BUDDHA BOARD PROJECT

18/52 Buddha Board Project

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The last morning I went into work was more or less a salvage expedition. I gathered up things like gym shoes and a work laptop. I grabbed a notebook and what ever else I had on my desk that I might need during the Stay-At-Home order. I did leave behind a plant. Though, someone has been into the office recently to water it. I assume it is still living. The person who watered it only said they had watered it for me. I’m sure it’s fine. It is one of those hardy varieties of houseplants that can generally be ignored. I think. At the last minute, I remembered to grab my Buddha board. At the very least, I could still keep up with my weekly photo project. And I have. Every morning, right before I pour myself my first of many mugs of coffee, I grab my Buddha board, draw a picture with water and then take a photo.

I thought the practice would be an anchor to normalcy. I saw it as a practice that would give me something in all of this that I could control. The list of things that I can control are ever dwindling. My 5:30 AM yoga and meditation practice has taken a back seat to an extra hour of sleep. Why I feel like I need that extra hour is beyond me. My activity level has plummeted to a new low with weekends spent in pajamas and barely brushing my teeth. I don’t even really take advantage of the nice weather days either, with the exception of Sunday. Michael and I cleaned the gutters and then went on a scooter ride. That scooter was the first time I have felt a since of normalcy in a long time. We turned our scooters onto Ward Parkway, right behind the cutest little blue moped. I gunned my throttle and passed Michael, zipping by him so I could I bring myself up next to the guy on the moped so I could get a better look. We smiled and nodded at each other and then I zoomed on ahead. This put me in the lead and for a brief moment, I was alone on the road, ticking along at a nice speed. The colors of Spring blurred in my peripheral vision. I passed a house that had the biggest, most beautiful tulips planted in their front yard. Turns out you can cry on a scooter. Tears of joy started to leak from eyes and I let the wind carry them away.

Monday morning, the alarm went off at 5:30 AM and yet again, I turned it off and stayed in bed. When I finally got up, I showered and dressed. I started the coffee and fed the dog. Then I grabbed my Buddha board. This practice has become more than just some photo project I can control. It has become a way for me to keep track of time. The background of the image is vastly different from the ones taken at the office. The last image taken at work was one of a completely bare and naked board. I painted nothing, choosing to leave it blank as a representation of how I felt. Blank and uncertain. Unsure of what was coming ahead. Like all of us felt and are probably still feeling. The next four weeks of images where the slow appearance of a bird poking his head out from one side of the board. It starts with just the side of his head. Then the beginning of an eye, the beginning of a second eye. Finally there’s a whole head of a silly bird, looking at the camera with big round eyes.

This week’s photo was not so whimsical. Maybe because it dawned on me that I haven’t really been paying attention to how long I have been at this. This photo marks the beginning of week five. No Cabbage this week because I was a right bitch last week and Michael decided we all needed a break. She’s at her mother’s and I have this week to flip my attitude, take some breaths and clear out the gunk that has settled into my joints. I need to do those things at the very least for her because she’s the last person that needs to be around my dark side. I know this is a luxury. The real parents out there, having to do all of the things all day, every day, do not have the ability to take such a break. So I’m vowing to use this time wisely and not squander it by letting myself fall deeper into the dark hole. The sunlight is there even if the sky is overcast.

I just have to look a little harder.

SATURDAY MORNING CARTOONS

Apparently it's National Siblings Day. Here's to my partners in crime.

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If you really look closely at that picture of the three of us, you’ll notice the years that separate us. The age difference allowed for solitary moments in our childhood. Some of us more than others. My moments came in the early morning hours, particularly Saturday mornings. I would wake up, the first rays of the sun barely visible, and I’d sneak down the stairs. I’d turn on the TV and flip the dial over to the channel that aired my favorite cartoons. The test pattern would still be on, so I would head into the kitchen. I would hoist myself up onto the kitchen counter, climb up and grab a bowl from the counter. Then I’d drag a kitchen chair over to the pantry to stand on so that I could get to a box of cereal. I would pour myself the biggest bowl of cereal and then plop myself down in front of the TV, staring at the test pattern and eating cereal until the cartoons started.

I still do this. Of course, I no longer have to climb the cabinets to reach things and TV test patterns are no longer a thing. Most of the times, I fix myself a proper breakfast like an omelet and toast. But sometimes…sometimes I pour myself a giant bowl of cereal. Every time I do it, I think about all of those times I climbed up onto that kitchen counter of my childhood. I remember feeling the hardness of counter on my knees and how I would brace myself with a hand on the refrigerator. Those moments would lead to a habit of climbing furniture and cabinets to reach things. Who needs a step stool when you have climbing skills? Those moments would lead to several habits. I still get up early and I still spend those early hours alone, sometimes in front of the TV, sometimes sitting at the counter in a cafe. Those Saturday mornings were probably early exercises for my independent, slightly fearless nature. Lessons in learning to fend for myself.

Eventually, though, I would be joined by my sister. She would sit down next to me with her own bowl of cereal. The two of us would sit there in our matching nightgowns, watching cartoons for as long as we could. This was before our Saturdays would be filled with our extracurricular activities. filled up with 4-H events, band and choir contests. Thinking back on it now, it was such a brief and narrow window of time. Those narrow windows of time are the ones that stick in my memory. I remember vividly the moments we spent apart as if we were an only child. I also remember vividly the moments we spent as actual siblings. All the games played, all the fights, all the bike rides, all the trips. Maybe we didn’t have the most traditional childhood sibling relationship. The differences in our ages seemed so much more extreme when I was a kid, at times even unsurpassable. Now the difference is miniscule. There have been events in my life that I would never have been able to handle with out the support of my siblings. Those were the times they provided the chair for me to climb up on or the boost up onto the counter.

They plop down next to me with their own bowls of cereal at the exact right moment I need them to.

ORGANIZED

Organizing myself for the week.

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Saturday was balanced with laziness and getting things done. At first, I was highly unmotivated to do anything but stare blankly at the TV. Then something happened after lunch and I decided to haul my body off the couch and do some cleaning. I dusted and wiped down all of the surfaces and things. Then I put together the two feed and water shelters we bought for the new coop. You guys, the new chicken coop is going to be fancy. After I cleaned up the packing material and put away the drill, I swept the floors and Michael vacuumed. I ate half a gummy and then Michael and I discussed dinner. The idea of preparing a meal did not sound appealing. I looked at Micheal and said “Can we just order a pizza?” We have not ordered take out since all of this started and Michael replied “Yeah, we can order from Waldo Pizza.” We ordered way too much pizza, but I’m not mad about it. It just means I have lunches for the next few days. Michael told me later that this had been the best idea I had had all day. Saturday felt appropriately balanced, which is more than I can say about the previous week.

I did a whole lot of sitting and staring at screens last week. My Python coding class consumes a large chunk of my days. Then there are the various work meetings and journal clubs that I attend during the week. This doesn’t include life stuff like staying on top of the laundry and household chores. I feel like even though I am staying busy, I am not efficiently busy. I don’t set boundaries on when I stop working on actual work and when I need to work on something for me. I am not taking art breaks and I am not taking health breaks. There were one too many days last week where I ended up crying in secret in my bedroom. I need to make this whole thing feel a little less like Groundhog Day . So I pulled out the old daily planner and set some goals for myself. I organized my days into something a little more balanced and a little more healthy.

