THANKFUL FRIDAY

I read a morning newsletter from the New York Times every morning while I drink coffee and eat breakfast. I tend to skim whatever the focused topic of the day is and go straight to the daily/nightly events. I read up on the latest climate change related disaster and the continued genocide in Gaza. I take note of the increasing number of concentration camps that my own country is building and using. I pay attention to what research labs are losing their funding and the latest attack on science by the current administration. I make a list of talking points for my congress people and representatives to email them and call them with that day. And then I sit with my grief and disgust over the country I live in and how so many Americans have turned out to be so very cruel.

And dumb. Cruel and dumb. It’s like we’re being governed by elementary school bullies who are often found in the corner eating glue.

So when Taylor Swift announced her engagement to Travis Kelce, I spent way too long being over the moon and texting with Misti about it because it was something joyful in this current sea of cruelty and hatefulness. And when you are a person contacting your congress and representatives begging them to stop the cruelty multiple times a week, this one little light of joy is a necessity. But also, I’m a complete sucker for love. Particularly when I see it happen with two people who seem to really get each other. This is Chris’s fault. Thanks to that jerk, I now I have this romantic side that wants to make heart signs with my hands and kissy faces whenever I see a couple who look like they really and truly like each other.

That thing some of us have inside us that wants better things for this country, for our world; that fire that keeps us yelling about the famine forced onto the Palestinians by Israel and the every day workers in our communities who are disappearing because of ICE and sent to concentration camps, that fire needs fuel. Our voices need a rest every once in while and we need to make space and time for caring for our internal fires. It’s tough out there for us advocates. Most of the congress people and representatives that I call or email multiple times a week are all white men who believe that a woman’s place is in the kitchen and that a person of color’s place is in prison. They don’t give a flip about what I think or feel. I know I’m yelling into deaf ears, but some of it gets through. None of it will get through if I allow my flame of rebellion to burn out.

Balance.

I am challenging myself to balance every bad news headline with one good one. I want to stay informed while finding good things. If I allow myself to get weighed down with despair, I am letting those fascists win. I have a sticker on my scooter that literally says “Fuck Fascism” with sparkly rainbows. So, yeah. News of Taylor and Travis’s engagement, while deliberately posed and micromanaged, made me giddy. Also, that story about the guy who threw a Subway sandwich at federal agents in D.C made me chuckle. Funny while fighting fascism.

I think this is my new game plan.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Among the headlines presented to me this week from the New York Times Well section include A User’s Guide to Midlife, Happiness Doesn’t Have To Be A Heavy Lift, How Stress Masks the Symptoms of Chronic Disease, and It’s Probably Time To Clean Your Water Bottle. I only clicked to read one of these and that was the one on happiness. While the information in the article didn’t really tell me something I didn’t already know, I did learn some new terms for a practice that I try to do every day. Things like micro-moments of positivity and tiny little joys (T.L.J.s). One of my favorite take-aways was the reverse pet peeve.

a ‘reverse pet peeve’ is something small that brings you disproportionate joy. -Bree Groff, author of the upcoming book Today Was Fun.

I’ve not ever used those words to describe my practice of seeking out the tiniest moments of joy, but the reverse pet peeve seems the most appropriate way to describe this thing I’ve been practicing and writing about for years in my Thankful Friday entries. I’ve been preaching the concept that joy doesn’t always have to come from big moments for a long time now.

This week, I had a summer scholar ask me what microscope system is my favorite of all time. I paused before answering because this felt like a choose your happiest moment question. Our technology center has many types of microscopes and they all serve different purposes. I finally answered “The Zeiss LSM-510.” I know this means nothing to many of you. It means nothing to that summer student or even to the postdoc she’s working with. Zeiss no longer makes the 510 and the software that ran that system has long ago been upgraded into something completely unrecognizable. The 510 was/is slow and clunky. Microscopy has come a long way since the development of the 510. The microscope systems I have access to now are so much nicer and friendly to use. I have said many times that I would love to re-image the experiments we imaged on the 510 with the new technology that is available to me now. So why would I choose this as my favorite of all time? The LSM 510 is the first confocal microscope I ever learned to use. I spent hours sitting in the dark with my boss, watching cells crawl across the screen eating bacteria or yeast or whatever we decided feed them. The LSM 510 is the microscope that sparked me. This is where I felt like I had finally chosen the correct scientific path for myself and there were many many moments of reverse pet peeves that happened while watching those cells.

Later on, I was working with the postdoc who is mentoring that summer scholar. His experiment is new and potentially messy so I set him up on a microscope that we recently moved into ‘retirement’. The two of us spent an afternoon working out ways to image this sample and finally managed to capture a short video of goblet cells actively taking in fluorescent dye. We both cheered and highfived each other. It was the most fun I’ve had in the lab in while. When the postdoc thanked me for my help, I shoved his gratitude aside because first of all, I was doing my job. But secondly, I was really happy to be asked for help on this project. This was bigger than T.L.J.

This is a reverse pet peeve that I’m going to savor for a long time.

AT THE CAR WASH

Back in March we had a super horrible cold snap. It was so cold that the windshield washer fluid in my car froze. When I say ‘my car’ I am now referring to the car I inherited from Mom. It came to us from Oklahoma where they can just put any old washer fluid in their vehicles because it never really gets to the level of cold we see here in northern Missouri. So for a week, I drove the car with windows I could barely see out of, occasionally collecting enough thawing snow water from the cars in front to run the wipers and smear the filth across the windshield. What can I say? I like to live dangerously. I had a car once where the windshield washer didn’t work at all. I carried a spray bottle of cleaner with me and would roll down the window while driving. Then I would take the spray bottle and stick my arm out the window and spray my windshield while running the wipers.

I know how to live without fancy things.

