work in her own gardens.

THINGS I DECIDED TO DO

I wrote a short Thankful Friday entry last week about a goose who has laid eggs in a precarious place and the whole nature vs nurture thing. I didn’t post it because I never really finished it. It was sort of done. Then I got busy and Friday rolled in. I technically could have finished it Friday afternoon, but instead I took my new camera lens for a walk to the Kauffman Gardens and then rushed back to help someone and finish up on some work. So, Friday’s gratitude post just didn’t get posted and the thing is, I didn’t feel too bad about it.

Back in October, I rented a camera lens to take with me to Woods Hole. It was one I was considering buying and camera lenses are not cheap. I thought that renting it and spending a week with it would give me some idea about want vs need. Would this be a whole lot of money spent on something I would only use on occasion? Or would this be the lens I would want to use most of the time, setting my zoom lens aside for those times it would be unsafe to get too close? I did not take my zoom lens with me and relied only on the rented lens. On day one, I was already starting a mental list of what I loved about the lens. It’s light weight, making it great for travel. Handles low light situations better than my zoom lens which allowed me to use faster shutter speeds, and all the pictures I took that week have a dreamy look about them. I counted maybe five or six times when I wanted a zoomed image. By the end of the week, I knew that this lens was a need. Okay…a wanty need, but a need none the less.

The rule for big ticket item fun purchases is that one must be paid off before buying the next. So, we paid off the last big “fun” purchase, a TV, and then headed out to buy my lens. Except the place where I was going to buy it, didn’t have it in stock or online. I had to go to the computer store that I hate with my whole heart. They didn’t have it in stock, but I could order it online. This actually turned out to be an easy, smooth purchase and I didn’t leave the place fuming. Side rant: I have not once gone to this particular store and been helped by anyone other than a condescending (male) computer know-it-all. This was the first time I have ever walked into this store and been treated like I actually knew what I was talking about. In fact, I was so surprised by the experience that I even said to the sales clerk “Wow! This was a way easier and a more delightful experience than I expected!” The camera lens arrived on Wednesday of last week, but my schedule didn’t open up until Friday for me to take it out for a spin. Then I started pointing it at things and remembered all the reasons why I fell in love with that lens in the first place.

Using my camera brings me joy and I am investing in my joy, not just with fancy new gear, but by making space in my day for my camera. I had zero plans to photograph the eclipse, but made some last minute adjustments to my camera and schedule. I set myself up at the top of our parking garage and while I don’t think I got anything spectacular (we only got 90% eclipse), I had a great time doing it. I used my phone as a remote device for my camera and laid back and enjoyed the sunshine and the view. As the eclipse reached 90% the parking garage filled up with people. Then I had a number of people chatting with me about what I was doing and how I was doing it. And while I wasn’t wowed by any of the pictures, I was able to compile a short time lapse of the event.

Skipping out on a Thankful Friday entry is by no means a sign that I had nothing to be grateful for last week or that I’ll stop doing gratitude posts. This is a gratitude post. I’m grateful for being able to invest in the things that bring me joy. It also has me thinking about how I can invest in other activities that bring me joy like yoga, bicycle rides for ice cream or plain old snuggling on the couch with Josephine. What does investing in those things look like or even mean? So much of that investment is time and making space for those things. Well…it means really learning the power of the word ‘no’ and really paying attention to how I feel when I say "yes” to something.

I feel pretty good about saying yes to investing in more joy.

THE STUFF WE DID

I’ve been a regular New Orleans visitor since the age of two. In all of those times, I have never participated in a swamp tour. We visited the zoo a number of times and rolled down the tallest hill in New Orleans (which is a man-made hill in the middle of the zoo). I have ridden the streetcar all through the city. I have walked down the most touristy streets, but I have never done a “Cajun Adventure Tour”. Michael wanted to see alligators on this trip, so we booked ourselves on a two hour flat bottom boat ride through the Honey Island Swamp just east of New Orleans. I could not convince Michael to ride an airboat or do a kayak trip through the swamp. Those things didn’t feel safe to him but a large boat carrying twenty people with a captain that often joked about losing tourists in the swamp felt safe.

There have been drives through swampy areas where Michael will ask me about what I might be looking at out the window. I always say that I’m looking for alligators. It is not really true because an alligator is pretty impossible to spot from a speeding vehicle. Alligators spend a lot of time mostly submerged with only the tops of their heads sticking up out of the water. They are the color of the water and look more like floating bits of wood than animal. The things I’m really looking at out the window are birds. White egrets and gray herons mostly dot the swamps along the road side. This trip, I saw two flamingos fly overhead. One our way down through Arkansas, I spotted a bald eagle just sitting in a field. One our drive up through Mississippi, I spotted another bald eagle flying away from some smaller birds he had made unhappy. Bird spotting is easy. Also deer. I see lots of deer on our road trips.

So this cajun goofball version of my dad gave us a tour of the Honey Island Swamp. He pointed out the wildlife which was mostly just alligators and raccoons. He told us about the spiders and snakes in the area. He thumped the boat canopy regularly to scare us into thinking a snake had fallen into the boat. When he wasn’t being silly, he told us about the plants, pointing out wild rice and irises. At one point, we came across a small pink cocoon like structure. This was filled with apple snail eggs, a highly invasive species that will wreck havoc on the ecosystem. I leaned over and told Michael about how we had to get special permits to use these as model organisms in research. We use them in the study of eye regeneration because apple snails can regenerate their eyeballs. This was so fascinating to Michael that he almost shouted out to everyone else on the boat that I am a scientists and I know about these snails.

Thankfully we managed to keep my knowledge just between the two of us.

Along with animal sighting, we collected license tags, forty two of them to be exact. Though four of those tags were Canadian and the Alaska tag was discovered at our very last roadside stop on the way home. Since Michael is a teacher by trade, he likes to give us ‘grades’ on our tag collections. He said we earned a solid B on this trip. Between alligator searches and tag collecting, we had sort of a scavenger hunt to find Banksy art pieces. Michael was unfamiliar with Banksy, an England based street artist, political activist and director. A while back, Melissa and I went to a Banksy Exhibition Show that felt like more of place to be seen, sipping fancy cocktails than a place to see and learn about the art. Frankly it was a little disappointing and now I think the disappointing display of work was by design. The thing you are supposed to take away from that showing is that Banksy’s art must be seen in the wild and part of the art is opening your eyes to the sights around you.

Banksy was in New Orleans in 2008, three years after hurricane Katrina. He left behind around fifteen stencils scattered all over the city. Most of those have been destroyed, painted over or part of buildings that were demolished. The first one we found was a piece called Looters that had been rescued from destruction and put on display inside a hotel lobby. The hotel has a small room off to the side of the art that explains a little bit about the artist and the efforts made to save this piece of art work. It helped that this was the first one we actually saw because this gave Michael a quick and dirty education on Banksy. Banksy’s art, for me, perfectly conveys the impermanence of life. Every thing. EVERY. THING. is temporary. Even that ‘permanent’ tattoo you had placed on your low back in 1997 will be dust someday. The map I was using to hunt Banksy art had not been kept up to date. There was supposed to be one of his stencils just two blocks down from where we were staying. We went looking for it on our first evening and when we got to the building, the stencil had been removed, the wall painted over with pink paint.

Someone must have recognized the importance of Nola Girl with Umbrella because a protective plate of plexiglass had been secured over her. She resides on the side of building that is boarded up and covered with graffiti. It looks like it used to be a walk-in clinic which is funny because right next door is a Voodoo shop. We found ourselves walking with a tall lanky young man who we shared pleasantries with while waiting for the street light to change. He had just found out that he had the day off and the weather was beautiful. He asked if we were looking for “the Banksy” and when we said yes, he guided us there because it was on his way. Michael and I stood there, the only tourists in the area, marveling at how temporary all this art happens to be. Not just the Girl with Umbrella, but all the other brightly colored graffiti art. It reminded me of something I had seen and experienced a long time ago.