I will admit that I have not kept up with my 30-Day digital planner. I mean, I have things written down on various dates, but I have not set a serious monthly goal for myself since probably the first week of March. I had purposefully left that month light because March was supposed to be about getting ready for my art showing in April. In fact, I should be taking Monday off to hang those pictures in Westside Local. I have a large stack of framed prints sitting in wait in the corner of our living room. I am disappointed and when I opened my calendar and saw “Hang pictures at Westside Local” written down for April 6th, I got a little teary. I consoled myself with the reminder that this showing will happen as soon as all of this is over. I erased the whole hang the pictures thing from the calendar. As I did that, I realized just how much I had been hanging onto plans that had already been made. I realized that I had become stuck in place over not being able to do those things.

Plans change. Even without pandemics happening.

Focus on the things that I can do right now is becoming a common mantra. Taking the time to plan out the week ahead made me feel more in control over focusing on what I can do right now. So much of our anxiety, or at least my anxiety, comes from the need to have control over something. I learned the hard way that there are just things in life that cannot be controlled. Being in the uncontrollable moments feels like being suspended inside a tornado, helplessly watching all of the debris and destruction swirl around you. Having that one thing you can control, anchors you. Spending my Sunday morning, planning out my week has anchored me, made me feel grounded and secure. Right now, it doesn’t even matter to me if I don’t stick to every planned thing. Just the act of writing out my goals and needs for the week ahead was enough to make me feel better.

Find the thing that anchors you this week.

HOLDING IT TOGETHER

Natural habitat

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I dreamt that I walked into a room that was littered with peeled oranges and macaroons. They were strewn all around the floor like rose petals. As I walked across the room, I looked down and noticed a ring poking out of the merengue of one of the macaroons and I bent down to pick it up. Then there was a man kneeling beside me, asking me to marry him. I stared at the ring and said “Of course. Of course I’ll marry you.” When I looked down into the man’s face, I saw Chris looking up at me with that sappy look he could get some times. Smiling. Big puppy dog eyes filling with tears of happiness.

I woke up feeling guilty.

A few weeks later, I had the dream that I always have about J. There was a mistake and we had been sent a body to burry because the Powers at Be had thought it was J. Except it wasn’t him. J had been wandering the desert and now he was finally back, trying to re-enter our lives as it is now. I was elated to see him, but worried about how he was going to take to all the changes that had occurred in his absence. Again, I woke up feeling guilty. Since that dream, I have been waiting for Dad. The power of three. I am Ebenezer Scrooge. You will be visited by three ghosts. I am still waiting for the third, wondering when Dad will show up.

I had an appointment with my chiropractor yesterday. Since the day was so nice, I rode the scooter, flying down the nearly empty streets. My soul lifted with the breeze. I arrived at my destination and my chiropractor was so happy to see me. The joy was mutual. It seems ridiculous how the sight of a familiar face you haven’t seen in weeks can illicit such joy. I practically skipped back my session on the roller table. I sprayed the table with disinfectant and wiped it down. Then I laid back and closed my eyes while the roller moved up and down my back. I was surprised to feel tears well up in my eyes and leak down the sides of my face. It came to me then, just how hard I have been working to hold it all together and holding it all together not just for my own benefit. On the outside, I look like I am handling all of this with ease. My insides tell a different story.

Even though I have set up a routine for myself, there are moments in my day where things just go on pause and I don’t know what to do with myself. I step away from my desk and walk around from the bedroom to the living room to the dining room. Back and forth. I listen to each squeak, tick and groan of the hardwood floor as I carefully place each step. I sit back down at my computer and fight my way through some exercises in Python coding. I do not have a coding brain and every review question is an exercise in futility. By the time I closed my computer yesterday, my brain felt mushy and I still had to re-take this week’s quiz. You must make a 70% or higher to move forward. Michael had to give me a lesson of true or false statements. It was more than slightly humiliating.

I die at least once a week while on the Oregon Trail or from an Exploding Kitten.

And I am unmotivated to write here.

It seems unauthentic to come here and write because I try to make the content somewhat uplifting. All I have brought you today is list of sad and whoa that I am tempted to delete. I am not deleting it though. Because I know that who ever is reading this is sitting there nodding their head and saying to themselves “I feel so much like this. I am not alone.” And we’re not alone. So do what I just did. Put on your favorite music. That music that makes you move your body. That music that has those moments in it that make you close your eyes and place a hand on your heart and raise the other to sky because it has reached the spiritual part of your heart.

Do it right now.

GHOSTS

Ghosts

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I drove in to work early early Monday morning knowing that I only had a brief window of time to get one last batch of slides running on one of our automated microscopes. The weather has been gray, cold and drizzly for days, but on this morning a thick fog had settled into the area. I paused to pull into the cemetery that I pass on the way to work because fog and cemeteries are photographic opportunities that I gravitate too. I only took a few minutes, a mad dash really, but I flipped back and forth between camera apps, playing around with long exposures. It wasn’t until later that I went back to look at and edit the photos and discovered that I had photographed ghosts. I keep seeing these pictures of places that I have visited before, places that are always swarming with people. I think about the times I have visited Talaura and how the thought of having to cross through Times Square would make us both groan. I remember elbowing my way through Pike’s Market with Chris and being overwhelmed by flashes of color and throngs of people. The pictures I have seen recently show a completely different scene. Stark and empty. Silent. And I itch to be there to photograph it myself. There is something so inviting about the emptiness.

Melancholy beauty.

Tuesday was my first full day to stay home. The city is shut down until sometime in April. I knew this day was coming for me, that I would join the many others who have been sent home to ‘work’. I had been dreading it because I am such a creature of habit. I cling to my routine and my way of life and my space. Now, a lot of that has to change and I am expected to be productive through it all. It is a struggle and day one was bumpy. I am working on creating a new routine. I’m was up at 5:30 for yoga and meditation. I showered and dressed for work. I fed the dog and made some coffee. I spent the morning extracting images and reviewing an image processing tutorial. The afternoon Zoom meeting to watch a video series on electron microscopy didn’t have enough viewers for us to commit to watching it today. So I filled that time with more processing tutorials. In the teatime Zoom meeting, we were all assigned various journal articles to present in scheduled journal club meetings. I have plans to start an intro course in coding in Python. This seems ambitious since I barely passed my basic programming in C class in college. I wedged in a twenty minute cardio workout and once the rain stopped, I dragged us all outside for a walk.

Today’s mantra: Be patient with those around me and be kind to myself.

That mantra should really say ‘be patient with myself and be kind to myself’. I need more than a day to settle into this. I was never the kid that eased herself into the pool. I was the kid to jump right in. I am learning to ease myself into this situation. What is funny is that I long to be in those empty places, yet I struggle to be in my very own empty place. There are too many ghosts flying around, too many voices. They bounce off the walls and whisper the things I don’t say out loud. They are fueled by my insecurities and they make me prickly. I don’t like being prickly.

Tomorrow, I’ll add ‘light some candles and sage the house’ into my new routine.

SURVIVING THE OREGON TRAIL

We're playing Oregon Trail. I died on my first play.

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The other evening, Michael, the Cabbage and I played a round of the card game version of the Oregon Trail. The Cabbage wrote her name down on the provided dry-erase board in the player 1 spot. Then I put down a name in ‘player 2’. I chose the name of Sally Anne Degenerate and when the Cabbage saw this she gasped and said “I didn’t know we could make up a name!” She then changed her name to ‘Amy’. Michael played the first card which happened to be a ‘town’ card and he immediately got to pick up some extra supplies. Then it was my turn. I played a ‘trail’ card that had me drawing from the ‘hazard’ deck. I immediately died of dysentery. The Cabbage and Michael played a few more rounds before the Cabbage, I mean Amy, died of a snake bite. Michael managed to hang on for a few more miles before succumbing to extreme cold.