By the end of the week, the weather had finally warmed to tolerable and Michael helped me determine that there was nothing wrong with the washer pump. Then he suggested that we go buy new washer blades and get the car washed. The carwash of our choice was too busy to do interiors, but they were offering a special on their monthly pass that included the interior. It was such a good deal, that Michael yelled “Sold!” and handed over his bank card. Now, I was not sold. I had owned my car for over year when I met Michael. The second time we were together in my car, he asked “When’s the last time you washed your car?” I looked at him with my head tilted like a puppy and said “Wash….car?” I had not washed my car since I had purchased it. Car washing is not a thing on my radar. We don’t do that in Oklahoma. I mean, we do but not like people do here. People go once a week to the car wash! Every carwash you drive past is always packed with people and cars. It is one of the craziest things I’d ever seen.

I felt that the carwash membership was unnecessary.

Michael, who currently drives a truck with signs of rust damage from the previous owner, believes that washing your car on the regular saves the car’s life. I get it. There’s a lot of salt that gets thrown around onto our streets. Right now, everything is coated in a thick layer of pollen. I think if I listen closely, I can hear my dad agreeing with Michael. Any way, I agreed to stop at the carwash every Saturday morning after my Trader Joe’s adventures, being sure to include an eye roll while agreeing. The next weekend rolled around and I went through the carwash and then parked in one of the lanes. Then a teenager came over and cleaned the inside of my car while I waited inside with a cup of coffee. They waived me over when they were done and I got into a very clean car to drive home. And something flipped over inside my chest. I honestly am not sure how to describe it other than love.

I love the carwash.

I mean, I love it. I’m a little disgusted with just how much I love it. It feels so wasteful and bougie. It can’t be an environmentally sound action to take and I don’t want to love it. But I love it. The moment I release control of my vehicle and get pulled into the carwash, I drift off into a space of peace and tranquility. I marvel at the psychedelic soap bubbles as they stream down the windows and when I get back into the car after they’ve cleaned the inside, even when I don’t think it’s that dirty, I sigh with pleasure of being inside a clean car. At the end of that month, my carwash subscription was going to double because I’d reached the end of the promotion period. Michael and I had a serious debate about keeping the membership. I argued against it because…Paris. Michael argued for it because of the joy it brought to me. We compromised on keeping a carwash membership but down grading to just the unlimited wash (no extras like interiors). Michael said that once a month I could have the interior cleaned as an add-on.

There was some concern that just going through the automatic carwash would not be enough for me, that I would not experience the same euphoria. On Saturday morning, I released control of the car, picked up my mug of coffee and settled in for the ride. I sipped coffee and drifted off to a lovely Zen garden and when it ended, I just drove off. I was not sad about it, but I do kind of wish I could have stayed inside the carwash a little longer. When I said this to Michael, he reminded me that my membership is unlimited and I could just loop back around and go through again if I wanted to. I gasped at the thought of it. Go through the carwash twice?!? In the same day!?! That’s hedonistic!

I’m totally doing that next week.

THE YEAR IN PICTURES

Every year, when I sit down to pull pictures for the annual Year in Pictures video, I am always surprised with all the things that happened in a year’s time. I have a bad habit of fixating on the things that happen near the end of a year and getting weighed down by the not so joyous moments. I get to the end of the year and think “I didn’t do anything this year.” That thought is obviously false. I saw the Northern Lights this year. Twice! We hunted moose. I spent time with old friends and even had a short visit with a cousin I hadn’t seen in years. The end of the year may have been challenging, but the whole of the year far outweighs the challenging parts. It is a reminder that I can make light, a reminder that I feel I will need for the coming year.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

It’s that time of the year when I think I have a giant list of things I need to get done before Christmas only to realize that I have tackled 97% of that giant list already. Most likely, the other 3% of that list will get tackled over the weekend. Then I will be back into a twiddling thumbs situation that my brain never really knows how to handle. This makes it hard for me to be present. My mind keeps floating off and into the next year, already calling it for this year. I’m basically phoning it in right now.

So, in some of my free time, I’ve been sorting and organizing photos I’ve taken this year. I’m starting to run low on postcards and uploaded some new prints to be made into cards. This week, I had friend who I had sent a postcard too a couple of weeks ago, tell me how professional and perfect my photos look as postcard. I asked her to remind me which one I had sent and she described a picture of a view finder pointed out towards the ocean. Then she said that if she had seen that postcard in a shop, she probably would have bought it. I thought this was the sweetest compliment and I was grateful to hear that the card had brought her joy.

This is a habit that I started late in the year. Every Sunday, I sit down and pick out two postcards to send out to two different people. There is no rhyme or reason to who I write a note to. I usually just skim my Christmas card list and randomly make a selection. Often, I try to pick out someone who I know to have been having a particularly hard week and if someone sends me a card in response, then I send another one back. This is how Amani and I have become penpals, penning each other short but sweet postcards. Amani has taken up water colors and I have a small collection of watercolor postcards of her art. My favorite one so far is the most recent one, filled with brightly colored jelly fish. The note on the back was damaged in transit and I can’t read the last part of her note. It has something to do with me “seeing beauty almost….” Which makes me laugh. It’s like I almost have an eye for beauty…almost. Not quite. This has been a good habit to start and as my brain starts to build a plan for the next year, I hope it remembers to leave space for postcards.

Something else I noticed while organizing photos is that I managed to capture a lot of joy in this year. Recently, I had to fill out a description form for an old photo that one of my online photography groups wants to feature. It was taken so long ago that I couldn’t tell where or why it was taken and it’s just a simple photo of a wild yellow iris. One of the questions on the form asked what had inspired me to take this photo. I wrote the following.

I am an amateur photographer with the sole purpose of seeking out beauty and joy in the every day. It's almost my meditation practice.

This still holds true for me, but I find great joy in getting out my camera with purpose and intention. I am grateful for these habits and practices.

And my brain is already leaving space for more of it in the next year.

