THANKFUL FRIDAY

Thursday

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I sat down on the couch in Dr. Mary’s office. It had been weeks since my last appointment. Maybe not weeks, but definitely before the start of the New Year. Dr Mary looked at me, tilted her head to the side while squinting her eyes and said “You look really good. You look rested. Are you rested?” I’m not so sure I am well rested but I do feel more relaxed than usual. This is an unusual feeling for this time of year because January is the month where I feel like crawling into a cocoon of blankets and not coming out until sometime in March. And this year kicked itself off with a big whammy. On New Year’s Eve, my mom was in a car accident.

She’s okay.

But I have concerns that I am not talking about here.

I started making some mental health changes back in October like thinking about where I am wasting my energy and taking a different approach with the things that trigger my anxiety. My new morning routine is getting really good to me. The alarm goes off at 5:00 AM, I roll out of bed and put on my robe. Then I head to the kitchen to turn the kettle on to boil water. I go to the bathroom and then back to the kitchen where I slice up a lemon. I place two lemon slices in a mug with a dollop of honey and once the water comes to a boil, I fill up the mug. Then I go and take a seat for twenty minutes of meditation that includes ten rounds of alternate nostril breathing and twenty four rounds of a mantra. The rest of the time is spent sitting still with my thoughts. When the timer goes off, I sip on my hot lemon water while writing it all down in a journal. Then I get up and get going with my day. The changes that I started implementing in October coupled with my renewed meditation practice is making a world of a difference. That first week of meditation did not include the lemon water and I really believe it is the act of making this hot lemon water that has really grounded this practice into place. I am not saying that every morning is easy. There are still some mornings when I really want to hit that snooze button, but I don’t. I don’t because I know that I will feel better if I just get up. I wrote in my journal yesterday about being tired and feeling sluggish that morning. I wrote about the animals trying to get my attention, Josephine pawing at me to scratch her head, the cat meowing loudly outside my door. I even forgot to start my meditation timer, which I corrected after my mantra rounds. I finished my meditation practice while gently scratching behind Josephine’s ears, but I showed up. I did the practice and I don’t feel like crawling into that blanket cocoon. In fact, the other morning when I went on my coffee loop, I felt almost…dare I even say…happy?

Thursday morning, when Michael stepped outside to decide if the cars needed to be defrosted, he realized that the temperatures were unusually warm for a January. He came in looking suspicious and then went to see if his scooter would start. It started right up and he came back into the house declaring it to be fake Spring and everybody needs to ride a scooter to work day. My scooter did not start right up. There was a far amount of engine coughing before I finally got it going, but when it finally came to life, I zipped to work at light speed. The ride in made me positively giddy. I mean, scooter rides never happen in January and it probably won’t happen again until real Spring shows up. It’s supposed to start sleeting today with snow predicted for all day Saturday.

I am ending this week with some profound gratitude for unusually warm days in January that allow for a scooter ride, but also for this practice that is serving me so well.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

A hazy shade of winter

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There is a small, yet heavy, package sitting on my cedar chest in the dining room. That box contains a new batter for my scooter. Michael ordered it ages ago when he realized that my old battery would no longer hold a charge. He asked me when was the last time I replaced that battery and I said “never.” My scooter is almost eleven years old. We haven’t even bothered to open the box of the new battery. It just sits there, very much like a doorstop, and reminds me that eventually it is going to stop snowing and the temperatures are going to become tolerable. I told Michael the other day that I was going to ride my scooter so dang much, that I was even going to ride it in the rain. I got caught in the rain while riding my scooter more times last year than I ever have since buying it. At this point, I’d welcome any scooter ride, rain or shine.

Winter time Thankful Fridays tend to center around hope. It is the time of year where I have to dig the deepest to find those little things that give me some kind of hope that I will make it through another winter. Typing that makes me realize that finding hope and really believing in that hope has become a difficult thing for me to do. There have been too many times when hope has lead to great disappointment. There have been too many times when hope had to be abandoned to make room for the acceptance of loss. The concept of hope for me has become almost mythical. It is believing in fairies and unicorns and even moose. Yet it is hope of something better that keeps us going and I can be passive in my hope or active. Right now, I am in the process of actively fueling hope. I’m planning museum trips. I’m getting on my mat. I’m wearing my favorite blue boots that I can only wear in the winter time because they keep my feet super toasty.