No one made it to Oregon.

By Friday I was starting to feel the weight of being the only one at work and I was not handling things well. After cleaning every microscope and wiping down all of the surfaces, I threw on my jacket and stepped outside because that’s becoming my reaction when it gets to be too much. Get outside. Take some deep breaths. Move my feet in some direction. Except this time the weather was near freezing with blustery wind. I pulled my gloves on and marched forward, completely alone with my own thoughts. As I walked, I started thinking about the game. Remembering how the Cabbage changed her player name to ‘Amy’ made me start laughing. She could have made up any name. Then I started thinking about how the game played out, how I died right at the start. I came to a complete stop in the middle of the sidewalk because at that moment my thoughts crashed together so hard that I expected to hear ambulance sirens heading my way.

I died right at the start.

The beginning of the Oregon trail, the real life Oregon trail, is about seventeen miles east of my current residence. From my vantage point, I can step out of my house, walk about a mile and land on a trail that could lead me to California, New Mexico or Oregon. I didn’t know this when we moved here. Chris and I knew very little about this area when we moved here other than this was a city for visiting, a place we’d drive to for concerts. I didn’t think about the history of this place. History is not really at the top of my list of things that I think about really. I mean, I appreciate history and all that, but I am not a person who remembers dates. I am not a person who seeks out the history of a place. At least not then. Age has made me more appreciative, more curious about such things. Really, it is the stories of the past that I find interesting. Dates still get lost in this brain.

The significance of all of this though, the whole being here, is not really about history. It is about plans being made and the idea of making a better life for yourself some place else. We dreamed of Oregon once. We dreamed of making a better life for ourselves way out west. We made it sixteen miles on the Oregon trail before Chris basically died of dysentery and I just stayed put. I’m not sad about it. Well, I’m not sad about the staying put part any way. Dreams change. New plans are made. I found the secret to surviving the Oregon trail. The secret is to start, travel about sixteen, seventeen miles, and then stop. Unload your wagon and set up your homestead. Don’t do it because you are giving up on a dream. Do it because you’ve taken a moment to look around at your surroundings and you realize that those surroundings are pretty great. Change your plans. Change your dreams. Make that better life for yourself right where you are, right now.

FAST

12/52

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The other night I had a dream where I was HUGE pregnant. Like I could have that baby at any moment pregnant. I remember looking down over my expansive belly and barely being able to see the tips of my toes. I was that pregnant. A group of us were wandering around a department store. I know my Mom was there and maybe my sister-in-law. I don’t really remember who was present, but it was suggested at one point that we all go swimming. “I don’t have a swimsuit.” I said. Then Mom said that I should just buy one and I was appalled at the idea of buying a new swimsuit to fit this engorged belly. “There’s no way I’m spending money on a new swimsuit I will only wear one time. I’d rather swim naked with my white round belly gleaming like a full moon.” Then I woke up. I have no other recollections of the dream other the heaviness I would expect to feel if I were huge pregnant.

I’m about to birth something I don’t want to spend any money on.

It might have to do with how I will probably be working from home by the end of Friday.

It could also just be a commentary about my genetic disposition of money spending.

Some time, way back in the Fall, Michael and I were driving down State Line when we passed a really nice rake just laying by the side of the road. “Did you see that?!? That was a really nice rake. We should go back and get it!” These words that sounded exactly my dad speaking just poured so easily from my lips. Michael looked at me sideways and said “You’re kidding right? We’re not going back for that rake.” I laughed and said “Of course I’m kidding.” Except I kind of wasn’t. Months have passed since this incident and I still have regrets about not going back for that rake on the side of the road. I can clearly see my Dad shaking his head in disappointment. “Oh Cindy. You just left that perfectly good rake on the side of the road.” The three of us were packed into the truck on Sunday. We had moved some furniture for JP and he’d given us his chicken coop, which we’re going to modify for our chickens. It’s not quite big enough to fit all four, but we got ideas. They are good ideas. Michael turned the truck onto the onramp for the highway and I noticed one of those gas station squeegees. “Hey! There was a gas station squeegee laying on the side of the road back there!” I practically yelled over the Cabbage’s head. Michael just shook his head and said “I am not stopping to pick up that gas station squeegee.” I waved it off and said “Oh, I didn’t expect you to stop. I was just noticing.”

But in one tiny corner of my heart, I kind of expected him to stop.

I can’t help it. It is in my genetic code from BOTH parents. Ask my mom why she keeps a small shovel in the back of her car. It is not for burying random bodies. It is for digging up interesting (weeds) plants that she sees on the side of the road. My Dad came home from work one time with a six pack of beer. This sounds like a normal sentence to most people, but my Dad never bought beer. There was never any alcohol in my parents house until us kids were old enough to bring it. I remember asking Dad in a very teenager snarky tone “Where did you get that beer?” Dad shrugged and said that he found in the parking lot of the grocery store. He found an unopened six pack of beer in the parking lot. I just shrugged and said “weird” and totally believed him. He said he was going to make biscuits with it. I am forty four years old and I know this is the equivalent to Tom’s “My hamburger flew out the window” story, but I am still 98% sure that Dad found that six pack in the parking lot.

I know you’re surprised to read about my urge to stop and pick up random junk off the side of the road considering I am known for constantly purging things from our home. My genetic coding has forced me to become this amalgamation of a human who kind of wants trash but also wants it far far away. We are at level 2 here at work and when they make the decision (probably Friday) to move us to level 3, I will be forced to work from home. I have a feeling that I will be doing a lot of moving of the trash far far away while I am home for the next unforeseeable future. This is either going to be a great opportunity for practicing Swedish death cleaning or day drinking.

Probably both.

* The title does not match the content. I started to write about intermittent fasting but decided that no one wanted to hear about me starving myself for sixteen hours a day. I was too lazy to change the title. Interpret.

PANDEMIC

12/52

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When I left work on Friday, I headed straight to Aldi to get a jump start on my grocery shopping for the weekend. I had seen pictures of cleaned out stores, but I still was not all that concerned. Aldi was busy, but no more than usual for Friday evening. It did have a look of being marauded. If you needed bread or mushrooms or mac-n-cheese, you were not going to find it here. The canned goods isle was also slim pickings. I still managed to get most of the things on my list that usually comes from Aldi (our groceries are split between Aldi and Trader Joe’s). I made it to check out, got all of my things on the conveyor and then reached into my coat pocket for my wallet. Which was not there. I distinctly remember taking my wallet out of my bag and placing into the inside of my coat pocket. So this meant that my wallet had fallen out somewhere in the store.

My heart racing, I ran back to produce and the grapes. I had bent over to collect grapes that had fallen out of the packaging. That’s where my wallet had to have fallen out. I started lifting up crates of grapes and then I yelled “Has anyone seen a wallet!”. I heard someone gasp and say “oh no.” Then I ran back to check out where the cashier had just finished ringing up my items. By this time I was pretty frantic. I looked at her and said “I don’t have my wallet!” She rolled her eyes and sighed. Then she called a manager to come do an override. As she was doing this, the (very) young security guard walked up to me and said “Mam, what is your name?” I gave him all the names that people call me. Then he very seriously said “Mam. We have your wallet.” Then I turned into June Caprice reenacting any one of her damsel in distress scenes. Groceries paid for, I headed home to eat a gummy and stress clean the house. The next morning, I got back from finishing up the grocery shopping to find an envelope with only my last name written across it. I opened it to find my driver’s license and a note from the young security guard. He had removed my license to find out who the wallet belonged to, but had forgotten to put it back. He had hand delivered it to our home. An hour later, I was at the bank finishing up a refinance that required proof of identification. Reaching into my wallet and not finding my license there would have put a real wrench in things. We left the bank, bought a gift card and a thank you note which I hand delivered to that security guard.