CAPTURING DINOSAURS

Sometime last week as we sat on the couch not watching TV, but scrolling on our phones, I got a notice that one of the last of Kansas City’s Drive-In Theaters, The Twin, would be closing permanently on November 17th. I relayed this information to Michael and said that I would love to get pictures of the sign before it gets demolished. Then Michael said “Why don’t I drive you out there Saturday evening?” There was a part of me that wanted to say “no, that seems like too much effort for five minutes of me screwing around with my camera.” but instead I said “Okay.” Then, at the perfect time of day on Saturday, Michael drove me out to Independence so I could take pictures of The Twin.

When we pulled up, there were three or four cars parked near the entrance. We figured they were all there to do what I was going to do, but as Michael pulled forward, past the entrance, I only saw one other person out with a camera and a tripod. The other’s were there to go to the movies. I got out of the truck with my gear and headed to the sign. When I got close enough, I asked “What are our chances that they turn the lights on?” The other photographer smiled and said “Right?!? That would be so awesome.” Then we did that dance photographers do when they’re photographing the same subject, being respectful of each other’s space. He left when it got darker but I had decided to try to use the flash I’d purchased a few years ago. I had made the purchase with the intention of learning some flash photography, but never really got around to using it. I used it Saturday evening and I couldn’t be happier with the results.

Finally, I signaled to Michael that I was done and we made our way home. Michael took us on a scenic route that put us in the path of a great neon sign for Mugs-Up and past an old drive-in theater that had closed years ago, the sign already nothing more than pieces. I am so glad I didn’t listen to that part of me that did not want to make the effort. Michael ended up driving us about half an hour from home for me to spend about fifteen minutes taking pictures, but there was one moment in that time frame when I gleefully jumped with joy as I looked at some of the preliminary shots. Not only was I doing the things, I was doing the things with newly learned skills, using the flash that’s been in my bag for two years. And I think if I can do this, if I can eek out fifteen minutes for glee just once a week, I can manage.

They never turned the lights on for the Twin sign and I am only slightly disappointed by that. The sign has seen better days and I am sure in it’s hey-day, the sign was glorious. Michael had doubts that the lights for the sign even work now. It reminded of me that time Chad and I were chasing neon motel signs in Cave City, Kentucky. Many of the old neon signs were off or not working. We stopped at each roadside motel with the light’s off on their sign and one of us would get out of the car to go ask at the front desk if they could turn the sign on. Most were nice about it, often nodding their heads and saying something along the lines of “wish I could, but the sign’s been broke for a long time now.” We would mumble something to match their regrets along with a ‘thank you’ before moving on to the next one. Sure it was disappointing to not be able to capture those bright neon lights, but we had so much fun jumping in and out of the car with our cameras, snapping away. The lights didn’t really matter. The time spent doing the thing was what was truly important.

Maybe next year, I’ll start working on a new showing. Maybe try hanging some things on some walls again. Just putting the thoughts out there feels like progress.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

I had some time to kill between appointments on Thursday, so I walked over to a little coffee shop to grab a coffee. At the last minute I asked for a pain au chocolat. I gathered my coffee and treat and settled in at table with a view of the door. The place wasn’t busy at first, then a stream of people started to pour in. I sat there with my coffee and croissant, just people watching. A young woman sat at a table near me, her back turned from me. A few minutes later a young man walked by and stopped to ask her if her avocado toast was any good. She replied that it was and he moved on to settle at his own table.

I watched a woman secure the leash of her little dog to a table outside and then go in. The little dog watched and waited for her return. I watched as people left, passing the dog without a notice. How can you just walk by and not even say “hello puppy!”? A few runners were still out on their morning runs, probably near the end of their run. I wondered what all these people could possibly be doing. It was 9:00 AM on a Thursday. Where did these people work? I’m sure some were students, some retired. It’s possible that some were headed to work in one of the shops in the area that didn’t open until 10:00. Possibly some of the people getting coffee were actual tourists. I recognized some typical touristy clothings, new Kansas City t-shirts.

I sat there speculating about the lives of these people, but they could easily have the same speculations about me sitting in a cafe late on a Thursday morning. I myself am like a tourist without doing all the touristy things. Alone, in a cafe on a weekday morning with minimal commitments and even those are commitments only for myself, feels decadent. A treat. A treat that should not be this rare. A treat that shouldn’t be a treat. It is moments like this that leave me asking why do I put off doing things like this. I get a personal day every year and it sits there lingering while I use up vacation days or sick days. I’m even sparing with my vacation and sick days, saving up for I don’t know what. Later in the day, I cried on the massage table while the therapist pressed out tiny knots between my back ribs. She spent so much time on my shoulders that she left little time for the rest of my body. My upper back feels like it’s been beaten with a ball peen hammer today, my punishment for not taking care of myself sooner.

I’m trying real hard to focus only on the things I can control. I am trying real hard to tuck in moments of joy, to do more dancing, to leave space for being silly. Today, I am grateful for the moments this week when I remembered to leave space for the joy, the dancing and the silliness.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Niki de Saint Phalle

A week ago, we had a family movie night and the three of us went to the theater for Inside Out 2. This was the same day I broke my necklace and was already experiencing some feelings. So I made sure to stash a brand new pack of travel tissues into my pocket. It’s Pixar. I knew there would be tears, but I also knew that there might also be sobs given the day I was having. It turned out to not be that bad. I mean, the movie is great. The puns are hilarious. The storyline is well thought out and maybe a little too relatable for the Cabbage right now, but we all enjoyed it. When I say it wasn’t that bad, I mean that it wasn’t the usual stabby stab of a Pixar movie. There was even a moment when I thought “Oh my gosh! I might make it through without crying!”

I don't know how to stop Anxiety. Maybe we can't. Maybe this is what happens when you grow up. You feel less joy. -Joy, Inside Out 2

And then I started crying.