I don’t need hope to know that winter will eventually end. Michael just bought a snow blower, so that is probably a good sign that we’ve seen the last of the snow. I do need to hope for something better to keep me moving through these last grueling weeks of winter though. I am thankful for the things in my life that fuel that hope like those brief moments of sunshine, the break between snow storms, and that box holding a new scooter battery.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Hello

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Michael has asked me on two different mornings this week if it was a scooter day. Both times I have answered "yes!" without even checking the weather. That's not true. I checked the weather by looking out the window. Skies were clear. That says 'scooter day' to me. The reality was that each day included a chance of severe weather or at least some rain. In fact, on Wednesday, we got a notice at work saying that we were under a tornado warning until 7 pm that evening. Michael can't ride his scooter on Wednesdays because those are evenings with the Cabbage. She's not quite tall enough to ride the scooter. Yet.

I got to work on Wednesday just before the rain hit. At one point during the day, the wind was ferocious and rain came down sideways. But by the time I left yoga class to head home, the sky had cleared. Michael opened the garage door for me when I got home that evening and said "I guess you managed to avoid the rain." I told him that I've become the Zen master of riding between raindrops. The Matrix on scooters. I am grateful that I did not get caught in the rain, but more than anything, I am grateful for the scooter rides. I am grateful to have thrown caution aside and just hopped on the scooter and gone. This has been the kind of week that has added hours to days in a way that was unproductive. I mean that those extra hours where not filled with good things that I wanted to be doing. There were several moments when I felt like just laying on the floor. Like that moment I realized that a very heartfelt, personal bit of writing I had been working on, didn't save. Those scooter rides, along with some yoga time, where moments of freedom from this week's little frustrations. 

Today I am driving to Oklahoma to see Thomas graduate from high school. Thomas is J's youngest boy and the most stoic of the two. I can think of a very small number of times when I have seen him laugh, truly laugh. He's a very serious young man, but my memories are immediately drawn to that time that he and his brother, JR, were riding in the backseat of our car. Chris was driving and all along the way, the three of them swapped Darth Vader fart jokes. They were ridiculous and dumb, but hilarious. The backseat was filled with raucous laughter. This is all I will be able to see in my head as I watch one of those young men walk across a stage and accept his diploma tomorrow. I am grateful to be gifted his moments of laughter. 

I am grateful for many things and I am always grateful for you. Here's to wonderful weekend and a blessed Thankful Friday.

I'VE GOT POISON IVY AND A HAMMOCK STAND

Project

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I don't really know how the poison ivy thing happened, but there's a very large patch of it on my upper right side, near my arm pit and a small patch on my left arm. Or it's shingles. I don't have time for a doctor's visit right now, so I've been coating it with hydrocortisone and taking Benadryl at night. This hasn't gotten me very far so I've made time to see the doctor today. Also, my last entry makes me sound depressed. Maybe I've been in a bit of a funk. I am not great, but I am OK. I've been doing a lot of just going through the motions these last few weeks and I find that writing the depressing stuff makes me feel better. A little sunshine wouldn't hurt either. 

My brother and sister-in-law were here this weekend and we spent Saturday doing all of the things. We went to breakfast at Randy's favorite place. We went to the City Market and looked at all the things. I got a coconut to drink. The Cabbage jumped around in the bounce house. Then we went to IKEA where we didn't look at all of the things, but just a lot of the things. I ended up with a new rug for the bedroom. Then we saw that they had a hammock stand for $70. Michael still feels really bad about me crashing to the earth in my hammock last year so he said "We are buying that stand!". Except they were completely sold out. I asked one employee if we could buy the display stand and she said "No!". I pouted. Then Katrina went and found a manager and the next thing we knew they were pulling the hammock off the stand and wheeling the hammock stand over to be re-priced so we could take it home. Because Katrina is a badass. The stand only cost us $50 because it was a display item! The take home lesson is if IKEA has it on display but not in stock, take Katrina with you.

Another thing we did this weekend was take all my pictures that I had taped to paper and hung around my work desk and turned them into two lovely collages. They're stuck to two different rectangular canvases which makes them very portable and easy to move. Not that I'm planning on moving again after the new space is finished, but you never know. I ordered some things to get going on an album to deal with all the pictures I have filling up drawers. Those things have arrived! So now I need to get moving on that project. See how productive I'm being? And I haven't even started the prednisone pack the doctor is going to prescribe for this poison ivy.

Today I rode the scooter and it's been ages since I've been able to do that. I didn't even need a jacket and I'm pretty sure I have a few bugs in my teeth from all the grinning.