SAY CHEESE

My theme for my weekend at Heather’s was Cheese. We made a ridiculous recreation of the Milk Bar Bakery’s Cheesy Puffs cake. We ate fancy grilled cheese sandwiches at Cheese Bar and then bought cheese at the store that owns the restaurant. Their pimento and cheese is my mother’s and I ate the last of it when I got home in the same way I’d eat it as a kid, sandwiched between two pieces of Wonder Bread. With the first bite, I started singing “Let’s do the time warp again!” After I left Heather’s, she and a friend attended a cheesecake class and were in the middle of baking as I passed a Sargento cheese truck.

I’m planning a cleansing diet for the month of May.

This trip to Des Moines was my second trip to the city and my first trip on solo with Josephine. Here’s what I learned. It takes no time to get from Kansas City to Des Moines. If you’re lucky, along the way you will spot bald eagles. I saw two! There’s an opportunity to see covered bridges and shop at an Amish store filled with homemade canned goods and crafts. You know you are leaving (or entering) the state of Missouri when you see all the giant firework warehouses next to the highway. I-35 is very much like the section of I-35 that runs through Oklahoma, meaning it needs some work. The cheese shop with the most wonderful cheese is right next to a French bakery that sells all the best flakey pastries and baguettes for the cheese you just bought at the fancy cheese shop.

There will be many trips to Heather’s in the future; one of which will be for the State Fair.

This trip was also a test of how well Josephine will do in the car without being able to sit in my lap for most of the ride. I fixed her bed in the front seat with a towel in the floor. There was a little bit of a dance in the beginning, but she very quickly settled into her bed. Then she split her time between the floor and the bed. She was the perfect copilot. She let me listen to whatever I wanted and didn’t talk while This American Life was playing. We made one stop for potty breaks for both of us and she didn’t request anything from inside the gas station. She never acted nervous or anxious. This is all very important because I have some solo camping adventures I want to do and it feels safe to have Josephine with me for those. She’s a little dog, but she’s got a big bark.

There was a particular song that kept popping up on the radio last year, This Year by Emily King. It’s catchy and felt like a good morning theme song. It’s the song that played in my head when I was writing out my plan/flow chart for 2024. It’s not a self absorption or a ‘you’re so vain’ thing. I don’t listen to the song and think ‘yeah, the world needs to revolve around me!’. I hear that song and see it as a reminder to take care of my own happiness. I have also spent too much time making space for someone else both physically and mentally. In my efforts to make room, I have made myself smaller and a little numb. So all the things I’ve put on my chart for the year have been activities I want to do for myself. I’m becoming less numb and less tolerant of being talked at as opposed to being talked to or with. I’m working at being less small. Making space for myself is involving a number of solo trips this year because planned trips force me to carve out the time for me. If I put it on the calendar and book the room, I’m going and that’s that.

I guess the next adventure will be solo camping. I’ve built the kitchen box and organized my camp gear. All that’s left is to throw a dart at the map and go.

THE TEN YEAR CHALLENGE

My alternate title for this post could also be Why I Am Not Participating in a Deep Learning Experiment on Aging. I have noticed people participating in a Ten Year Challenge on social media the last few days. For those of you who don’t know what this challenge is, it is a photo challenge. You post a picture of yourself from ten years ago next to a picture of yourself today. It’s nice and I will admit that I enjoy seeing other people’s pictures of then and now. I will aslo admit that I have been tempted to participate and post my own then and now pictures. Then I remember where I was ten years ago and I think that just surviving and being here and now on the other side of death is the challenge.

I doubt very seriously that I ever took a picture of myself during the month of January ten years ago. If I did, the woman in that picture would probably have a weird awkward smile plastered on her face and her eyes filled with terror. The picture might even be blurry because I’m pretty sure I vibrated with panic and tension. For those who knew me before this moment, I did not look like the person they remembered because I was also in the process of growing my hair out to be donated to charity. Really, the ten-years-ago me wasn’t me. I don’t know who it was, maybe an alternate reality version of myself, but it wasn’t me. When it was finally time to cut off all that hair, I posted a picture of the new haircut and Robin commented something about finally getting our Cindy back. Everyone at work was shocked by the drastic short hair because they didn’t know me before when I had mostly always had short hair. Almost a year later, I resembled my old self. A little skinnier. Terror in the eyes replaced with sadness, but there is a smile on my face.

I’ve always put on a brave face.

I don’t know if I look older now. I bought one of those face roller things and I have been routinely rolling my face every evening. It is a placebo, but I feel like I look younger than I did this time last year. There is more gray in my hair. A lot more gray now. Natural highlights. I like it. I’m about the same size and shape I was ten years ago. Actually, I am smaller now. Ten years ago to this date, I was still in a panic state of trying to save a life and hadn’t just yet started to lose weight. That came later when bottles of wine and sleeves of Saltines became routine meals. The photographic comparison between ten-years-ago-me and now-me would show little differences. This is because the real Ten Year Challenge cannot be compared in photographs. I am no longer terrified, but that terror is easily triggered. I am still sad, but maybe less sad (?). I question that because I didn’t have time ten years ago today to be sad. I’m not more confident than I was ten years ago, but I’m not less confident. I’ve had to fight to get my confidence level back where it was ten years ago, which was probably on the level of somewhat confident.