This takes me back to thoughts and ideas I heard recently on Hidden Brain and which I talked about here before. Neuroscientists know that forming new synaptic connections is a link to feeling joy. Think about firsts. Your first taste of ice cream made your little head explode, but over time that feeling lessened. With that first bite we formed a neural connection that said ice cream equals joy. As we age, that connection we made becomes a known thing. So eventually, ice cream goes from “OH MY GOD THIS IS AMAZING!!!!!!” to “This is nice.” This example doesn’t have anything to do with anxiety, but more to do with habituation. Unless you’re lactose intolerant and then anxiety plays a part in your ability to enjoy ice cream. We feel less joy not just because we are growing older, but because the things that bring us joy have become habits.

The other day, I Mission Impossible moved myself from the front passenger seat of my car (while in motion) to the very back of my car where I grabbed a small block of cheese. Then made my way back to my seat with said cheese so that Michael and I could have a snack while we were out running errands. I ended up doing it again to grab a Coke that had been mistakingly placed in the bag (and not in Michael’s hand). I did this with ease and was pretty impressed with my curent state of agility. In that moment, I felt a large amount of joy. You see, like most women, I am often frustrated with this body. If I sit for more than five minutes, my body hurts when I get up. All of my fat cells have migrated from all other parts of my body to set up camp in my midsection. But I still have the ability to climb around in my car like a toddler who figured how to escape from their carseat.

So what made this a joyful moment?

My actions were new. I had never attempted such a thing in this car before. I’ve done something similar in Michael’s truck. I’ve also stood on the center console and through the sunroof of his truck (sometimes while moving) to take pictures. His truck is bigger than my little Kia. There was a slight danger factor (adrenaline rush) in the moment, but I moved with ease, leaving me with a sense of accomplishment. I even took a moment to verbally acknowledge my awesomeness. I am sure that when I was seven, if I had done such a thing, I would not have put the event into any category of feelings, yet it is probably something I did easily (probably often) at that age. What made this situation a joyful experience was the ability to reclaim actions taken for granted of my youth. In this case, I rerouted a joy pathway. So while it is true that as we grow older we might experience less joy, we don’t have to experience less joy. We just need to reroute the old pathways.

I don’t plan on living a life where I experience less joy. If anything, I expect to experience even more joy. Or maybe it’s that the joy I do experience now is more meaningful? There are things that have never lost their wow factor for me. Fireflies and hummingbirds. Seeing wildlife like deer in my neighborhood. Nature still wows me, but there are many other things outside of nature that can still fill me with joy. Just by making that observation, I have rerouted dozens of joy pathways. It is as simple as flipping a switch.

Here’s to flipping switches.

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

In these last few weeks of December, I’m finding myself to be at a loss. I’ve finished my Christmas shopping. Things at work are slowing down so that no one is on a microscope on Mondays and the calendar doesn’t fill up until Thursdays. Then I have two days of being busy and the rest of my time has been spent reading up on live cell nuclear stains. I am also spending a large amount of headspace on squashing the feeling that I’m missing something. For instance, did I really book the Airbnb for Christmas with my family or did I dream that part? Have I purchased enough gifts to make all the people happy? Have I made any real plans for the coming year or are those still roaming free-range in my head?

I can tell you that the answers to those questions are yes, probably not, and a nope.

I’m sure that being this organized around the holidays is meant to be a good a thing, leaving time for just enjoying the moments. This is the reason that I make the effort to be ahead of the game this time every year, so I can sit back and bask in the holiday glow. Maybe do some baking (that’s hilarious and I said maybe). Avoid the crowded mess of people shopping for last minute gifts. Turns out that I’m not so good at basking and the doer inside me can’t stop thinking that I need to do something.

Karen Walrond sent out a recent newsletter with journalling prompts for reflecting on the past year and taking time to celebrate your joy. I know many people who really had a rough go of things in 2023 and they’re more than ready to start anew in 2024. This makes me think back on years when I had a rough go of things and I wonder if I have the experience to encourage people to take a moment to celebrate your victories of this year before moving on. I’ve had plenty of years when my joy to celebrate is just the act of getting out of bed in the mornings. I don’t feel that 2023 has been much of a struggle for me. I did some things that challenged me and were outside of my comfort zone, but those things led me to goodness.

I have yet to sit down and do any of the journal prompts, but I did go ahead and compile an album of pictures for the year. There are pictures from this year where I had to pause and ask myself “Did that happen this year?!” not because I don’t remember it happening. Some of it just feels like is happened ages ago. Usually my end-of-year slide show goes on and on. This year, I made a real effort to only include pictures with people and animals, but it was hard to not throw in some pictures that I took of places. Some of my best pictures do not include a single person and they were taken in moments of great joy. But today, I’m celebrating moments of joy that includes the wonderful people in my life.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE

Look, the world is a bit of a dumpster fire right and I don’t have anything nice to say about it. So I’m not saying anything. I am subbing yoga classes for a fellow yoga teacher this week and my life currently looks like 2010. Which is busy. My life looks busy and not in a Christmas Holiday busy kind of way, but I’d like to leave you a list of things that are bringing me a lot of joy and happy distractions during this time.

• My wonderful, adorable friend Amani has started a tiny mic series where she critiques her neighborhood Christmas displays. The one with the giant Abominable Snowman is my favorite so far. The look of joy on her face is infectiously wonderful.

• It is advent calendar time and my favorite thing has been watching Ollie and his little brother Tato, doing things from their advent calendar. Last year’s advent calendar was the one that brought Tato into the family. So watching these two together this last year has been wonderful. I love their adventures.

• Speaking of advent calendars. Every year I get a newsletter that waxes poetically over the Aldi cheese advent calendar. The newsletter always warns that this calendar is hard to get. This year, I was in Aldi at the exact right time. This cheese advent calendar has been sitting in wait in my fridge since the beginning of November. So far, it does not disappoint. The cheese portion has been the perfect size for cutting into two tasting pieces for the both of us. We’ve had a super sharp cheddar, a pepper Gouda, and a smokey cheddar. Monday night’s was some weird apple blend. I did not love it, but I did not hate it. Even though it is early days, I give this advent a 10 out of 10.