There used to be a famous black sand beach on the Big Island of Hawaii. Photographs of the beach were plastered on prints and postcards and used in tourist promotional brochures. I was on that island with my parents in 1990 and there was a major volcanic eruption at the beginning of that week that sent lava flowing towards that beach. We went and stood on that beach and could see the smoke and glow of hot lava in the distance. By the middle of that week, half of the beach had been covered with lava and by the time we left, the entire beach was gone. Poof. Just like that in a week’s time this beautiful beach area was covered with molten lava. Now, years later, the ocean is wearing away some of that now hardened lava and a new black sand beach is forming. Vegetation is starting to grow up between the craggy lava rocks.

This is graffiti in nature.

New Orleans is, in itself, very temporary. It is torn down and flooded out only to be built back up again, very much like that beach in Hawaii. And we spent our time simply wandering around, soaking up the temporary beauty of it all.

THE BIG SAD

There was a small bit of graffiti that Michael and I passed a few times while roaming New Orleans. It simply said “Big Sad” with a sad face drawn under the words. I didn’t take a picture of it, which is weird because I took lots of graffiti pictures, but for some reason never pointed a camera at this one. It sparked a small conversation when we first noticed it. I said to Michael “You know how sometimes things make you a little sad? Like, I’m out of ice cream; this makes me a little sad. Big sad is reserved for things like when your favorite ice cream shop closes.” I told him that I think I’ll use Big Sad more in sentences.

Leaving New Orleans made me big sad.

On our first night in the city, we took a forty five minute walk through the Garden District to get to a dinner reservation at Basin Seafood. I was smarter on this trip and did some research, made reservations so we wouldn’t be floating with indecision on food choices. I found Basin on Eater in their best oysters on the half shell list. It’s a small but elegant restaurant on Magazine Street and the food there did not disappoint. Michael got the short ribs served on cheesy grits, which I tasted. They were the best grits I have had in years and the oysters and lima beans were so good that Michael, who does not really like raw oysters or lime beans, left thinking that maybe he was a raw oyster/lime bean eater.

On our walk to the restaurant, even on the walk back, we took turns pointing out various houses. Every time I saw a ‘For Sale’ sign I’d say “We could buy that one. We could live there.” I believe I even mentioned at one point that I had not seen any yoga studios in that area. “We could buy that one and I could open a yoga studio downstairs while we live in the top half.” Michael nodded and mumbled vague agreements each time I said something like this. While he agrees that we should visit this city often, he is less keen on the idea of living there full time. To be fair, summers would probably kill him. March is a tease in New Orleans. The weather was perfect with bright sunny days and cool breezes. The summer months are steamy and full of hurricanes (not just the fun boozy kind). I don’t know why I didn’t notice this on the last trip, but on our drive into New Orleans, we passed many stilt houses that you could only access by boat. “The only way to get to that house is by boat. What if we lived in house like that?” Those houses sparked more interest because Michael wants a boat. I think I wouldn’t be able to handle that kind of isolation. I need the street sounds and the strolling paths. I require the earth under my feet to be less squishy. Though, I wouldn’t mind kayaking through the swamps on weekends.

You know when your time in a place is time well spent if it breaks your heart a little to leave that place. In my case, I feel like I am always leaving something behind in New Orleans, something of great value so that I must return again soon to retrieve it. Then I leave something else and must return again, repeating this loop until maybe I’ll get that place out of my system. Maybe one day, it just won’t have the same appeal. I did notice a number of houses up for sale as though some of the residents of New Orleans have given up on the city. It didn’t seem as crowded with tourists this time around, but honestly we didn’t venture too deeply into those places. We skirted around them and into those residential areas that are often ignored by our government. That’s where you’ll find the best fried chicken and a Banksy that’s been left untouched by other graffiti artists or painted over by the shop owner.

We stopped in Mississippi on our way back north to meet my cousin for lunch, a cousin I haven’t seen in almost twenty years. I didn’t expect the feelings of joy and delight in seeing her face and hugging her tight. It was almost as if there had been no space or time between us since our last encounter and I confess that tears welled up in my eyes when we said our goodbyes. She had asked if we would be traveling up through Louisville, the town where our parents had grown up, where Pepaw’s house and shop used to be. I told her that I couldn’t stomach to drive through there knowing those places were gone. My cousin said she felt the same even though she lives close, she always makes a point to drive around. It’s too hard to see the empty spots that once held so much. I wiped tears from my cheeks as we drove north through that state, brushing away my complicated feelings. It might sound as if I didn’t have a wonderful vacation. Complicated feelings and tears and melancholy and all. The truth is, the trip was too good. Misti sent me a text asking if I’d had a good adventure and I burst into tears because this adventure had ended. I am still full of oysters and crawfish. Making this week’s menu was a challenge knowing that nothing I make is going to taste as good as the food we ate last week. I don’t cook with bacon fat or ham juice. And I ate plenty of things cooked in meat juice last week, plus a piece of fried chicken.

Recently, I sat down to evaluate the wordy collage I had created for the things I wanted to do this year. I listed all the things that had been completed, made a list for things that have been planned and a list of things that are still a work in progress. I was surprised by the number of things that I have already completed. When we got home, I took New Orleans from the planned list and moved it up to the completed list, but not before noticing that I have several adventures still sitting in the planned section. I’ll be back in New Orleans in a couple of years. I have to retrieve a valuable item and leave an equally valuable item behind. For now, I have hundreds of pictures left to be processed and I will take my time pouring over each photo, savoring the memories.

I’m big sad this adventure has ended but I’m really excited about the next adventures.

NOW WHAT

There’s a part of me, that people pleaser me, that almost feels like I should apologize for the rage that I poured out onto these pages last week. I have to stop and remind myself that I am practicing the allowance of all feelings good and bad. Contrary to what some may think, I don’t walk around breathing fire like a dragon or punching walls all the time. My rage stays contained inside this body until I can furiously type it all out. A friend of mine referred to it as “Beautiful rage” and I love that so much, I’ve been thinking about where to have those words tattooed onto my body. But I don’t want this space to just be a rage against the machine page.

Saturday morning, I sat down in my usual space at Heirloom and opened up my Fortune Cookie Journal (so few pages are left…I don’t know what happens when I fill them all). The music playing that morning were all the 90s bands that made up the soundtrack of the end of my HS years and into my college years. Nirvana, Jane’s Addiction, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, Cake. I knew the words to every song that played through those speakers and I was pulled back in time to a place of great happiness and naivety. Those years smelled like burnt coffee, used bookstores, cigarettes and incense mixed together. These were the years of learning the importance of finding meaning in words and oh how we dissected lyrics and movies and scripts. I was a biology major, living alongside english majors absorbing their coolness while memorizing biochemical compound structures. We were carefree even though we had no reason to be so.

I watched Past Lives over the weekend and I have been pondering those moments that feel like past lives for me now, much like the one described above. It took me longer to get around to seeing the film than I had intended. I knew that it would be beautiful in a way that feels prickly and it was. It was full of the what if questions, the kind of game I have often played on my own. There are the choices we make and there are the choices made by others that have a ripple effect on the trajectory of lives and all of these lead to questions of what if I had chosen this way instead of that. If everything in life is a choice, half of those choices are how we have decided to react to the choices made by others.