I am younger now than I was then for a number reasons. Some good and some bad. All unrepresentable with photography.

THIS IS 45

It seems that I am always willing to celebrate birthdays of others over my own. It is never because I dread growing another year older. It is always because of history. I have one and some of those dates in my historical timeline are rough. Last year, I received a Visa card full of money from some random car settlement thing. Our plan was to use that money for a spa day in celebration of my birthday. I was going to spend the day getting a massage and a facial. I was going to sit in a steam room and soak in mineral waters. I was going to scrub my skin with artisanal body scrubs and then sit in the steam room some more. Because of scheduling, we could not get into the spa until some time in April. Well, we all know what was happening by April. My spa day birthday celebration was cancelled. I turned my bathroom into a steam room and put a Biore strip on my face. I scrubbed my skin with plain old sea salt and olive oil. Then I used the Visa card money to replace my iPad and gave the Cabbage my old one.

The previous year, Michael took me out to dinner. It would have been a nice intimate evening for the two of us with the exception of the fifty other restaurant patrons yelling at one of the five TV screens strategically placed around the restaurant. We lost that game, but the next year we won that game. The city went crazy. Fountains were died red. Union Station was lit up in red. The whole city was red. The Chiefs won the Super Bowl and the city exploded with fireworks. We had a big parade and then the city went into lockdown for the pandemic. This year looks very much like last year except we are all still in a pandemic. The Chiefs will play the Buffalo Bills in the NFL Conference Championship this weekend and this city is preparing for the win and dreaming of Super Bowl fairies. Living in a city with it’s very own NFL team is interesting and exciting, even if you’re not a sports ball fan. I will say that I think Patrick Mahomes, the Chiefs’ quarterback, is a fine young gentleman.

On Monday, Michael took me on a hunt to find macarons. We called three different places. The first two places both responded with “Do you mean French macarons?” I didn’t realize there were any other kind. The third place, The French Market, said that yes, indeed they had macarons. I mean, you can’t very well call yourself The French Market if you don’t have macarons in your market. So Michael took me there, where I picked out a dozen little colorful meringue cookies. I ate two of them for breakfast on Tuesday. I might eat the rest of them today for lunch. On Friday or Saturday, we will get sushi from Bob’s Wasabi. We will sit in the truck in the parking lot and eat sushi off of the trays we purchased for turning our vehicle into a restaurant. I can taste the unagi now.

I am tempted to say that this year is not much different from previous birthdays. Except that’s not really true. I am entering age forty five with a new body and a reluctant mind. My life, on many days, feels like floating in a lazy river and this where the reluctance comes in. My mind is still struggling with the idea of floating and often I have to cling to my floating device to keep myself from jumping off and swimming against the current. The pace of life these days is quite different and it has been different for a while now. I am reluctant to get used it because eventually I know that this pace is going to pick up. I don’t want to get used to a slower pace when tomorrow or the next day or the next, that pace is going to speed back up to ‘normal’. I am entering age forty five with the realization that there is no such thing as ‘normal’ and that feels almost unsettling. At least it is unsettling until I remind myself that my previous state of ‘normal’ is the one I created for myself. I create my own idea of normal. I have a list of things I want to normalize in regards to me. Things like outward expression of feelings and emotions or releasing that death grip on my floating device and sometimes getting up to swim against the current. Because swimming against currents is my normal. It is what I do. It is who I am.

So here’s what forty five looks for me. It looks like a woman who has stopped trying to change herself. I am not ‘working’ on myself to be something I am not. Instead I am just doing the best I can to be the best version of me.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Instagram post by Cindy Maddera * May 29, 2019 at 1:23pm UTC

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Short weeks always feel a little bit like long weeks. I’m a day off and I have to make up for it. That is what short weeks feel like for me. One big game of catch up. That’s the American way right? You can have this day off, but you’re going to have to pay for it later. This is particularly hard when I am still processing my thoughts from the weekend. And boy do I have some thoughts to process. I’ve got plans forming in my head right this minute. Monday morning, I’m sending out an email with a link to my portfolio to the manager at the Westside Local with hopes that he will offer me a date for a showing in his restaurant. I have no idea what I’m doing, but I’m doing it. Which means I need to make up new business cards and start printing photos and buying frames. If I sell two photos, I’m buying a new lens and if I write all of that down here it makes me more accountable.

That’s my first project. Plans for my second project of combining pictures with words is in the works.

One of the things Terry said to me last week was “What about you? What are you doing for you?” And I threw my drink in his face and walked away. Not really. But I might have felt like it. He pointed out that I do a lot of taking care of other people and a lot of not taking care of myself. So we started talking about things that I wanted, things I’ve been afraid to say out loud, things that I have been hesitant to put into motion. I don’t know why it’s so hard for me to just say what I want. Maybe because for a long time, whenever I would say what I wanted, I got it or had help getting it or some sort of backing. Then that person who was doing all of that backing and helping and giving was gone. After that, wanting sort of felt like wishes and that I used all of those up with Chris. Who am I to ask for more?