• I am terrible at crossword puzzles. Word finding games, matching games, hidden treasure finding game. Those are fine, but the crossword has always confused the crap out of me. Last week I started attempting the New York Times daily crossword. I go through and get what I can and then after dinner, I make Michael help me finish the crossword. Tuesday’s I did most of it all on my own and only needed help with four clues. I’m learning the tricks of the crossword. Go brain!

• All of my Christmas decorations are up and cards are in the mail. Hanukkah starts on Thursday and after much debate, we(I) decided to continue our tradition of celebrating. I have reasons that I might expound on later. We have latkes planned for our evening meal and I am looking forward to lighting the first candle.

• One of my coworkers eats a breakfast burrito from our grab-n-go area of the cafeteria almost every day. Each burrito comes with a packed of La Victoria hot sauce. He never uses the sauce, but doesn’t feel like it’s a good idea to throw them away. Our office fridge has a crisper drawer full of these packets. They have become an enormous joke to all of us. We needed a topper for our Christmas tree in the office and I made this:

This is probably the best craft I’ve ever done.

What about you? Where are you finding light these days?

THE ONLY EXCUSE

I’ve been a ‘member’ of the Yoga In the Park facebook group for years. I joined the group thinking that I would go to the yoga events, but I never do. The group usually meets at 2 pm on Sundays outside of the Nelson Art Museum. So..yoga with shuttlecocks. The teachers rotate and vary. The class is free but donations are recommended. I see the reminders for classes all the time and I always come up with some reason for not getting my butt off the couch. That’s not fair. My butt is usually not on the couch at two in the afternoon on a Sunday. I’m usually in the kitchen chopping vegetables for the week or folding the last of the laundry. So my usual reasons for not going is that it is just inconvenient.

My marshmallow body is the excuse I’m using for everything these days. I just sit back and watch as my barrel shaped torso get larger and larger. I’ve taken to buying the kinds of dresses that keep you guessing on the shape of the body underneath, partially for reasons of girth and partially for reasons of I like to keep people guessing. I’ve been minimal maintenance over here for months. This attitude is fading. I have been consistently getting ten thousand or more steps in every day and I’ve added weights to my yoga practice. So, on Sunday when Michael asked me if I had plans, I told him that I was thinking of going to yoga in the park. He said if I rode my bicycle, he’d ride with me to the Nelson and then go do his own thing while I did yoga. I agreed and we figured out a way to strap my yoga mat to my bike. We were at the Nelson in no time and agreed to a meeting time. He went his way and I went mine.

I found a nice spot in the shade to roll out my mat and did some people watching while I waited for class to start. The class was nice, not too flowy but moderately challenging. My biggest distraction was the guy who rolled out his mat directly behind me. I mean DIRECTLY behind me. I’m sure that at some point during the class, his nose was inches from my ass. Surprisingly enough, this was not the thing that bothered me the most. What drove me absolutely bonkers was that the guy was wearing heavy wool socks. His yoga mat wasn’t a true a yoga mat, but one of those really thick gym mats and every time I was in down dog, I could see this man struggling. It took all my willpower to not be yoga teacher Cindy and tell the man to at least remove his socks. By the time savasana rolled around, the sun had shifted. So I moved my a foot forward to be in the shade and to create some distance.

And this is why I make for a terrible yoga student.

Michael rode up just as I was putting my yoga mat on my bike. I told him about yoga and wool socks. Then we rode our bikes to Char Bar in Westport for linner. We spent most of our afternoon on our bikes and I was not mad about it. In fact, I learned two things that day. First, I don’t think I like yoga in the park. I mean, I didn’t hate yoga in the park, but it may not be the yoga class for me. Secondly, I love riding my bicycle. Like, I really enjoy riding around on my bike. When I was a kid, I went every where on a bike. Bicycles went with us on camping trips. I always had a bike. Once we moved here, I hated riding. Even Bessy the Bingo bike turned out to be only mildly enjoying to ride and that was only if I wasn’t going anywhere with Michael. Because I am slow and I don’t like to work hard. It’s raining here today and I am actually sad that I couldn’t ride my bike to work. And I am little confused as to who I am now because I never thought I would be someone that enjoys riding a bicycle to and from work. My ebike makes me less slow and I only work a little. That’s not true. I get in decent cardio workout while riding. I never stop peddling and the peddle assist kicks off once you reach a certain speed. It’s only there to give you a nudge up the hill.

A nudge up the hill is all I needed.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

In my Self Care Circle group, we’ve talked a lot about ways to incorporate movement and cultivate joy in our every day lives. Roze gave us all the gift of the one song dance party where for one whole song, you dance with abandon, like no one’s watching. I’ve never been shy about moving my body to a beat, but I did find it important enough to remind myself to get up and dance. So I put it on my calendar and every day at 2:00pm, I get an alert that it is time for a dance party at my desk. I scheduled it for this time because I start to get sluggish and sleepy in the mid afternoon. It might not make sense to force myself off my butt to dance when I’m slumping, but dancing is an energizing exercise. So at 2:00pm, I can be found shaking off my mid afternoon slumps by wiggling my hips and flailing about like a wacky wavy inflatable tube guy.

There’s a scene in Beetlejuice where he makes a group of people at a dinner part start dancing. I’m sure you are familiar with the scene, but the dinner party guests all start involuntarily moving their bodies to the beat of the Banana Boat song and looking all confused. I become one of those dinner party guests, except with less confusion, whenever a song with a good beat starts playing. I can’t help myself and do not ever wish to help myself. At concerts, I will look around me while I’m flailing about and see most of the audience just standing motionless. I want to grab ahold of the nearest person and yell “MOVE YOUR BODY! HOW CAN YOU STAND STILL TO THIS BEAT! I MEAN, CAN’T YOU FEEEEEL THIS MUSIC?!?!” That’s the thing. I don’t just hear music as much as I feel it physically inside my body.