I feel like I am standing in the middle of a frozen pond watching the ice break all around me. Meanwhile I’m standing on my own patch of ice, just floating along and pretending that everything is normal and okay. I am a scientist and I am not too concerned for myself in regards to the coronavirus. I am also not inclined to panic under such circumstances. Yet, seeing the state of the grocery stores followed with standing in the longest line at MicroCenter to buy an external hard drive, one can’t help but feel a little bit anxious right now. At some point during the day on Saturday, I realized that it would have been Chris and mine’s twenty second wedding anniversary. I laughed to myself and asked Chris “where do you think we would have gone this year?” As usual, there was no response. I irrationally think about how some events in this timeline would not happen if Chris were still living. Trump. Disney owning Star Wars and Marvel. The Tesla truck. The coronavirus.

Timelines are built on quicksand.

We have food. And toilet paper. My computer has been cleaned up and photos moved off of the hard drive so that if I have to work from home, my computer is ready. Right now, my little patch of ice is intact and we’re floating along.

THE KIND OF OLD LADY I PLAN ON BEING ONE DAY

Eloise-ish

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The weather app on my phone told me that the low was forty, but the high for the day would be in the sixties. I could do forty, I thought even as I heard the furnace kick on for the house. I zipped up my sleeping bag coat, added a layer of gloves under my mittens and backed the Vespa out of the garage. Turns out that the extra layer of gloves did not keep my finger tips from freezing and I could not feel the tops of my thighs by the time I reached the parking garage. Forty degrees is colder than I had anticipated, but I only had to travel four miles in it. Four miles is a blink of an eye when traveling at my usual speeds. Surprisingly, a blink of an eye is all the time I need to imagine myself at age eighty, zipping around cars and flying over speed bumps on my scooter.

I want to be doing exactly that as an old lady.

When I think about the old lady I want to be one day, I always think of Tao Porchon-Lynch, the 101 year old yoga teacher. I went to look her up for this entry and discovered that she passed away in February. I’ve read her autobiography, but as I read through the obituary on her website, I was once again floored by this woman’s extraordinary life. I am inspired by her optimistic view and her inner joyful light that shown through her eyes and smile. A pinch of sadness hit me when I heard of her passing. I suppose I thought she would just go on teaching yoga and shimmering with joy for ever and ever. Except I guess maybe she decided that she had done enough shimmering and it was time to move on from this world.

Some time ago, I wrote a little story here about an eighty year old master surfer and maker of surf boards. I gave her the name of Ida Merryweather and last we left her, she was convincing her apprentice to help her sneak her friends out of the nursing home to go surfing. She was partly inspired by Tao, but also an imagination of the woman I would like to be at age eighty. I want to start the day by hearing my old joints pop and crackle as I get out of bed and stretch, gulp down some vitamin C and scramble up an egg for breakfast. Then I want to pack up whatever little terrier I have at the time (probably named Josephine because of genetics and how my Pepaw had at least three Penny’s before he died) and head out on the scooter. No plans. There might be stops for coffee or stops for photo taking. Me and the pup will take a picnic break in a park and go for a walk. I’ll do yoga and feed birds. Maybe I’ll start knitting again. I will collect a group of senior citizen friends and we will go once a week to play bingo and once a year on a big adventurous trip like touring the pyramids or camping in Africa. We’ll take up surfing and swimming with sharks.

Know that the joy of living is right inside you - Tao Porchon-Lynch

I am in training for those days now with brisk morning scooter rides and honoring that instinct to stop and take the picture. I’m going to torture class to keep these bones strong for swimming with (an if need be, fighting off) sharks. I’m eating greens and tofu because it’s good for me (also because I like it), but on occasion, I’m having ice-cream for dinner because that’s good for me too. I dance in the grocery store when a good beat is playing through the store speakers. Sometimes I sing along to those tunes. I do this because I really really believe that the knowledge of my very own inner pool of joy, is what’s going to allow me to be that spry, yoga practicing, scooter riding, bingo hopper, globe trotting, shark swimming eighty year old woman I plan on being one day.

SUBSTANCE

Comedian Michael has been getting back into his comedy roots, doing five minutes here and there at different open mic nights. Last night he did fifteen mins in a comedy showcase at the Groundhog Day Theatre. It was the fit time I'd seen his act. He was good. Real good.

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We all have lives from before, people we used to be, things we used to do. Life changes, we change, and then suddenly we are doing different things. We become different people. In my former life, I was a dancer and a singer. I was a musician and a sidekick, a Harpo to Chris’s Groucho. Sometimes we go back to some of those things from our former lives, but I have no desire to go back to my stage days and my Harpo days are behind me. I found new things and different outlets, like yoga and photography. In Michael’s former life, he was a standup comedian. He bartended to make ends meet, then spent the rest of his time hustling for gigs. One day he reached a crossroads. He could either step up his hustle and really try to make it big time or he could switch gears entirely, go back to school and get a useful degree. Married, with a baby on the way, Michael chose the ‘switch gears’ option.

But he missed the stage.

Sometime in the Fall there was talk of a talent show happening at work and all of Michael’s coworkers encouraged him to do a comedy act. He started going to open mic nights to get ready and working on a new set list. His goal was to keep things clean, but also to not be mean. He was terrified of dropping an F-bomb on the high school stage. Then the talent show thing didn’t happen, but Michael kept going to the open mics, still working on new material. Which has been good. He needed something, some outlet, of his own and he’s enjoying the process. Michael’s open mic nights led to an invitation to do a fifteen minute set in a comedy showcase at the Groundhog Day Theatre Sunday night. He asked me to go mostly so I could video record his set for him and partly to pad the audience, but only if I sat where he couldn’t see my face. I’m a distraction. I sat in the back corner with my phone propped up on a tall stack of chairs.

Sometimes Baby needs to be put in the corner.

I sat there listening to the comics that came on before Michael and trying my best to find them funny. Stand up comedy isn’t really my scene. I enjoy it when it is good, but when the comic is bombing, I have internal pains for that person. Sunday night didn’t seem to go to well for most of the comics. The MC has potential and I could tell that he was at least working on his craft. When a joke would fail, he’d look at his set list and say “Okay….that one didn’t work.” and move on. The two guys that came on before Michael were lost in the weeds. One was high and the other one was drunk or at least pretending to be drunk. Maybe that was part of his act. It didn’t work in his favor. The first guy had some incoherent story or joke involving Wolfman Jack and his dad. The second walked back and forth yelling “Hey!” a whole bunch. It was a relief when Michael hit the stage because I knew he couldn’t be as bad as those two. He also has a no drinking policy for himself and would at least be coherent. The woman who closed the show has the potential to really make it big but she was also too high to maintain a train of thought. She lost track of where she was in her set and had problems enunciating.

Michael was the oldest and most experienced of all the other performers and it showed. From the moment he stepped on to the stage until the moment he left, he was on point. There was a clear cohesion to his set and there were great callbacks to previous jokes. It was together and professional. And it was funny. I laughed a lot. It was the first time I had seen him perform and I think this made us both nervous. He sheepishly asked me after the show “so…do I still have a place to live?” and I just laughed without answering his question.