Perhaps I was a bird and you were the branch I rested on. - Nora, Past Lives

I joke that in a past life I was a devout Catholic, possibly even a nun. Guilt was often my motivator and I would constantly stress over doing the “right” thing. I’ve never really thought much about who (or what) else I might have been in other lives. I’ve never really thought about the what if I’d gone to a different college, accepted that full music scholarship to OU or at the very least sent my MCAT scores in and applied for medical school. I don’t really think about it because I know how unhappy I would have been with those choices. I knew at the time of decision that choosing those paths would not lead me to a life of joy. I never started playing the What If game until after Chris died. Then I questioned all the choices I had made and what life would be like if I had made different ones. Except, I haven’t played this game with myself in quite some time. I didn’t choose those other lives; I chose this one. Has it led me to a life of joy? I heard someone say once that we can’t have all joy all the time. This is true for me, but I do have joy.

This is my life and I am living it with you. -Nora

Next week, I’m dragging Michael back to New Orleans, a place where if past lives are truly a thing, one of mine was lived here. The last time we went was the first time I’d been back since before Hurricane Katrina and I thought that so much had probably changed since then that I wouldn’t feel at home there anymore. What happened during our last trip was I became so overwhelmed by memories of previous trips, that I froze. I didn’t make tentative itineraries or search out restaurants. We just sort wandered aimlessly and hoped to stumble onto good food. The wandering aimlessly was good, the food finds were not. Reservations are needed in this post-Covid landscape. This time around, we’ve made better plans and we’re even doing an activity that I have never done before any all the many times I have been to New Orleans. We’ve booked a swamp tour in hopes of seeing alligators in their natural habit.

We’re not leaving until next week, but I feel like taking a break from this space. Maybe I’ll spend some time updating some photos and thinking about what’s next. I need to spend more time with paper and ink. This is how I conjure up the experiences I want for myself and I’m a planner at heart. Don’t worry though. I’ll be back.

In this life I am still a blogger.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

At the beginning of this week, I posted tales about the state of my body that many found relatable. Women friends have reached out, nodding heads in agreement and sharing their own personal experience. This was exactly my intention behind that entry. I am infuriated by the taboo of conversing above whispers in regards to our female bodies and well over the idea that I should feel shame about the normal things that happen to my female body. And because of the lack of interest from the medical industry, we (women) must come together and share, share, share in hopes of navigating our way through this highly uncertain phenomena of perimenopause/menopause.

Chad sent me a TikTok story about Rosalind Franklin and how Watson and Crick stole her research, which ended up winning them the Nobel Prize in 1962. This story is not new to me. All female scientists know this story. My first education on Watson and Crick though told a different story. They didn’t mention stealing any work or ideas from Franklin, but they made sure to talk about how disagreeable Franklin was to work with and, one would say, a bitch. The reality is that Rosalind Franklin was standing up for her research and herself. Watson and Crick would never have figured out the helical structure of DNA without Rosalind Franklin’s work. So instead of allowing a woman to get the credit for this discovery, they villainized her. They projected their fragile male egos and jealousy into writing a false narrative of a contentious woman.

Psst…this isn’t the first time in history fragile male egos and their jealousy has been projected to vilify a woman.

Some of you are probably wondering what the story of Rosalind Franklin has to do with woes of perimenopause. Trust me. This is all linked together. For far too long women have been pigeon holed into a projection of what men have wanted us to be and in doing so this has lessened us. Our bodies, our thoughts, our appearances are all gender constructed for the man. Deviations in said construct are not to be tolerated and should be ignored, thus putting our basic needs in the backseat and our contributions outside of childbearing, something to be stolen or unnoticed. I did not intend to set off to write yet another rant on the never ending reach of the patriarchy, but I can’t ignore that the lack of research and information around women’s health is directly linked to the patriarchy. Women have been relegated to barely even whispering words such as vagina or bleeding because men find those words unappealing or offensive, while there are whole industries built around glorifying the male ejaculation. A cock and balls is probably the most popular choice for graffiti artists and it is usually placed near the mouth of the model on the poster.

Where is the graffiti artist drawing vulvas in the mouths of poster models?

This is not a sermon for the choir kind of post. I wrote all of this on Wednesday and usually writing down my rage helps to dampen it. Instead, all I managed to do was pour gasoline all over my rage. I spent the day feeling prickly and stabby. But after another fitful night of sleep, I thought about what many of the women in my community had said about what they are going through. The most common phrase written in my comments is “I thought I was going crazy.” Of course we think this; we’re all tired and doctors wont listen to us. The number of comments I read that started with “my doctor didn’t believe me” or “three doctors later..” was ridiculous. Not only are we dealing with changes in our bodies that start with messing up the very foundation needed for basic living (which is sleep. sleep and rest are the most important things for our bodies), we are doing so while still, STILL, fighting to be the women we want to be and not the women men (or society) may want us to be. I want you to know that I am grateful for your voices and your continued hard work in this daily battle. We all deserve naps.

Let’s all go take naps!

DESPERATELY SEEKING

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about a lot of different things. Things I want to do. Things I want to write. Things I want to buy. Things I want to change. Things that may be too expensive for me to keep. All of this is surrounded with questions. Should we get another dog? Should we try to rehab the chicken coop? How do I get someone to repave my driveway for a reasonable price? Can I remove the bushes in front of the house and have a porch installed? Am I ever going to do something about my kitchen? Should I enroll in electrician school and learn how to rewire my own house? I think I should teach a yoga workshop about shoulder anatomy and straps?

That last sentence doesn’t really read as a question, but when I say it out loud I tend to illicit a questioning tone.

I am restless. Truly, restless. Even when I am supposed to be sleeping and resting, I am lost somewhere in my own thoughts. Just last week I was so lost in my own thoughts while on my morning building walk, that when I made it back to the first floor I didn’t know what floor I was on and could not remember walking all of the second floor. I am now up to three different wake up times in the night. Sometimes it is because I had that dream where I have to use the bathroom in an unconventional bathroom setting but mostly it is because I heard a noise and then I have to spend the next hour trying to go back to sleep while thinking about the noise. Before I know it, Josephine is tapping me with a paw and it is almost about time for my alarm to go off. Last week, Josephine started tapping me exactly one hour earlier than the alarm in anticipation to the time change. I am sleeping. I am just not sleeping well.

This is probably why I have finally fallen for one of the many hormone treatment ads that I am bombarded with on a daily basis. I poked around on the company website and then I went in search of some non-sponsored reviews. As a result, I discovered a community of women who all had similar stories of restlessness, no sleep, scattered thought and mood swings (I didn’t really mention those but…). This community had some very insightful and helpful reviews in regards to the product I was considering and after reading through many discussions, I was convinced. I filled out the survey, had a very brief chat with an online doctor and am currently waiting the arrival of an estrogen body cream along with a dietary supplement of DHEA. If I see some significant changes, I plan to contact my regular doctor to see about getting this stuff through my insurance.

I’ve been slow to admit to myself that my symptoms were not all in my head, a perfect example of how the medical industry has been gaslighting women since there was a medical industry. It doesn’t help that perimenopause is the great unknown of medicine with confusing symptom descriptions like “frequent or infrequent periods.” Perimenopause and Menopause are the epitome of Voldemort, He Who Must Not Be Named. No one wants to talk about it. No one wants to dole out grant money to research it. No doctor wants specialize in it. No one cares about a woman’s body unless it is still capable of reproduction. Perimenopause is that gray timeline where a woman could still have a baby. While there’s a whole lot reasons why a could is not a should, no one’s going to do anything that would exclude the possibilities. Women in America do not have rights to their own bodies.