Every morning when I get out of the shower, I poke my head into the living room and say “Alexa, play some music.” Because there are three of us on this music account with various listening preferences, I usually have to poke my head out into the living room again and say “Alexa, play a different station.” This week, I told her to play songs by the Scissor Sisters. I have danced every morning this week while brushing my teeth, putting on makeup, drying my hair and getting dressed. Then Josephine and I dance while I’m getting her goodbye treats and I pretty much dance right up until I ask Alexa to stop so I can leave the house.

This simple act of adding music that makes me dance to my mornings is what has made this generally normal, just a week kind of week, more than just a normal week (side note: on two separate occasions this week, I had at least one article of clothing on backwards). I often sneak vegetables into our meals because getting Michael to eat something other than corn is challenging. Well, adding dance music to my mornings is like sneaking in vegetables, except in this case joy is replacing kale. I have been sneaking joy into my life each morning with dance music.

I highly recommend it.

Also, I highly recommend kale.

SPONTANEOUS

Here is what was on my weekend to-do list: laundry, grocery shopping, bin buying, camper clean out, general household cleaning, balloon ride.

I checked all of those things off my list except for the hot air balloon ride. That got cancelled because of wind, but I’m not too upset about that. When I got home from grocery shopping, Michael helped me unload the car and said “let’s be tourists today.” I was still a little bit pouty over the canceled balloon ride, but shrugged and replied “I’ve never been to the Toy and Miniature Museum.” So, we hopped on our scooters in search of lunch before heading to the museum. We found Earl’s Premier while we were looking for something else and it turned out to be a very very good accidental find. It is the kind of restaurant that feels like someplace we’d visit while on vacation. Oysters consumed, we made our way over to the Toy and Miniature Museum, marveling at tiny replicas of chairs and feeling nostalgic over toys. There was one display that contained a grouping of toys for certain years. I looked at this display and said “I had that toy from the 70s, most of those things from the 80s and that Beanie Baby from the 90s.” And since this made me feel old, I dragged Michael over to the Art Deco exhibit at the Nelson so we could look at things older than us.

When it was time for the balloon glow, we decided it would be better to ride the bus than it would be to deal with parking and I am really glad we did this. The event was filled to capacity. Luckily, Michael and I arrived early enough to not have to wait in line too long for food from a food truck, but we were meeting the Cabbage and that side of the family. They did not arrive early. I sat on our blankets as a place holder while Michael and the others scattered off to the food trucks. I waited for ever for someone to come back. I kept watching the fading light and then I’d look up at the spot where I really wanted to be to get good pictures. There were already some people camped out in that spot. Finally, I sent a text that basically read “I might not be here when you get back.” and I started climbing my up to a good vantage point.

I made it to that spot, but there were already three photographers set up there, two of them with tripods. I kind of stood back hesitantly like a wallflower. One of the women noticed me and said “Hey! You want to come over here? We can make space for you!” Then she slid some gear bags over so I could get in the space. I set my camera up on the stone wall and then proceeded to make myself as small as possible so I wouldn’t be in their way. This was unnecessary and a direct symptom of my own insecurities. Two of the women chatted with me about small talky subjects and camera preferences. Then when the show started, we all started clicking shutters and giggling. Trying to capture a balloon all lit up was like trying to capture lightning. It was like we were playing a photographer’s strange version of whack-a-mole. Eventually, I decided to leave that spot for something closer. I thanked all of them for sharing the space with me and they said they’d see me next year.

That was the best part of my day.

For a brief amount of time, I was pulled into a circle of photographers and I was treated like an equal. I got to hang out with the cool kids. I saw respect and understanding when I talked about the reasons for choosing my current camera, because I didn’t just sound like I knew what was talking about. I knew what I was talking about. The moment reminded me of all the times Chad and I went on photo walks together. In that moment, every irritation and annoyance disappeared. Tension and stress from things happening in my life melted away. In that moment, I allowed myself to stop pretending to be a photographer and just let myself be a photographer.

I stopped judging myself.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

For some of us the concept of joy is illusive. I was having a serious conversation recently with someone who said to me “I don’t think I even know what joy looks like.” I’ve been thinking about this for days because I have seen this person laugh and smile with authentic joy. Yet, that very same person doesn’t know what joy looks like. Joy did not become an illusive thing for me until after J’s death. In the days, weeks and months after J’s death, I felt nothing at all. I did not know what joy looked like, but I also didn’t know what any emotion looked like. My ability to process any kind of emotion was shut down like an old computer. It took me longer than it should have to realize that I was feeling numb, but I was fortunate enough to have a partner who was supportive. Chris was a great support, but besides being patient and supportive, Chris was a master at seeking out joy. I believe he became a master at seeking out joy because he learned way before we even met that joy is illusive. It took time and effort to bring myself back from the void of nothing and I really feel it would have been impossible if not for Chris.

Here are some activities that helped me cultivate joy in my daily life: gratitude practice, photography projects, scooter rides, my yoga practice, teaching my yoga practice. Of all of these practices, I will say that my gratitude practice and my photography projects have been the most important activities. Joy is not only illusive, but it is a master of disguise. It can hide in the tiniest, strangest of places. Joy can be right in front of your face and so well disguised that you don’t see it. But I also think we have this disillusionment or predisposed idea of what joy should look like, that makes it easier for real joy to disguise itself. We don’t know what joy looks because we are bombarded with contradicting voices telling us about the things we are supposed to need to be joyful or how we must look in order to be joyful. In the quest to have the thing or look the look, we lose sight of what joy really looks like. Both the gratitude practice and the daily photo project helped me to recognize when I was looking at a moment of joy.