That’s stupid.

Once I said “I want..” to the first thing, it got so easy to say I want more things. Wants that had been buried deep for the last seven years came bubbling up to the surface. I suddenly got a clear defined picture in my head for what it is that I want. Voicing what I want gave me direction. Like.. I know what I’m doing next and I know that next step will determine what I do after that and I know what actions I will be taking. I have a Mother Fuckin’ plan! I don’t think I have felt this clear and focused since Chris died. I’m not even worried about not selling any prints. Some people just might be getting some poster sized photos for Christmas this year. Though Michael did say to me that it’s still just a hobby until I find a way to monetize it. To which I wanted to say “You’re just a hobby.” because I’ve been channelling a less mature version of myself lately. I think we all know that this has become more than just a hobby.

I am a photographer.

I am a writer.

I am an artist.

FOR THE ART

Rain drops on tulips

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I stepped out the front door this morning to head to work and noticed that the tulips I had planted were looking particularly lovely all covered in raindrops. I set my yoga mat and my lunch bag down on the porch and swung my backpack around to fish out my phone. Then I walked around to be in front of the house and I started taking pictures. I was in full on photoshoot mode when I noticed that someone’s car alarm was going off. Then I realized that the annoying alarm sound was not a car alarm. It was my house. I had set the house alarm as I was leaving but then I never actually shut the front door. I hadn’t even attempted to shut that door. It was just standing there, wide open. I jumped up and ran inside the house and disarmed the system before someone could call me or the cops or both.

You have a minute after setting the alarm to get out of the house and shut the door. This is usually not a problem for me. In fact, there have been times when I have shut the door and realized I had forgotten something. I have unlocked the door, gotten back inside, grabbed forgotten thing and gotten back out again before my minute was up. This morning, I didn’t even think about it. I just dropped everything and went into photography mode. I guess it was a good thing I wasn’t also carrying a baby or a Faberge egg. I let myself become distracted. The key word is ‘let’. We hear so much about how the average person is always distracted, mostly by their phone. There’s checking emails, catching up on Facebook, reading the latest tweet and scrolling through Instagram. Rinse and repeat to see if anyone’s noticed your post or added something new. One minute, you’re writing up some report for work and then next minute you’re watching kitten videos. These distractions not only keep us from doing the things we are supposed to be doing, but also from the things we are meant to be doing.

Here is what I hear when I think about this story: I was distracted by the beauty of tulips and I had to photograph them. The reality is I was distracted from the beauty of these tulips by the alarm ringing away inside my house. The process of making sure the front door was closed was the distraction that pulled me away from the thing I was meant to be doing. Rewiring the brain to think this way is hard. There are times when I am pausing to take a picture or editing a photo when I have to pull my focus away from someone who demands attention. I try to be polite about it and try to be sneaky while I am doing those things so that it looks like I’m working at paying attention to the person who is talking at me (because usually that’s how it goes). So often I feel bad about this and the result is that I end up not taking the picture I wanted or editing the photo the way I wanted. This is so stupid because this photography thing (and this is really not easy for me to admit) is who I am. Taking photos and all the stuff that goes along with this art is the thing I meant to be doing.

Everything else is the distraction.

PEEK-A-BOO

Same but different

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I’ve been reduced to tears of anger, frustration and fear three times this week and it’s only Wednesday. Part of it’s been the election. Part of it has to do with work stuff (the first rule of blog club is to never blog about work). Some of it has to do with holding onto things I need to say but I’m afraid to say because I’m a big chicken. A tiny bit of it is me just feeling sorry for myself. An even smaller bit of that is my disappointment over the ending of the most recent episode of the Walking Dead (WHY DO WE STILL WATCH THIS?!?!). There’s an 80% chance that it is going to snow here tomorrow and I’ve just about got a hole dug out for me to be burry my head in it.

I feel like all the good parts of me have dropped off the planet. My writing is sparse and full of complaints and gripes. My photos are forced and unimagined. My yoga classes are uninspired and meh. I feel like shutting down here until the end of the year. We saw our first Christmas themed advertisement last night and Michael and I both booed the TV. Michael has already started asking me about what I want to do for my birthday in January and I almost told him to just fuck off. I can’t plan that far ahead. I can’t really plan ten minutes ahead right now. We’re lucky that I make up the menu for the week on Thursdays. It’s the reason we have food for this week and meals I don’t have to think about. We’re spending Thanksgiving with friends at a cabin in the woods in California. In my head, I’m already eating an Ike’s sandwich and taking long walks in woods of tall trees. I’m photographing the fog that rolls into Tomales Bay and looking for giant slugs.

Maybe this is where I’ll find those missing good parts of myself.

I’m not giving up completely for the rest of the year. I’ll be around only because I know that writing here keeps me somewhat sane.