I’ve had four periods since the start of the year. Yes, that’s two a month but so far zip all nothing but an occasional right ovary cramp for this month. I don’t think I’m having hot flashes, but experience moments when I feel hot. It’s nothing dramatic. I get hot, take a layer off and five minutes later I’m so cold my teeth start chattering. I have no energy yet I still do all of things. And since I have no idea what forty eight is supposed to feel like, I chalked it all of this up to seasonal depression and inefficient heating and air systems. Honestly, for all I know those things could be the problem. I guess I’ll find out soon enough once my prescription arrives.

I’ll keep you posted. Meanwhile, I’ll be over here looking at puppies.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Long ago, I stepped back from a life where I seemed to always be burning a candle at two ends. Sometimes I think of it as stepping into a life a leisure, which is a bit absurd if you think that a life of leisure is working a nine to five job, keeping up a house, making sure pets are well spoiled, teaching two yoga class a week, and walking ten thousands steps a day. But yes, apparently I consider my current life to be one of leisure. Maybe it has been a little too leisurely for me because I recently seem to be continuously adding stuff to my social calendar. There are two back to back weekends in April where I will be out of town on adventures. My norm is to only have one weekend adventure a month, if that, particularly in the winter months. Now it seems I am making up for all the days I lived the life of a mole.

I took Tuesday off from work so that I could hang photos at Westside Local. I don’t know why I thought this would take me hours, but fortunately I was home when FedEx dumped a large cumbersome box onto my front yard. The box contained a chair I had ordered that was scheduled to arrive on Thursday. Now you can just go ahead and imagine all Lucille Ball moments now because that pretty much sums up how I managed to get the large cumbersome box into the house. The chair is for the living area and it is the chair I wanted for that space to begin with but ended up compromising on a chair I did not love. That chair has served it’s purpose and now others can see why I did not love that chair because their butts have been sitting in it long enough to recognize the flaws of said chair. The new chair is a nice orange, is smaller and less bulky than the old chair. And I love it.

I also thought that by taking Tuesday off, I would have time to rest up before heading out to see Jenny Lewis in concert. This is a concert I have dreamed about for years and even though it was happening on a school night and the show didn’t start until 8 with the opener, I didn’t want to miss this opportunity. The concert was at the Truman which does not have seating unless you purchased the VIP balcony section. I was too cheap to do that when I bought our tickets months ago, thinking the balcony at the Truman would give terrible views. I know different now and was told that “we are grownups and can afford the slightly more expensive seat.” I had terrible views from the floor area, but this did not keep me from nonstop dancing for an hour and half. At one point Michael brought me a cup of water and suggested I drink it all. I thanked him for that when we left the venue and started our walk back to where we parked. He said with a little bit of awe in his voice “You didn’t stop moving the entire time.”

I can’t help it. Music just makes me move my body.

Wednesday evening, I met (Nurse) Jenn for dinner. She told me about her full dance card and the number of times she had been asked by others to reschedule our date. She had held firm, refusing to reschedule our time together. It’s the dumbest thing. I can literally walk to her house, but finding time on our schedules for each others requires the moon and stars to be in a very specific alignment pattern. I had also considered the possibility of rescheduling our date for a couple of reasons, but stayed committed. Jenn told me that even though all of these other things were going on, I am one of the few people in her life who “fills her cup.” And by this point, she really needed a refill. I can say the same is true for her. Jenn is really good at getting me to talk about things that I usually leave floating around inside my head. Our time together is equal parts listening and sharing. She thinks I’m amazing and is very vocal about it. I think she’s the cool girl I have always been trying to impress, but I also think she’s spectacular.

So here we are on Friday and I have to say that I’m exhausted. I’m looking forward to a weekend of more leisure than adventure. Our biggest adventure will be swapping vehicles around oil change appointments while getting the Cabbage to piano lessons. The fox, chicken, bag of feed and one row boat riddle is practice for living life. But while my body is tired, I am entering the weekend with a full heart. I am grateful for full dance cards and most especially grateful for spending time with someone who fills my heart.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Monday and Tuesday this week, I rode Valerie (the scooter) to work. Monday’s ride was spectacular. Tuesday’s ride was…not so great. I left the house under fairly mild conditions. The high for the day was 75 degrees, but I knew a cold front was moving in at some point. I bargained on being home before the front moved in. I was wrong. When I left work at 6:00 PM the temperature was 43 degrees. I had to stop at a local pub for an AIDS Walk Open Volunteer meeting. When I left the bar at 7:00 PM, the temperature was 38 degrees with strong gusts of wind. I was four blocks from the house when it started sleeting. It was not even remotely ideal scooter riding conditions, but I did it and I’m still alive.

I am notoriously territorial about my scooter. I don’t want anyone other than me riding Valerie. The same was true with V. I know Chris rode V once because that’s how he discovered my back tire was bad. He didn’t ask permission; he just did it. So there could have been other times. I don’t know. Once, I let my brother ride V home from work. He and Katrina were finishing up a long motorcycle ride to Canada and had stopped at my house. I went to work on V and let them have my car for the day, but at the end of the day, the city was hit with a downpour. My brother had all the rain repellant gear with him. So they came and got me in the car. I drove my car home and he drove the scooter so I wouldn’t get rained on. I am forever grateful he was there to do that.

Michael jokes about my territorial attitude towards the scooter and needles me about letting him ride my scooter constantly. Look, I am often the passenger when he’s driving a four wheeled vehicle. I am often behind him when we are on scooter rides. I do not approve of his driving techniques and this is why I will not let him drive my scooter. There is also something to be said about having things of your own. I would never ask to ride Michael’s scooter. For one thing, I’m not confident I have the strength to handle it. His scooter is heavier and has a bigger engine. For another thing, I don’t feel the need to share everything.

I struggled with my identity for a long time after Chris died; not that I think my identity is solely tied into a thing. It is a simplification of all the things, thoughts and ideas that are truly my own. I had so thoroughly woven my identity with Chris, that I couldn’t really tell what part of my actions or thoughts were Chris’s actions and thoughts or my own. I never noticed this while we were Chris and Cindy mostly because the two of us were so often on the same page about things both emotionally and intellectually. But when he was gone, I wasn’t sure how to be just Cindy. Eventually I figured out that I’ve always been just Cindy, that my identity wasn’t absorbed or defined by my relationship with Chris, but rather enhanced by it.

Being a little territorial about some things like my scooter or my writing or my ideas is my way of maintaining my own identity. Women, especially, have been trained to feel guilt for wanting/needing something of their very own, that we are being selfish for wanting our own time and space. This is yet another patriarchal lie that I am burning to the ground. Several times this week, I have looked at my reflection in the mirror and been surprised by my own cuteness. I have looked and thought “Hey there, cutie.” I may have even said it out loud and when I have finished taking note of my cuteness, I have whispered “you are deserving.” I am deserving of my own space and time. I deserve to be a little bit selfish.

Hey there, cutie. You also deserve to be a little bit selfish.

MY FLAMING LIPS

Okay, this is not a real entry or worth a whole post but it is a ramble of things I’m a little bit proud of. First of all, most of you know about my peeling lips and how I pick at them. Most of the times my lips are in a state of scabbed, chapped or just a bleeding mess because I lack all restraint and cant’ keep my hands from peeling any bit of a possible flake of skin from my lips. It is a terrible ugly habit, but it is a habit of a lifetime. There have been short snips of time when I have not done this. Once when I was on a gluten free diet and once I don’t know why or remember, but I just didn’t. It has been three months now and so I feel like it is safe for me to disclose that my lips are healed and in the best shape of their lives. How did I do it? One morning I was smearing Aquaphor cream onto my tattoo and rubbed some extra onto my lips. Since then, I’ve been doing that twice a day and even though there have been times I’ve tried to pick at my lips, there’s nothing to pick off.