I like to keep him guessing.

30 SOMETHING

Someone trashed their 30s

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I did an illegal u-turn so I could take that picture of the trashed balloons. At the time, I found it funny to see someone trashing their thirties. My thirties were great! This was my first thought, but then I remembered my real thirties versus my imaginary thirties. My thirties were a complete shit show. I entered my thirties with a broken family wrecked by loss. When Chris and I celebrated the end of 2005, we celebrated with a real hope that the new year would be better. Then Chris’s Dad’s cancer came back and we entered the years of slogging our way through bogs of grief, depression and despair to find some glimmer of joy.

You know those round water bumper boats with the smelly gas engines. I used to beg to ride those as a kid and every time Dad would relent the money for a ticket, I would end up stuck in a corner going nowhere, just spinning. This describes my early thirties. There was grief on top of grief, living with a mother-in-law who I was constantly struggle to connect with, trying to dig out of debt and just stuck. Spinning in the corner. Next, I would move into a job where I killed mice every day for science. I’d often end my work day crying in a bathroom stall over all the carnage and how science wasn’t fun any more. Then I would watch my best friend deteriorate and die, only to have to repeat that process with my Dad. The rest of my thirties would be spent just trying to figure out how to live my life without that best friend and finding some sense of self. By the time I entered my forties, I felt like a wise old sage. Though, now that I’m in my mid-forties, I feel less wise and more old. Despite the train wreck of my thirties, I wouldn’t throw those years away. In those years, I would acquire the confidence in myself that I never had in my twenties. I don’t mean just a physical confidence, but a mental confidence, a belief in myself. I found that I was really good at teaching yoga and that I loved teaching. Those years brought me my scooter, which has been a constant source of glee. I grew my own vegetables and I made pickles and sauerkraut. I found my writing voice and discovered a creativity that had been locked deep inside me. I started taking my photography more seriously. Chris and I finally did what we always said we were going to do and that was to move out of Oklahoma. I moved into a job that made science fun again and did not leave me crying in the bathroom at the end of a work day. I learned some valuable life lessons in my thirties. Sure, they happened to be punch-in-a-gut hard lessons, but sometimes a lesson has to be difficult in order to really learn it. If it hadn’t been for the shit show that was my thirties, I would not be the woman I am today.

Of course that can be said of any decade. If I could say anything to the birthday celebrant who put those balloons out for trash pickup, it would be to savor and pay attention to every moment. Not just the moments in your thirties. All of the moments. Swim around in the painful moments until your fingers are wrinkly. Really soak those in because those moments make the good moments so so so so good. It’s like the painful moments rip a layer of skin off and the good moments are skin graphs that grow in that space. You might be under the impression that turning thirty will suddenly make you a grownup. That is not true. You will make grownup decisions, probably more of them than you did in the previous ten years of your life, but you will not be a grownup. There is no defining age for being a grownup. This is important because the less you dwell on the concept of being a grownup, the better off you are. I mean, be a grownup when it is absolutely necessary, but all other times allow yourself moments of silliness and play. Have ice cream for dinner. If your gut is telling you to pull the car over to explore some derelict building that looks interesting, do it. There’s a 60% chance of rain forecasted for the day? Ride the scooter anyway; there is a 40% chance it won’t.

And vote. Always vote.

IN THIS COUNTRY, HOUSE OWNS YOU

Backyard

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There are things about home ownership that I wish I had known before buying a house. I’ve been told by every adult “Buy a house! You’re throwing money away by renting!”. When I bought my house, my monthly payment dropped by almost $400 and I was all “RENTING IS A SCAM!” Then the sewer backed up in the basement and I realized my landlord was not going to fix this because I was the landlord. I didn’t know how to snake a drain. Calling a plumber sounded like something only suckers did. So I poured a bunch of chemicals down the drain.

Then I called a plumber.

Michael has done a fairly good job of fixing things around the house. It does come with its fair share of handyman’s Tourettes though and I’ve learned to stay out of his way in these moments. Soon after he moved in, the springy thingy system on the garage door broke on one side. We were all really lucky no one was in the garage when it happened because apparently wire ricochets all around. But now the garage door weighed fifty million pounds. Michael, with some blood, sweat and a sailor’s vocabulary managed to lift the door enough to get a carjack under it. Then he was able to use the carjack to lift the garage door enough to replace the springy thingy. I stayed well out of his way for all of this and this was the beginning of an unsaid agreement between us. I would just let him do what needed to be done. No matter how much he yelled, grunted, sweated or cursed. I would just leave him to it. The only times I did not just hand the whatever needs to be fixed to him was when the tiles started falling off the bathroom walls and when the basement flooded. Both of those times I stepped in because I knew the job surmounted our physical abilities (to not kill each other).

A few weeks ago, the furnace stopped working. It sounded like it was going to kick on, but then would not kick on. Michael did his research and discovered that there was some sensor that he needed to pull out and clean or rub with sandpaper. He did this, put the sensor back in and voila! The furnace kicked into action. He strutted around the house for days because he had fixed the furnace. He told someone he works with about it and the woman responded with “oh yeah. Sensor. You have to clean it.” Then he was shocked that this was something he had never heard of before. Why isn’t this common knowledge?!? I wouldn’t have known to do this. I’m not even sure I know how to remove the furnace panel. Then Friday afternoon, Michael calls me. He tells me to NOT touch the thermostat when I get home. He was in the process of rushing out to the only repair store that carried a certain part for the furnace. This time it was the ignitor that went out. He made it to the store just as they were closing, retrieved the part, came home and then replaced the part. We had heat! He fixed the furnace!

Except the new part was not exactly like the old one.

I woke up around 7 AM Sunday morning and the house was cold. I sighed and then decided not to wake Michael. There really wasn’t anything he could do at that time on a Sunday morning any way. I had prepped dough for another (failed) attempt at making sourdough bread. This required the oven temperature to be set to 500 degrees, which heated up the house well enough. Michael got up a few hours later, came out of his room and then stuck his ear to the floor vent outside his room. I said “Yeah, the furnace isn’t working.” He took his flashlight and headed down to the basement. Then he came back up and called a service repair guy. He looked at me and said “Get your big credit card out because we might be replacing the furnace today.” Then we both sat on the couch with queasy guts waiting on the service repair guy. Our service guy, Jerry, showed up and took a look at the furnace. He pulled out the ignitor that Michael had installed on Friday and it had shorted out because it wasn’t exactly like the old one. Jerry put in a new ignitor (a universal one that is easier to replace), told us when the best deals were for buying an AC and to not let them tell us we needed new duct work when they install the AC because what we have is just fine. It cost us around $300, which is a whole lot cheaper than a new furnace.

Later on Michael and I were making enchiladas, both of us standing near the stove waiting on the oil for the tortillas to heat up. Michael uses tongs to dunk a corn tortilla in the hot oil and then places it my baking dish for me to fill and roll. He started playing around, snapping at me with the metal tongs. I put up karate hands in defense and then told him he better stop because if he hurt me, I’d have to kick him out. Michael gasped and said “But I fixed the furnace!” I immediately responded with “Jerry fixed the furnace!” This caused him to double over with laughter, but when he had regained his breath he said “but I called Jerry.” I had to give him that because I was never more shocked when I heard him call the repair guy in the first place. I thought for sure his next step was going to be taking the furnace completely apart and that this was the winter we would die.