Your brain has to be trained to see joyful moments.

If you watch TV, spend time on the internet, read the news…you know, the things we all do every day… you will not see that there is much to be joyful about. If you are passively waiting for joy to jump out of its hiding space and yell out “I’m Here!”, you should be prepared to wait and wait and wait. Joyful moments, at first, need to be actively sought out. It is only after you learn to recognize joy, that joyful moments be can be spontaneous moments. My joy this week has been found in the moments I have been able to walk outside in between rain storms. It is seeing Josephine recovering well from dental surgery this week. I have found joy in teaching my yoga classes this week and seeing new faces in those classes. Joy has been present in the moments when I have truly helped someone with their science on a microscope. I had some good writing time this week, which doesn’t always fill me with joy, but there is joy in making progress. The last two weeks have been hard. Really fucking hard. Not just for me, but for all of us. Joy is wearing its best camouflage right now and you’ve got to look really hard to see it.

But it’s there.

OUR YEAR IN PICTURES

Sometime around midnight on Wednesday (or Thursday…who knows what day it is anymore?) I realized I had not done anything about creating my usual end of the year slideshow. So, I cobbled something together and you know what? 2021 wasn’t so bad. We went places and saw some faces. We found Harry Styles the Caterpillar and kept him alive until he became Harry Styles the Moth. It was not a completely shit year. So here it is. Our year in Pictures.

VESPERADOS

A few nights ago, I’m sitting on the couch and scrolling through my Instagram feed. Up pops an ad for Vespa and my first thought is “Vespa, why are you wasting your time with me. I’m a sure thing.” Everyone knows that I love my Vespa just about as much as I love Josephine. My plan is to have this scoter until I’m 108 years old, but if something happens and I have to replace it, I will just replace it with another Vespa. So I say to Michael “Why am I getting Vespa ads on my Instagram?” To which he replies “It’s not me! I have not been looking. I swear.” Then I looked. I scrolled through the new line of Vespas and landed on a picture. I turned it for Michael to see and then I said “Yeah, but wouldn’t this look so much better in the garage than that giant scooter you have now?”

Michael’s current scooter is a joke. It is huge and clunky, with a large engine. The engine really belongs on a motorcycle. Watching Michael maneuver his scooter in and out of the garage, hurts my body. It looks like he’s trying to wrestle with a robot and the robot is winning. It takes up so much space in the garage that I struggle to get to my scooter. I’ve never been a fan. I’m a snob and I think his scooter is ugly. Two nights after I planted the Vespa seed, it sprouted while watching Luca on Disney+. Luca sees the Vespa poster on Alberto’s wall and asks “What’s a Vespa?” Alberto responds with “What’s a Vespa? What’s a Vespa!?! It’s only the best thing in the whole world!” Michael looked at me and I just shrugged. Then we both started laughing because Alberto is not wrong.

The next day, Michael went shopping for a new Vespa.

I rode out to the dealership with him last night so he could trade in the old scooter and finalize the paperwork on the new scooter. He settled on a 300cc Vespa GTS. He’s still got to order trunk and windshield. Vespa parts are hard to come by these days partly because of the pandemic and partly because the factory closes for a month in the summer. Afterwards, we took both scooters for a ride out to dinner. When I caught up with at the first stoplight, he turned to me and crowed with laughter. He yelled “it feels like I’m riding a scooter!” The old bike was really a motorcycle dressed as a scooter. Don’t get me wrong; motorcycles are great. They’re just different and riding a scooter brings a certain level of joy. Michael had been without that kind of joy for the last two years. He also rides this scooter differently. Before, we would be on rides together and he’d often leave me behind. Then he’d try to drive it like it was still a small scooter instead of giant beast. We were on rides ‘together’ but we were not together. Last night, we rode together, like for real together, and I got a glimpse of a previous life.

It made my heart swell.

CAMERA

It’s been a while since my Nikon last saw the light of day. I think sometime last fall, I dug it out and put the zoom lens on it. Then I hiked it, along with a tripod up to the Paseo Bridge for some moon pictures. I thought I’d want the Nikon for J’s boot pictures. Really, I didn’t know what I’d need. So I just packed all of my camera gear and when it came time to take J’s boot pictures, I ended up switching back and forth between my cell camera and the Nikon. At one point while I was using the cell camera, Michael looked over my shoulder and said “Holy crap! If that’s what you can do with your phone, then maybe you should consider selling your Nikon.” I replied with “I’ll think about it.”

There had been a moment earlier in the day when we were walking the rim trail at the Canyon Village. I was wearing my Duluth overall shorts and I had paired myself down to only carrying what I could put in pockets. Those overalls are a photographer’s dream because of all of the pockets, but I had Josephine to wrangle and I didn’t want to be weighed down. We were walking along and suddenly a hummingbird swooped down to drink from a thistle growing next to the path. I pulled my cell phone out from the center chest pocket, spun and crouched down in one fluid move to capture that hummingbird. When I stood up, I turned and there was a man standing slightly behind me with his own camera with a very expensive lens. He looked at me with wide eyes and said “that was amazing.” and he wasn’t talking about the hummingbird.

It is true that I can take some pretty great pictures with my cell phone camera. In fact more than half of the photos I printed for my art showing last year are pictures taken with my phone. It is the camera I have with me all the time and I have practiced and experimented with it enough to feel like I really know what I’m doing when I am using it. The resolution level is comparable (or even better) than my Nikon. I can quickly edit and post pictures. It does not require a strap and I do not have to change out lenses. It is the camera I have become most comfortable with, but I still hesitate to get rid of the Nikon for a number of reasons. One of those reasons is that it brings me a certain level of joy.