Pucker up! It’s a gosh dang miracle.

The second thing that I’ve done is print out cute little price tags that include a QR code for my Venmo account that I will place with the prints I’m hanging next month. Is this a big deal? Nope, but it makes me feel real tech savvy and hip like a young person. Some of you are sitting there thinking “But Cindy, you are savvy and hip!” and I’m here to say that I am savvy and hip for my age demographic. My generation invented blogging and online sharing of photos. I can do those things well, but Reels and TikToks and the Snaps? Forget it. I’m not saying I can’t do those things. I’m saying I have yet to create space for learning to do those things and I don’t feel like I’ll be making space for that learning any time soon.

Back at Christmas, when we were at Jenn and Wade’s, we all had to take turns saying something personal about ourselves. One of the questions posed was “what is something you lie about to yourself?” I tell myself that I am unhealthy. Like all the time. I have had people tell me that I am not enough in some way or fashion. Not every day or all the time, but eventually there’s been the review where I’m not doing my job enough or the relationship where I don’t praise enough. Commercials and ads tell me I’m not thin enough, eating healthy enough, young enough, happy enough. I am bombarded with outside ‘not enoughs’ and for a while I had started adopting this language when talking to myself. It’s like spending a week in London and suddenly picking up a British accent. That’s basically how the biggest lie came into being. The biggest lie I tell myself is that I am not enough.

Wait. That is also not true.

The biggest lie I used to tell myself was that I am not enough. I’ve been working on this for a while. That whole unhealthy lie I tell myself slipped by me and I was surprised it even came out of my mouth. Here I was smugly thinking that I had beat the habit of telling myself all the ways I am not enough. Habits are hard to dump. Celebrating small victories has become part of my strategy for dumping that bad habit. Neither of those above things are news worthy items, but both of them are small victories. I am not unhealthy. Look at my lips! They’re so healthy looking! I eat a bag of kale a week. Is that something an unhealthy person would do? Maybe? I don’t know, but you might also notice in that part on my second small victory, I did not allude to being not techy enough. I know enough things and I’d rather spend my time in other ways than spending it learning new tech.

Small victories for today (so far): I added my outside walking loop back in with my inside walking loop. I have taken over 8,000 steps today all before 10:00AM. I figured out a Jupyter notebook coding problem I was having last week. That’s amazing! And the day is young. I think I will celebrate with a dance party at my desk.

You should celebrate your small victories.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

It is currently Wednesday and I’m thinking about Friday’s gratitude posting. When I look out the window from my standing point at my work desk, I have a perfect view of the fountain in the center of the circle drive. More than a dozen robins are taking turns between being at the fountain and the trees that surround the fountain. I have seen people walking outside without coats on and this weekend I’m checking the tires for all two wheeled vehicles. This was never a Fake Spring, but the real deal with an the occasional appearance of Fake Winter. The air feels like Spring and tastes like adventure.

I gave Michael the option of joining me on my Moose Hunt in June and he got pretty excited about hunting mythical creatures. Months ago, I made a plea for a return visit to New Orleans. I know we were just there, but I feel like I didn’t absorb enough aiyee. I didn’t eat enough crawfish or slurp down enough (hardly any) raw oysters. Ever since leaving from New Orleans, I’ve been craving that place more than I would expect. I might love the Pacific Northwest, but I left my soul in New Orleans years and years ago. It has owned a piece of me since I was three. I didn’t have to twist any of Michael’s arms to get him to agree to another visit. That trip is booked and planned and I hadn’t expected to be planning any other trips for the year.

But then the Moose Hunt.

And a weekend tulip festival with my mom and sister.

And some gal camp trips.

And…

And…

I don’t want to spend a lot of money or even travel a great distance, but I want to fill this year up with tiny adventures. I did not know this at first, even though, well before the New Year, I had made some sort of word collage of wants for 2024 and “seeing a moose” and “solo camp trips” made an appearance in this collage. I didn’t really believe that I would get any more proactive than writing those wants down somewhere. I didn’t believe I would ever say the wants out loud. Yet I have said them out loud and in doing so it feels like I have cast spells. This spell casting has me feeling lighter and hopeful. There have been times when the thought of planning and actually going places has felt exhausting. Finding the place to stay. Packing the car. Making the drive to the place. Just the idea of all of it has felt heavy and leaves me in need of a nap. But something is different now.

This feels exciting.

THE WEEKENDER

I met Amy and Deborah in a town that I have visited a thousand times. Honestly, it was not far from where I grew up, but we managed to see things and explore areas that I had never seen before. I actually went inside the Price Tower instead of just seeing it from the road and then we discovered another tower in a park that I had no idea existed. That was called the Play-Tower and it was built in 1963 by Bruce Goff, commissioned by Mrs. Harold C. Price. The spiral staircase takes you up six feet to a steel ball and is rather terrifying, because once at the top, you can feel the tower swaying back and forth. When we made it back down, the three of spent the rest of trip complaining about our old lady knees. As per usual, there was lots and lots talking and lots and lots of laughter and lots and lots of snacks.

My drive to and from our meeting space had me traveling old country highways and somewhere in Kansas, I passed a sign for a Little House on the Prairie homestead, one that I don’t remember every noticing before. Talaura, Michael and I visited the homestead in South Dakota and we dragged the Cabbage to the Laura Ingalls Wilder’s home in Mansfield MO, but I didn’t realize there was a place in Kansas so close to the OK border. So on my way home from the weekend, I followed the signs and took a detour. I was the only person in the parking space outside the homestead. It is currently closed for the winter, but you are still free to roam the property. There is a replica of the original log cabin built in 1870 by the Ingalls. The other buildings came later, after the Ingalls had moved back up to Pepin WI.

The Ingalls family moved around a lot and not from town to town. They moved state to state, which is impressive considering they were traveling by wagon.

As I made my way around the property, a very vague and dreamy memory kept nudging the back of my brain. I could have sworn a preschool version of me, along with a group of other preschoolers ran around this place like the feral children we were. I can almost hear the slightly stern voice of a woman trying to wrangle us up. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and juice boxes made up our picnic lunch. If this is a true memory, I can assure you that I was wearing a prairie inspired dress with a matching bonnet. I don’t know what my obsession with all things Little House is all about. I read all the books and watched the TV show and reruns of the TV show, but I don’t remember reading the books over and over the way I did Little Women. Yet there was, is, still something about prairie life that hooked me. I spent hours building an imaginary homestead in our pasture when I was little. I spent hours imagining living life on the prairie while I was actually living life on a prairie.

Building something from nothing.

I think this is what I am drawn too in these stories and the real places that birthed those stories. Laura Ingalls Wilder and her family reinvented themselves over and over, move after move. When the first life they tried to build broke, they moved on to build a new life, starting practically from scratch each time. And there were times when it may have felt impossible to rebuild. There were times so awful, that Laura Ingalls Wilder couldn’t or wouldn’t write about them. Yet the family not only survived, but thrived so much so that we know their names and the stories Laura wrote feel like stories about our own grandparents. Life on the prairie forces resilience. I may have been raised in modern times, but I was still raised on prairie land. My high school’s neighbor was a dairy farm and we participated in more tornado drills than fire drills. Though, my HS was evacuated more than once due to wildfires. Bouquets of prairie flowers were clenched in my hands often wilting before I made it home from whatever pasture adventure I had been on. I know the tunes from the area songbirds.