This will not be the winter we die… from furnace failure.

I ATE THE BACON

Any thing goes at Santa Cali Gon days. Just kidding.

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The first time I went to Heirloom, I ordered a biscuit sandwich without realizing it came with bacon on it unless you modify it. When my sandwich was set in front of me, I grimaced. I pulled the bacon slices off my sandwich and just set them to the side. Then I stared at the bacon as I took a bite of egg, cheese and biscuit. Then I thought “I’ll just take one bite. It does seem like really good bacon.” I took a bite and set the piece down. I continued to eat my biscuit, egg and cheese sandwich while eyeing the bacon just sitting there on my plate. I took another bite of bacon. Then another and another until I had finished that piece of bacon. I finished my biscuit sandwich and then ate that second piece of bacon.

After we had Chris’s Celebration of Life service, I left Misti’s house in Oklahoma City to drive back to KCMO. I stopped at a Kolache place near her house and ordered a donut and two kolachies. When I took a bite of the first kolache, I realized it was filled with meat. I shrugged and then shoved both kolachies into my mouth like a starving person. I remember reading stories submitted by readers to Vegetarian Times a long time ago. The topic was dealing with meat cravings. One woman wrote in and said that once a year she drives herself to KFC and orders a bucket of chicken. She goes through the drive-thru and then parks her car in the parking lot of the shopping center next door. Then she eats all of the chicken in the bucket, all alone in a deserted parking lot. I read her confession and felt sad for this woman. I could imagine her glancing around furtively like a wild animal while she gnawed on a chicken bone and worrying about someone she knows seeing her in this act of carnivorism. I pictured her doing this in the dark and if you shined a flashlight into her car, she would cover face and yell “DON’T LOOK AT ME!” That’s what eating the meat-filled kolachie felt like. DON’T LOOK AT ME! I’VE JUST HAD THE WORST TWO MONTHS OF MY WHOLE LIFE! It was part shame and partly a defensive reaction to my actions. I felt guilt for eating this poor animal. I felt stupid for not paying attention to what I was ordering. I was a poser, a hypocrite. And at the same time, I didn’t really give a fuck about any of it. So what if I just ate two (what was basically) hotdogs and cheese stuffed into a pastry dough. Chris is dead. There are worse things than a vegetarian/pescatarian eating meat.

As I stepped up to the counter at Heirloom on Saturday to place my usual breakfast order, I noticed the special menu out of the corner of my eye. I paused and saw that they were offering avocado toast on a slice of their fancy sourdough, topped with an artisanal goat cheese and fried egg. I thought “oh! I love avocado toast!” and then I placed my order and settled in at the counter with my Fortune Cookie journal. A few minutes later the owner came out with my plate and set it in front of me saying “enjoy! It’s good to see your face in here today.” I smiled and said “thanks!” and then looked down at my plate to see two slices of bacon sitting next to my avocado toast. I made a face and thought “Oh no…I’m going to eat that bacon.” And I did. I didn’t cram it all into my mouth as quickly as I could as if trying to hide evidence. I savored that bacon, taking deliberate bites and mindfully chewing. Bacon meditation. Which could totally be a thing. It was good bacon from a good ethical farm and it would have been a horrible waste and dishonor to the pig who sacrificed his life so that we could eat him to not eat the bacon.

I even licked the grease from my fingers and as I did this I gave a subtle little nod of acknowledgment to Chris’s presence lurking over my left shoulder.

MURDER OF CROWS

Snow geese

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I dreamt of a murder of crows sweeping over head in one large choreographed group. Their large black bodies with wings stretched out wide soared back and forth. They did not behave as a usual murder but instead swarmed together like a murmuration of starlings. I stood transfixed by the sight of them. In the mornings there’s a large murder of crows that, like the traffic commuters, fly somewhere south of the city. I have watched them from a window at work moving languidly as if through water, one by one, heading in that direction. In the evenings I have watched just the opposite. They come from somewhere south of my house and fly back to where ever they roost for the night. The crows of my dream were not like those crows from real life. Have you ever witnessed a murmuration? Hundreds to thousands of starlings move over a field or body of water like a school of fish, swooping and swirling together in dance. It is a breathtaking and mesmerizing thing to witness. Crows are not known for this behavior. They may travel in groups but they’re loaners within that group. Very similar to a gaggle of gothic teens. Also a crow is at least twice the size of a starling and watching them swarm in such a way was almost scary. Except I was not scared. I reached for a camera and frantically ran back and forth capturing the whole event in blurry photos.

Last week I wrote up a class description for the workshop I am offering at Camp Wildling. I have a very clear vision for this class and know exactly how I want to present it. I sent it off to Kelly so she could put it on the website and five minutes later I heard the first whisper. What makes you think you can teach a workshop on photography? I closed my eyes while gently pinching the bridge of my nose, nodded my head and thought “here we go.” I had wondered when my inner doubt and self saboteur was going to make it’s presence known. I knew it was coming because I just felt too confident about this workshop and my abilities to teach it. I did the same thing when I found out I was going to be hanging my pictures in a local restaurant for two months. I spent weeks tugging at my hair and gnashing my teeth, asking myself “what on earth was I thinking?” and telling myself I was not good enough for this. I never even realized I had gotten over all of that until I talked to Talaura in December. All of the worries about the showing that I expressed to her where technical things like how to hang the pictures. It was Talaura who pointed it out that none of my worries had anything to do with my artistic worth. I paused when she said this because there is some part of me that still has that doubt. That kind of doubt has just become so minuscule that I hardly even notice it.

A lot of folklore portrays crows as harbingers of death. We see them linked with scarecrows and Halloween decorations. They come across as dark and gloomy creatures cawing out ‘never more’ in poetry. A crow is more than this. There is some ancient legend about the fall of the Kingdom of England if ravens are removed from the Tower of London. There are six of them living in the tower now. The Pacific Northwest Native Americans believed that a raven was the creator of the world, carrying around a pebble in his beak until it was too tired and then dropping it in a large body of water. The stone became the land we live on. Crows are smart birds, maybe even as smart as apes. They use tools, sometimes even make their own tools and they recognize faces. Some crows can count. One lu-lu dream interpretation site I came across said the groups of freely flying crows in a dream represents your intelligence and suggests that you trust your instinct. Basically it means you should believe in yourself.

If this is the case, then may we all dream of crows behaving like starlings.

HERE'S WHAT 44 LOOKS LIKE

My nurse

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Last week ended with me wanting to high five everyone. My friend and yoga teacher, Kelly, is/has put together a summer camp for adults and she posted a need for workshops and people. Now I’ve been thinking about a photography workshop for some time, one centered around using your camera phone. I figure if I can take nice pictures with my phone, you can too. So I presented the idea to Kelly and she was so enthusiastic about it, that it made me want to jump up and down. Tickets are on sale now for Camp Wildling and I’ve had a sneak peek at the entire schedule. If you’ve ever had a dream to attend that camp from Parent Trap, this is your chance. Then, I put my name down on the volunteer list for this year’s AIDS Walk Open and I got asked to do a meditation workshop for wellness week at work. The very best part that ended the week was something I did at work that was a little outside of my wheelhouse. It involved basically writing a program to do a bunch of stuff on a microscope. And it worked! It worked really well!

High five!