We stopped in Tucumcari, NM for our first night on the road and we made it there before sunset. After setting up the camper and scrounging up some dinner, I asked Michael to drive me to the main part of town that sits on the historic Route 66. I knew there would be some great neon signs and the sun was starting it’s descent, making the sky look spectacular. He would drive to a place, I’d tell him to stop and then I’d hop out of the truck with my Nikon in hand and take pictures. At each stop, I would feel a shift inside my body as I mindfully adjusted exposures and isos. I did not rush. I did not second guess myself or think about the hassle and inconvenience for those waiting for me in the truck. I just took pictures. When we made it to Tepee Curious, I took some pictures that I knew without even looking at the preview screen on the camera that they were going to be great pictures. When I came around the corner to climb back into the truck, I was clutching the Nikon and grinning.

So, I am not ready to give up my Nikon. It serves a purpose that goes beyond taking pictures.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Aum

My boss walked into the office on Tuesday, looked at the microscope schedule and then said “Cindy, go home. Things are not busy here.” I frowned behind my mask. It is true that I have been the on-call person in our office for the past three weeks. Most of that time, I have been entirely on my own to clean and maintain five different systems and troubleshoot any problems that might come up, but I’m good with that. I’ve been good with being in the office. I didn’t want to go home, partly because I’ve been on a roll with the number of steps I’m getting in each day. I knew if I went home, I’d just become a couch slug for the day. So I stayed. I worked on coding while I ate my morning snack. Then I grabbed my yoga mat and walked up to the Nelson. When I got to the front lawn of the Nelson, I made my way to a shady spot created by one of the giant shuttlecock sculptures. I rolled out my mat and did an hour of yoga.

It was an hour of time well spent.

The Nelson is closed on Tuesdays right now and the sculpture gardens that surround the museum were mostly empty. The temperatures outside were prefect with a light cool breeze. Every time I looked up, I would see a monarch float by or a family of swallows swirling around. When my timer sounded to end my final relaxation, I carefully sat up and slowely opened my eyes. Then I rolled up my mat and strolled back to work, relishing my yoga high. I paused at Kauffman Gardens to take some pictures. I did not rush myself and as I got closer to my office, it suddenly occurred to me that this is what self care looks likes. I mean, I genuinely felt at peace, relaxed and focused. I realized that I had felt real joy in my yoga practice that day, something I hadn’t felt in some time. Yes, I know I’ve talked about my yoga practice and how it has been a touch stone for me this year, but my time on my mat has not always been necessarily joyful. It’s been good. It’s been the most useful tool for giving me at least one hour of quiet brain time. It just hasn’t always filled up my heart with joy.

Being okay is not the same as being filled with joy. While I do not expect to always feel joyful, I do expect to recognize moments of joy. What I learned this week is that I have not been paying enough attention to moments of pure joy. This year has not been a year without joy. This has just been a year where it has been more difficult to recognize and hold onto the joy that flutters in and out of daily life. Of course, the more difficult it is to recognize and hold onto joy, the more important it is to do so. So right now, I am holding onto that joyful hour of yoga at the Nelson, but I’m also strolling through my memory bank to make a mental list of joyful moments that I failed to notice.

When was the last time you took the time to give to yourself, what you endeavor to give others? - Sarah Blondin

When was the last time you took the time to find joy for just you?

CULTIVATION

We will have temperatures above freezing today.

4 Likes, 0 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "We will have temperatures above freezing today."

Years ago I wrote up a life list and one of the things on that list was to grow a vegetable garden. The first year I did this, I grew Christmas beans, tomatoes, spinach, basil, squash and cantaloupe. The spinach failed in the hot Oklahoma sun. The squash succumbed to squash beetles. We harvested enough Christmas beans for us to each have half a cup of cooked beans. Basil did well. Tomatoes did okay. The cantaloupe seeds that we planted came from the inside of a store bought cantaloupe Chris’s mom was eating. She spit out a seed and said “Can we plant these?” I shrugged and replied “I don’t see why not.” Those seeds produced two softball sized cantaloupe that were the sweetest cantaloupes I have ever tasted. It was like they were made of straight up sugar. That summer we cultivated more than a vegetable garden. We grew joy and surprises and sweetness. We grew wonder and amazement. Every thing that sprouted from the dirt was met with astonishment. “Oh my God! Look what we have grown!?!?!” We couldn’t believe it. We could not believe what we had done.

I gave up on the vegetable garden last year. Michael pulled up all of the boxes and a friend from work took them. He set them up in his backyard for his little girls to plant seeds in and I could not be more pleased with this. Our gardening days had run it’s course and no longer cultivated the wonderment and joy as it had in previous years. It is not actually environmentally friendly to grow a garden if you are not all that good at growing things. The money you spend on a not so fruitful vegetable garden in your backyard could be better spent supporting local farmers and so we turned our focus to other projects, other adventures. Occasionally I think about scattering lettuce and kale seeds all around the outside of the house so I don’t have to use the weed eater, but I am considering creating a couple of small potted gardens and building an outdoor space to gather with friends. I once read some great advice for creating an outdoor space on a budget. The designer said to just put down an outside area rug and arrange outdoor furniture on it. That’s simple enough.

Those are ideas for another time, when the weather is a bit more cooperative.

Right now, I am thinking of cultivating a new garden. This garden will not grow kale or squash or beans. Neither will it be an ornamental garden filled with hydrangeas and peonies. This new garden will not be delegated to six boxes out in the backyard either. It will be bigger than that. I want to cultivate a space that grows creativity and peace and contentment. I want to cultivate the joy, surprises and sweetness that first garden brought us but I want to do it without actually planting a seed into dirt. I think this is possible. I believe it is possible to recapture all of those things above but in a different way. There will be a section for photography, a section for words. There will be a corner devoted to my yoga practice and a corner within a corner devoted to meditation. I think I will add in a cooking section and a spot for just laying still with a puppy on my lap.

Wait. I think already have this garden. It just needs some weeding and a little bit of care.