I told Michael my plans for a moose hunt this summer and he is onboard for this adventure. We have started planning and plotting our route, a route that will take us very close to two other Laura Ingalls Wilder homesites. Homes I have yet to visit. I am placing pins in those towns with intentions for stopping on our way back home. I figure this could be my consolation for hunting imaginary creatures and coming up empty handed.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

I spent most of Saturday in our basement framing prints that I will hang on the walls at Westside Local in March. When I ran out of frames, I took a break for lunch and discovered that the rest of the frames that I had ordered were sitting on my front porch. So after lunch, I went back down to finish framing. Once that was done, I looked around at the cluttered mess of the basement and set to work breaking down boxes and reorganizing shelves. I filled a box with kitchen items that hasn’t been touched in more than year and filled a bag with garbage. Then I moved over to the camp gear and pulled items from the old camp kitchen that I could use in my car camp kitchen. I organized all of my car camping equipment into one spot so that it’s easy for me to grab and throw into my car.

It was a very productive day and I started to get excited about the possibility of throwing my camp gear into my car and spending a weekend in the woods. Recently I posed a question to a group of friends about how far I might need to drive in order to see a moose. Several agreed that straight north into the Minnesota/Canada border area was probably my best bet. That’s about an eight to ten mile drive. Totally doable. I could easily take a long weekend and go for a moose hunt. I got so excited about the idea that I started looking at maps and moose sighting forums. Moose sighting forums. They exist, probably because there are people like me that do not believe that moose are real. I’ve settled on a visit to a place just north of Duluth, MN. I’d really like to make that happen this summer.

Any way, I fell for the trap that is Fake Spring. I allowed myself to settle into the warmer temps and start to dream of outdoor adventures. Of course, the weather has flipped back to cold. There’s even an 87% for snow today. It’s snowing right now! Which seems just about right since I’m driving to meet up with Amy and Deborah for our annual gals weekend. When I look at the crystal ball that is the weather predictions, I see more flip flopping temps in the following week and it makes everything feel a bit manic. I am practicing patience and preparing for the day Fake Spring becomes Real Spring. And you know what? I feel like I didn’t eat enough soup this winter. So this gives me more soup days to enjoy.

Now to address the elephant in the room that centers around the events of this week.

I started writing this entry on Wednesday, before the Super Bowl Parade and the mass shooting that occurred at the end of the celebration. The Super Bowl Parade has and is a celebration that involves day drinking. The state of Missouri is also a Right To Carry state, with no permit requirements for handguns. It is a miracle we have not had this tragedy happen before. When looking back through archives, the last mass shooting in Kansas City occurred in 1933 during the Kansas City Massacre, which ironically was also at Union Station. Comprehensive gun control is on my list of wants and needs that I vomit out to my senators and representatives every week, which is starting to feel about as productive as a thought and a prayer. And that’s about all I will say here.

I will say that I am grateful for the texts from loved ones checking in to make sure we were and are safe.

I am grateful that my Kansas City friends who went or almost went, are also safe.

I am grateful to be spending the weekend away from the city.

I am grateful to be spending the weekend talking and laughing with Amy and Deborah.

I am thankful for the promise of outdoor adventures.

I am thankful for soup days.

I am thankful for you.

WORDS

I’m not entirely sure where we were, but it was north of the river. North of the river is how the people of Kansas City refer to anything north of the Missouri River. This is an area that has gone largely unexplored during my time here. I know where the roller rink is and maybe a couple of casinos. I can get myself to Michael’s school and the airport, but don’t ask me for restaurant recommendations. Unless you’re into Indian food, then Swagat’s out by the airport is a solid choice. We happened to be in a completely unrecognizable area on this day because Michael was buying a used exercise bike. On our way home, we passed a billboard for a layer that read in large, yellow lettering “Winningest!” and I lost my mind.

At first, I couldn’t stop saying the word out loud over and over. I found the sound of the word to be ridiculously hilarious. It’s not like I haven’t heard someone use the word before, but it is always been used in jest around me. Seeing the word spelled out on the billboard just reiterated how stupid this word is. I was almost over my minor turrets moment when we passed the same advertisement on a different billboard. Then I exploded. This is an advertisement for a law office. Do you really want someone you cannot even use grammatically correct language in their advertisement to defend you in a court of law?!? Yeah, I know that my house is made of glass. My posts are the Swiss cheese of poorly written navel gazings, but I didn’t major in English. This dude is a lawyer; His job revolves around language. Besides, my editor is dead. What’s that lawyer’s excuse?

Lately, well ever since the “winningest” incident, I’ve found myself increasingly ranting about language. I will see a turn of words that makes my brain itch and I will go off in a ten minute rant. Yesterday, Michael had the TV on and it was all day coverage of concussion ball. There was a story about Brock Purdy (I didn’t know who this person was before this story) and the day he was drafted for the 49rs. They were showing footage of the draft and there was a woman standing on stage, holding up a jersey the read “Mr. Irrelevant”. I said “Why are they calling that guy Mr. Irrelevant?” and Michael replied “It’s because he is the last person to be drafted.” Disgust and rage instantly boiled up out of my body. Before they showed that footage, the sportscaster was talking about how Purdy has a “chip on this shoulder.” Of course he has a chip on his shoulder! He was just called ‘irrelevant’! That is just mean and uncalled for. As if I didn’t already think poorly about the capitalism and exploitation of athletes that is the NFL, now I think even less of them because they are bullies. Mean, hazing Frat boy, bullies.

And while everyone was speculating about Kelce proposing to Taylor and/or the Chiefs Super Bowl win being a government rig so that Taylor and Kelce could use that platform to endorse Biden (people are fucking crazy), actual genocide was/is happening in Gaza. I know many of you are sitting there thinking ‘But I can’t do anything about the genocide in Gaza’. Yeah, well, you can’t do anything about the whole Taylor/Kelce relationship either but it doesn’t keep you from chattering on and on about it. And if you can chatter and on and on about that, surely you can do some chattering to your representatives about demanding a cease fire and shifting our funding from weapons to humanitarian efforts.

Maybe now that we don’t have football to scream about, we can be the winningest by raising our voices against genocide.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

In 1996, Chris and I drove to Kansas City, KS to see Sting in concert. It was the Mercury Falling tour and our first concert together. We had no idea who the opener was going to be and when Tracy Chapman stepped out onto the stage, Chris and I turned to each other and practically squealed with glee. Tracy Chapman was the icing on this cake of a concert. The two women sitting in front of us left the concert when Tracy Chapman left the stage. They paid Sting amount of moneys to see her and I don’t blame them. Seeing Tracy Chapman step out onto the stage to sing her song Fast Car with Luke Combs at Sunday’s Grammy’s made every one I know burst into tears for good reasons.

Chris’s birthday was on Tuesday.

Tuesday morning, while getting ready for work, I asked Alexa to play songs by David Bowie. There is not an obvious link between Chris and David Bowie. We loved Bowie’s music and it was often featured in our daily playlists. We never got to see him concert, which is a bummer, but we never really talked about the possibility of going to a Bowie concert (mostly because we figured we could never afford it). My link with Chris and David Bowie is a bit more subtle. Many of you know that David Bowie died of liver cancer in 2016. Some of you may not realize that Bowie died two days after celebrating his 69th birthday. Chris also died of liver cancer within days of his birthday and it’s taken me a long time to say that this is how Chris died. For years, when asked, I’d tell people that Chris died from a large tumor on his liver that was wrapped around his bile duct. It felt (sometimes feels) that “liver cancer” is too simple of a description and the word ‘cancer’ implies that it can be removed and treated. None of these were options for us. There was no excision of a tumor or chemo treatments. We were handed a sheet of paper containing a list of phone numbers for hospice care.

Chris died four days after celebrating his 41st birthday.