Then Sunday morning around 4 AM, I woke up sweaty and nauseated. My body felt like it had been used as a punching bag. When Michael came in my room later that morning, I burst into tears and he cancelled our dinner reservations for my birthday dinner that night. I spent the next two days laying around, drinking water and occasionally eating a saltine cracker. I did eat a bagel with cream cheese and lox on the second day and had some regrets about that food choice. I laid around another day, ate a pb&j and a taco, both of which tasted like ash or mold but stayed in place. So I’m back to work today moving at half my usual speed, but living and breathing and keeping food down. Winner! So far, I am the only one in the house to be struck with this. Michael thinks it was food poisoning. I’m not sure that I have ever had food poisoning so I don’t know. I am very paranoid that Michael’s going to come down with it next, assuming it was not a poisoning situation.

So, forty four looks five pounds lighter than forty three. I have been hankering for a spa day and there is a plan in the works for this once we take care of other things first. I can just tag the last few days on as a spa treatment, the colon cleanse treatment. I don’t recommend it. The massage and facial are much better options, but if you’re feeling puffy and just want to reset everything, food poisoning…I mean a colon cleanse is the way to go. Really, I’d rather not celebrate my birthday on my actual birthday anyway. The Shitty Ghost of Birthdays’ Past tends to overshadow any attempts at a nice birthday. So when things settle down, I will spend an afternoon hanging out in a steam room, getting massaged and scrubbed. I will eat a dozen oysters on the half-shell with a Caesar salad and wash it all down with a Pimm’s cup. Michael keeps telling me how sorry he is that I was sick on my birthday and every time he says it, I just shrug.

It’s one day. One day out of every year. Sure, it’s meant to be celebrated with candles and cake, but honestly, there was serious doubt that I would even make it that first day. Birth was traumatic. Who wants to celebrate that? Celebration comes in the days that follow, when it looks like you’re actually going to survive. Well, it looks like I have survived. Now it’s time to celebrate and I might just spend the rest of the year celebrating. I am really excited about the things I have planned for this year.

PLACE WORDS HERE

Instagram post by Cindy Maddera * Jan 12, 2020 at 3:29pm UTC

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I did not leave the house on Saturday. Michael, in anticipation for a predicted ice/snow storm, went grocery shopping after work on Friday so that I wouldn’t have to dig out my car to go the next morning. It was a very knight in shining armor thing to do considering that grocery stores on the eve of snow storms are the worst places ever. Grocery stores on the eve of snow storms followed with a NFL Divisional game for the home team are worse than the worst places ever. Yet Michael donned his shield and sword and charged into Trader Joe’s and even refrained from opening the bottle of Bourbon he was purchasing until after he got home. He told me all about his adventures when I made it home that evening. I laughed and told him that it probably wouldn’t snow. Pellets of ice could be heard hitting the house sometime around 7:00 that evening. So we got a nice layer of ice before the five inches of snow that came down Saturday morning.

Sometimes having your very own knight isn’t so bad.

We had a snow day. I did yoga and meditation. I cleaned the bathroom and did the laundry. I even took a shower, but I did not put on a bra. I had a nice warm cup of chai with half of a special marshmallow floating in it and I finished a book and started another one. At some point during the day, Michael asked me “when’s the last time you didn’t leave the house on a Saturday?” I thought about this for a long time and could not come up with an answer. Maybe that one time in 1993 when I didn’t have a band contest, choir contest or a 4-H thing. The moon was in the seventh house and Mercury was aligned with Mars, because there had to be only one Saturday out of the year when I did not have one of the above things to do. Or all of the things. Saturdays are for leaving the house. Sundays are for CBS Sunday Morning and no bras. Definitely not on a Saturday. This whole not having to leave the house for anything on a Saturday thing was very weird and slightly disorienting. You would think that I would have used my time a little more productively. Like working on a writing project or painting the kitchen. Maybe I should have spent the day scrubbing the baseboards with a toothbrush or rearranging the living room. I am one hundred percent positive that there are chores that I have been putting off that I could have done, but I didn’t. I did the bare minimum of chores and the most creative I got was deciding what yoga poses I was going to do in my practice that morning. I have zero regrets about this and those of you who really know me know that for me to have zero regrets on basically being lazy is a pretty big milestone.

My yoga teacher who I did my teacher training with was/is a big fan of doing less. We’d have many a discussion on the subject. Doing less did not mean that you didn’t challenge yourself in a practice; you just moved a little bit slower, did a few less poses, spent twenty minutes in final relaxation. She warned us about those students who had personal lives of go, go, go. Those people tended to gravitate to a vigorous vinyasa flow kind of practice and usually skipped final relaxation. They did this because it felt normal to them. It was what they were used to even if it wasn’t necessarily what they needed. Making some one like that slow down was actually the best medicine a yoga teacher could offer them. In the years since I have been teaching, I have had those people in my classes. It takes them a bit to give into the pace of the practice, but once they do, those people become final relaxation junkies. I have never considered myself to be one of the go, go, go kind. In fact, I always lump myself into a sloth like category. If we were talking doshas, I’d put myself firmly on team Kapha. I’m solidly built and lean towards lethargy. I have been telling myself lies, giving myself a label so I’d have an excuse for being the chunky kid. I may be solidly built, but those of you have stayed with me in my house have witnessed my constant movement away from lethargy. Ask Michael about my so called naps where I close my eyes for ten minutes.

What ‘leans towards lethargy’ really means is ‘leans towards not wanting to exercise’. I don’t want to spend time on the treadmill or jumping up and down while lifting weights over my head. I do it so I am no longer the chunky kid (debatably still chunky) but stay solidly built. Spending a day lounging on the couch with a good book and doing less stuff is a need from time to time. At the very least it gives me fodder for a lengthy blog entry about nothing.

I SEE A GIRL, SHE'S ROLLER SKATING

Skating

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I don’t remember when it started or when it came to an end, but I remember the window of time where I lived on roller skates. I remember watching early episodes of Facts of Life and thinking that Tootie was the coolest character on that show. She went everywhere on her roller skates and she was cute, funny and clever. I wanted be just like Tootie. When I inherited my sister’s hand-me-down roller skates, I never wanted to take them off. They were white and I had made pink pompoms for the laces. I roller skated down our street on the rough asphalt. I roller skated in the garage on the very few occasions that the garage was clean and the floor space was empty. Mostly, I roller skated at the local roller rink. The closest roller rink was in Owasso. Rick’s Roller Arena was the place to be. Church outings, birthdays, school outings. Every Tuesday night was American Airlines night which meant that AA employees and children got in to skate for $1.

Mom would drop us off and we’d skate for hours. We’d speed skate, racing each other around the rink or dance along to the music while we skated. Of course, there would be boy watching and that awkward pre-teen couples skate where you hopefully ended up holding sweaty hands with a boy who could actually skate. We’d take a break in skating to play a few rounds of skee-ball and then jump back onto the rink in time for a game of Limbo. We all did the hokey pokey. When I said that to Michael, he said “You did the hokey pokey on roller skates!?!” and I laughed. It was the only time I ever did the hokey pokey. I didn’t even know the hokey pokey was done outside of the skating rink. Hard wood floors. Disco lights. Hits from the 70s and 80s. The slight breeze you generated as you swayed your way around the rink floor. It was all bliss.