Concerts were our church. Movie scripts were his scripture. Girls on Film by Duran Duran started playing in the car on my way home yesterday and I sang along with Chris’s lyrics “Dogs on stilts”. I don’t think I can sing it any other way. Chris lacked the ability to carry a tune, but was more than skilled in linking a tune to a scene. In December of 2011, Chris and I saw our final concert together, Florence and the Machine. He was very sick and in a lot of pain, but we didn’t know then about the tumor or the cancer. He spent most of the concert sitting on the floor and we did not stay for the entire show. The morning Chris died, I drove to work in hopes of getting an hour or two of tasks accomplished. Hospice had settled into our home by then and Chris was comfortable. His mother and brother were there, so I thought this would be a good time to step away for bit. As I made the drive, Dog Days are Over by Florence and Machine came on the radio. I was at my desk for ten minutes before they called me to tell me that Chris had passed.

I wanna hear one song without thinking of you… -Me and My Dog by Boygenius

I have carried a trunk full of guilt and anger over Chris’s last morning for years. I should have been there. He’s such a jerk for choosing the moment I leave the house to draw his last breath. What kind of idiot am I for thinking I could ‘step out for a bit’? If I’d been there would he still be breathing? That is a particularly horrific thought. A day and a half before Chris died, he stopped being the sharp witted person we all knew and loved. He was unconscious and incoherent. The Chris we all knew and loved had already left the building. Chris didn’t choose that moment to leave out of spite or meanness. It was just his time and it was easier for the both of us for me to not be present. My presence made it harder for him leave and he really needed to leave. Knowing this is why I don’t carry that trunk around with me all the time now. I might move it from one place to another from time to time. It is always in the room with me, but I am no longer carrying it every waking moment.

The day the doctor handed us the phone number for hospice care, I was forced to recognize that there was nothing I could do in this situation. Being put into this absolute position broke my brain. It didn’t happen all at once. It took phone calls to various cancer centers and the inability to get Chris’s pain managed for it to sink in. There was nothing I could do to fix this. With time, I’ve started seeing this as less of a failure on my part and more of a surrender. When I tell my students to surrender to their final relaxation it is my cue to them to give in and allow for relaxation. There is a floaty feeling that happens when your body completely sinks into your mat and you have surrendered. It is not dissimilar to the feeling I have when I set down that trunk of guilt and anger.

I am often asked if it ever gets any easier, this whole grief thing, and I still after all this time don’t know how to answer. There is not a day that passes where I don’t think of him or miss him terribly. But I have surrendered myself to the reality that Chris no longer has a physical presence on this planet. That particular reality has become part of that trunk I sometimes move around. The answer to the question of ease has a yes and no answer. That trunk is heavy and takes up space, but it is filled with things I can’t completely dump. On the days I’m carting that around, my answer is no. On the days when I’m not carrying it, but I can see the trunk in the room, my answer is yes.

There is gratitude to be found in the surrender.

MY TWENTY TWO YEAR OLD SELF

There was a thing floating around last week on Instagram that challenged people to post a picture of themselves at age twenty one. The funny thing about this was that so many of the people in my community only have actual print images of themselves from that time. We were all twenty one in the years before digital. The closest picture I had of myself on hand and printed was taken when I was twenty two. It’s a photo of Chris and I on our wedding day. He’s in a tuxedo and I’m in my wedding suit, a flower headband on my head. I’m holding a bouquet and our marriage license. It is one of the few pictures I have of the two of us where Chris is actually looking at the camera. It is the only decent photo of the two of us together on our wedding day.

We went with unconventional as our theme.

That is the picture I shared on Instagram but with a note that I was twenty two in the photo, but only just barely and that it was the closest I could get to twenty one right now. I’d have to dig through a box if I wanted something from when I was twenty one. There were a couple of people who responded to my post in disbelief and declared that I still look pretty much the same. I responded to these people with gratitude for the kindness but also an assurance that this can’t possibly be true. Though one person argued with me, holding firm to their belief that I still resemble twenty two year old Cindy. And again, I hold firm to my belief that it is impossible that I look the same as I did twenty six years ago.

I am the same weight now that I was then, but take better care of my body now. My haircut is the same, but my hair has more white in it now, but when I look in the mirror, I don’t see a twenty two year old me looking back. When I look at twenty two year old me I see more than the surface stuff and the reason I don’t believe for a second that I still pretty much look the same as back then. This was before I had finished undergrad and entered into the soul crushing world of graduate school. Chris always backed me up, never telling me “you can’t” or that I was doing things wrong or not good enough. I believed I could do anything and in time that confidence would be whittled down to nothing, but Chris would be right there helping build that confidence back. Without him around, my imposter syndrome is magnified for the whole world to see and to point at with critical pointer fingers. I am the house built on sand, continuously rebuilding my confidence levels while new tides come in to wash it all away. That picture was taken when I was at the beginning of what felt like everything, before bad career choices and bad financial decisions. Before I knew real heartbreaking loss. Before I even knew anything about imposter syndrome. Before I learned that I have to be my greatest ally. Before I knew anything about anything.

Aging is living. Living is aging. -Radiant Rebellion by Karen Walrond

That picture is of a woman just beginning to live. If I could go back and tell that young woman in the picture to do things differently, make different choices, would I? There’s maybe one or two things I’d recommend, like don’t buy that time share you’ll never use or think about clinical microbiology as a career. Otherwise, I’d say make the choices you’re going to make, but soak up every single moment of joy, even the smallest thing that makes you smile. Take millions and millions of mental pictures of those moments and there will be millions and millions because you will experience more joy than pain. In fact, I will argue that the amount of joy you experience is what will make the painful moments stand out and sting the most.

I would tell her that some times are not going to be great, but you’re going to be okay.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Tuesday morning, I peeled my tired ‘don’t wanna’ ass out of bed and then pulled on some clothes. I opened my closet and reached in for my walking shoes and Josephine nearly lost her mind. Josephine does not have a big enough body for containing joy. When she sees my walking shoes, she knows we’re going for a walk and her joy explodes from her body in a couple of ways. She will parkour herself all around my bedroom and grab the nearest toy to flip around in the air. Then she will throw her little body at me in a demand to tie my shoes faster. Once she is harnessed and leashed, she will grab a section of the leash and pull me towards the front door. This is her reaction every time, not just because it’s been a few months since our last walk.

Michael and I are and will continue to be busy with various things over the next few months. Michael has several after school meetings and play rehearsals. I get home late on Tuesdays because I teach an evening yoga class. This makes me feel bad for Josephine because she has no one to pet her all day or play a game of tug-o-war. It is a long day for all of us. The weather is tolerable this week, so I was determined to at least do this Tuesday morning walk. I woke up before my alarm (not unusual) and looked at the clock. My whole body groaned. I was a little bit sore form the previous day’s yoga experience. My eyes were crusty. It was cold in the house and staying in bed, even though I would not get any real sleep, felt soooooo much easier than getting out of bed.

But I didn’t stay in bed.

I rolled to one side and peeled myself up to a seated position. Then I firmly placed all four corners of the bottom of my feet into the floor. I said to myself “get up.” even though I still didn’t want to, but once I was dressed and walking, my body changed it’s mind about the ‘don’t wanna’. Our way to the park felt slower than normal, mostly because Josephine had to stop and investigate all of the things along the way. Side note: Josephine is part pig. She grunts and snorts with her nose to the ground for 95% of the walk. At one point, she sniffed a spot on the ground, took five steps before shaking her head in surprise and circling back for another sniff. We saw two raccoons slink their way across the street (blocks from our house) and heard one owl claiming the area has his. We were the only ones in the park or out in the neighborhood. There was only the faintest of light to the East as we walked the last block back to the house.

I know that not to far from now, there will be more than just a faint bit of light as we make our way home from our walks.

Why is it so hard to get started? What happens to my body during these months that makes it impossible to want to move?!? It’s like my blood thickens to maple syrup but it doesn’t make me warmer. I am never warm. My hands are so cold that if I were to touch you, you would think you had been touched by death. I starting writing this entry thinking that I would immediately post this because I figured that getting up to walk the dog would only happen on Tuesday, but Wednesday morning there I was bundled up and walking Josephine through the neighborhood. Then I did it again on Thursday and Friday. By Thursday, this was starting feel like a gratitude post and I delayed posting. I’ve also been a little bit lazy about my writing, spending my “free time” playing The Bee or doing the NYTimes crossword. I recognize that winter is far from over and that I should expect at least two more miserably cold with possible snow events before the end of March. I also know that today a large rodent made some predictions about the weather for the next few weeks. But today, right now, I am not focused on the future or the what ifs to come.

I am grateful for a week that contained buckets of sunshine every day and temperatures that allowed us to thaw before the next cold front comes along.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Last week, Micheal had some sort of a cold, but I kind of ignored it. He didn’t really act sick except for that one morning when he said “I don’t feel good.” But still, I blew it off which I have apologized for because now I’m the one with the cold. Not too long ago I saw some joke meme tweet thing of a conversation between the brain and the body. The body was saying “We need more fluids!” and the brain replied “I just gave you tons of fluids! What are you doing with all of the fluids?! Are you making mucous?” Then the body doesn’t respond because that is exactly what it’s doing with all of the fluids. I have never found anything more relatable than this. I wouldn’t be so mad about it all if I hadn’t just gotten over the cough and funk that I had before Christmas. This has been a week of cold medicine and neti pots and lots of Kleenex. Then, I threw in some red light therapy for good luck.

Last Saturday, I stepped on a scale for the first time in over six months and for the first time ever, I didn’t give a flip about the number that appeared. My uncaring of the number did not come from a depressed state. I just didn’t care. I was standing on the scale purely for reference since it was also my birthday. If I kept a lab notebook on myself, this would be important data to add, but I don’t. So, I filed the info in my mental lab notebook. My weight is a reflection of my current state of activity level, which always decreases as I go into hibernation mode. In the Spring time, I know I will emerge from semi-hibernation to dog walks and bicycle rides. The season will shift from rich lasagnas to tomato salad and the number on the scale will still just be a number. This is the thing that forty eight year old Cindy would like to pass onto seventeen year old Cindy: The scale numbers are a social construct.

Pear, apple, hourglass, etc are all social constructs for the shape of a woman’s body.

Each year, I gain a new perspective and a little bit more wisdom about this body that my soul inhabits. Each year, I gain a new perspective and a bit more wisdom about my soul and living each day with loving kindness. The only disappointing thing about my birthday this year was that I was too busy and isolated to take time to thank each person individually for their Happy Birthday wishes left on my Facebook timeline. I took the Facebook app off of my phone years ago and only have access to it when I’m on my computer or iPad in a wifi area. So I came home from a day of absorbing yoga knowledge to a timeline filled with love and joy. Which is the only reason for social media.

This body and soul is not large enough and can not contain the amount of gratitude that I have for each of you and for those who make the choice to use these platforms for good.

THE WHALE

I spent the whole day on Saturday attending a chair yoga teacher certification class. I was supposed to go again on Sunday but woke up with a sore throat and a slight fever. After showering and eating breakfast, I didn’t feel much better. So I opted to stay home and not spread my germs, but I was very happy to see that pictures and videos from the day had been posted for me to scroll through. It was also really nice to watch a video of our teacher demonstrating how to get off the floor and it is exactly how I teach my students to safely get off the floor. The course was helpful and validating. Michael said that the experience seemed to have energized me, which is funny because I ended up taking a four hour nap on Sunday.

Early on Saturday, our teacher passed out a deck of oracle cards. I thought that oracle cards was just a Roze thing, but turns out it is becoming a popular yoga studio thing to do. It’s cleaner than goat yoga. I treated this experience with the same eye-roll as I’d use for Roze. The card that I pulled from this deck is a card I have pulled before from one of Roze’s decks. It was the Whale: True Voice card and I half read the description knowing full well that somewhere in there it was going to say something about speaking with compassion to yourself and others. I have no problems speaking with compassion to others. I might even be real good at that. I don’t want to talk about the ‘yourself’ part of that sentence. There was one part of this description that I hadn’t noticed before and it reads “Getting in touch with the mystery and unseen realms of life.” To which I responded “Shut the fuck up.” I turned my ghostbuster trap into an Idea trap.

The description on this card also said this:

Singing your true song from a place of compassion.

Somewhere along the way I have forgotten my true song and I have been working really hard these last three months to remember that song. It has slowly been coming back to me, but in a really annoying way. It’s like I can plunk out a few notes over and over again in my head, kind of like hearing Chris try to sing out the tune to Brazil, which if you knew Chris, you knew he was tone deaf. It’s like I hear something that is kind of familiar, but not yet clear and I know some of that is from trying to hard. Every one I know has struggled with January and it has not turned out to be the fresh start to the New Year that we all wanted. I know I jumped into January first with the idea that I was going to figure everything out on week one.

Then January tried to kill me.

More than a few notes of that song revealed itself this weekend. The revelation came by immersing myself in a community of yoga teachers of various of levels of teaching experience. Teachers can and do learn from other teachers. I loved learning from the others in our group and I loved sharing my own knowledge with the group. At one point on Saturday, we were paired off to practice teaching sun salutations. My partner was a woman who is still working on her teacher training and still finding her teacher voice. She was nervous when it became her turn to teach me. She’s normally a Spin teacher and I said if you can teach a class while riding a bike, you can teach anything. But really, the best advice I gave her was that the more she loved this practice, the easier it will be for her to share her knowledge of the practice. And then I started speaking whale like Dory in Finding Nemo. (Not really)

This post is about to get real long because finding your voice and loving your practice ties into something I started writing last week.

Last year, I purchased a new camera backpack to hold my Nikon and the (potential) extra lenses and gear. I did a whole lot of research on camera packs and what I wanted in a backpack. That also meant narrowing down what it was that I didn’t like about the camera bag I already owned. The deciding factors included comfort and ease of packability while not being bulky. I didn’t want to settle on any of these things for cost and I spent monies to get what I truly wanted. It was worth it. I love everything about this backpack. It has specific and easy to get to pockets for just about everything I need while traveling. It fits my body and does not feel like I am wearing a pack meant for a month long excursion on the Appalachian Trail. It hangs nicely on my closet door and I generally just leave my camera in it.

The bag and camera have not moved in over two months.

I have fallen completely out of practice with my Nikon. In fact I can pinpoint the exact time when I felt joy in taking photos and that was when I was in Woods Hole back in October. Lately, when I’m sitting in bed in the mornings with Josephine and drinking my tea, I will stare at that bag and start to stew. I sit there and think about projects I could/should start to practice using this camera. Last year, I was gifted a flash along with a set of diffusers and I have yet to take time out to learn when and how to use it. That’s just stupid because now in the dark cold months when the last thing I want to do is to go outside is the best time to stay inside and learn about flash photography. When you look for the light, but can’t seem to find it, then you make your own light.

This weekend I was reminded that when you truly love the things you do, then of course you find time to do those things. But there is also joy, great amounts of it really, in sharing those things with others. Yoga. Photography. Words. These are my things and I’m clearing space for more doing of these things that I love.