It has been ages since I was on roller skates. Maybe it was my thirtieth birthday. I think I talked Stephanie and Cati into going roller skating with me. Cati was still little and I spent more time keeping her from falling down than I did actually skating. I was terrified she’d fall and break a bone. That was the last time I wore a pair of skates. That was fourteen years ago. The Cabbage is now at that age where she likes roller skating, so that was our family outing on Saturday. Her skating method is still a work in progress and she has falls, but she’s independent. She’s self confident enough to not need me skating with her and I had the time mostly to myself. I put on my rental skates and did a tentative run around the rink. It was an unsteady run and I knew something wasn’t right. I exchanged my skates for a size smaller and everything fell right back into place. I spent my first two or three laps tense and panicked over crashing into falling children (they were every where). Then I found an opening in the crowd, relaxed and just skated round and round and round.

Then I took a break to play skee-ball.

CAN YOU TELL ME HOW TO GET TO SESAME STREET?

No two alike

12 Likes, 1 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "No two alike"

A few weeks ago I caught the tale end of the 50th Anniversary celebration of Sesame Street on PBS. Watching it made my heart swell up with joy and then hearing all the guests tell stories of their favorite Sesame Street moments, killed me dead. I don’t think I could choose just one favorite moment. My favorite moments was every time Kermit or Grover sat on the brick wall, talking to a little kid. At the end of their conversation Kermit or Grover would hug the child. This is where I learned jealousy. I wanted to be that little kid so badly and I wanted to be hugged by Kermit and Grover. I just knew by looking at the kid’s face that getting that hug was the best feeling in the whole wide world.

I’m not sure that I learned my ABCs or numbers from watching Sesame Street. Actually, I don’t remember learning my ABCs as much as it just seems like I always knew them. I was reading before I started kindergarten. The lessons that I did learn from Sesame street are far more important than the ABCs or learning to count in Spanish. Sesame Street taught me that the world outside of my white rural bubble was filled with all kinds of people. Different colors. Different beliefs. Different needs. So much difference yet we all need, crave and offer love. For a long time I thought that maybe Sesame Street was making it all up. I would walk around the grocery store with my Mom and look at the people around me. You could not walk into the grocery store without saying hello to someone you knew. We all knew each other. We were all the same color, same religion. I would look around and wonder “where are those families that I see on Sesame Street?” Sesame Street showed me that my life was missing diversity.

I learned more about diversity and loving kindness from Sesame Street than I did from my own church.

Last night, I watched Joan Ganz Cooney and Dr. Lloyd Morrisett accept Kennedy Center Honors for Sesame Street. Big Bird and Elmo and Grover and few others all took the stage to celebrate. I still stare at Big Bird with the same awe and joy as I did as a small child. Sesame Street still brings joy to my heart and when the whole audience stood up and started singing along to Sing A Song, I knew that this joy is contagious and true for all of us.

So, what about you? What’s your favorite Sesame Street memory?

OVERACHIEVER

Home. F is for Fortune Cookie Journal.

10 Likes, 0 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "Home. F is for Fortune Cookie Journal."

The Smarter Living section of the New York times has an article this week entitled “Start Practicing Your New Year’s Resolutions Now.” I didn’t read it. In fact, I saw that headline, promptly rolled my eyes and said “Oh, Smarter Living, that’s yesterday’s news!” because I’ve been practicing this whole improving my life thing since October. I’m making progress. I feel good. I have all the plans in the world to karate chop my way into 2020. I did have some hyperventilating moments in regards to an art showing that I’m doing in April and May, but I got some really great advice from a few different voices. I’m pretty settled about all of it now. Chilled.

Since October, when I started setting specific goals for the month, I’ve noticed that not only have I spent time focusing on achieving those goals, but I have also spent time focusing on me. This includes genuine self care like putting lotion on my flaky skin instead of just sitting around scratching and trying to claw that skin off. I take allergy medicine before bed so I don’t wake up with a clogged nostril and crusted over eyes. I threw out all of my makeup that has been sitting in my medicine cabinet for more than two years and bought new eyeshadow, eyeliner and mascara. I haven’t used the eyeshadow or eyeliner yet, but I’ve been using my eyelash curler and mascara almost every day. I go to the gym every day but I don’t beat myself up when things happen in my schedule and I have to miss a day. The only goal I set for the month of December is to survive. December is hard enough for a thousand reasons. This year includes more travel than I’m used to, which makes the month seem too short to get the usual things done, let alone added things.

See? Self care. Not putting more stuff on my plate than I can eat.

My mantra now is “I am responsible for my own happiness.” Part of that responsibility requires me to figure out what exactly makes me happy. Setting specific goals and making accomplishments on those goals makes me happy. Making my eyes look pretty makes me happy. Waking up breathing out of both sides of my nose makes me happy. Not waiting around until the New Year to start all of this, makes me happy.

HUSTLE

Tradition!

9 Likes, 0 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "Tradition!"

We started a new tradition last year when we traveled to California for Thanksgiving, or what we all like to call Crabsgiving because we ate crabs for two days in a cabin in the Point Reyes National Seashore. It just made sense that we would repeat some aspect of that this year. Indian food replaced the crabs and Colorado replaced California. Most of last year’s group couldn’t make it, but Michael, Heather and I all had a wonderfully relaxing, snow filled time. Heather moved to Denver in the Spring of this year and it has been a good move for her. Michael and I had a great time and we made plans for next year. We’re calling next year Crawdadsgiving or Oystersgiving 2020 and you can guess our destination.

Michael and I got home late Saturday and I spent Sunday gathering food for the week and washing clothes. We are getting thick in the hustle that comes with December. I leave Friday for a conference in D.C. and come back to office Christmas parties and other Holiday festivities. Before I know it we will be packing the car for our Christmas visit with my family in Oklahoma. Though, I do not feel rushed or panicked. I have a couple of things left on the list to get for gifts, Christmas cards are ordered, and most everything else is done. I’ve been planning ahead. The one thing I was unsure about was wether or not I’d have the energy and time to deal with putting up the Christmas tree. I thought about skipping it mostly because I didn’t think I’d have time. By the time I would get around to it all, it would be time to take it all down. Why bother? Then I thought about the new ornament we bought for this year and I moved the pile of animals I was laying under and got up from the couch.

The tree is standing with lights and ornaments. There’s a pretty wreath on the door and the Hanukah lamp is setting on the bookcase. I have yet to hang up stockings, but only because I am out of the sticky things needed for the hanging. I did the bare minimum of decorating. The tree is just lights and ornaments. No ribbon or tinsel. I was a little bit worried that the tree would look sparse without ribbon, but it seems that I have finally amassed a decent number of ornaments so that it doesn’t matter if there’s ribbon or garland. Michael and I have acquired a number of look-a-like pairs of ornaments. As I placed the third bearded man figure next to the third girl in a stocking cap figure, I realized that this tree reflects a much different life and I felt a pang of guilt. Chris is barely on the tree any more.

I soothe myself with the reminder that we had still been in the process of replacing our Christmas ornaments. Truth be told, we had been in the process of rebuilding a lot things, like a home. We sat on an air mattress on the living room floor for a month before we inherited a couch from Traci. Replacing his Star Trek and Star Wars ornaments was not a cheap or easy undertaking. I hang every ornament that was his: the Ecto-1, the Wall-E, a storm trooper, a couple of other Star Wars related ornaments. At one time, there was an even dispersal of elephants and Sci-Fi on the tree. There are still plenty of elephants on the tree, of course. The dispersal of elephants and Sci-Fi has turned into a smattering of ornaments made by the Cabbage, bearded gnomes and figures of girls in stocking caps. There are red-capped mushrooms poking out here and there and vintage glass balls.

Actually, it really has become quite a beautiful tree, all things considered. It represents many blessings. I remember when we barely had any ornaments to go on it and now it’s full. My life is full. So full, that sometimes it hurts.