THERE IT IS

Michael asked me yet again, probably for the fifth time, what I needed for summer camp. I answered him with the same answer I gave the four times before: a shug of the shoulder and a questionable ‘nothing’. I mean, I’m teaching a class on using the camera on your phone. I have a giant tablet I’m writing some notes on and a stack of lens cleaning cloths. I bought an HDMI cable so I could hook my laptop up to a projector for a slide show presentation at the end of camp. I have a tent, a sleeping bag, a sleeping mat, and an ice chest. I am debating about taking our camp box of cookware. There will be a few meals not provided at camp and while there will be grills and firepits, there will not be cookware. To take cookware or not to take cookware is the thing I am contemplating the most right now.

Except, I have had enough people ask me if I have everything I need enough times that I am starting to doubt that I have everything I need. Then, just a few days ago, Kelly re-posted a picture I had taken onto the camp’s facebook page as advertisement of my class and what’s being offered at camp and I heard it. I heard the voice. It started out by just whispering in my ear, but quickly escalated to straight up yelling in my face. Yeah, you guessed it. It was the Voice of Doubt. There it was, telling me that I am a total fraud and an imposter. The truly amazing thing is that I have been able to fool people into even thinking I had some sort of talents. In fact, The Voice of Doubt applauded me on my acting skills. At first, I almost didn’t recognize the Voice of Doubt because it’s been awhile since I’ve heard it, but it has also been awhile since I’ve done anything that puts me in a vulnerable spot.

Do you know what the Voice of Doubt makes me do (besides obviously see myself as a failure)? It makes me procrastinate. This is such a flip from earlier days when the Voice of Doubt would have me in a frenzy of over preparedness. I have a mystic voodoo theory about how the Voice of Doubt affects me now versus how it affected me then and it basically comes down it’s all Chris’s fault. Gah! I used to get so frustrated by Chris’s procrastination particularly because I was the opposite of a procrastinator. Now, because of my mystic voodoo theory that is too crazy for me to tell you about, I get it. I understand that all of that procrastination was because of the Voice of Doubt. Instead of doing anything, I am sitting here thinking about making a list. But only thinking about it. You see, I can’t even get it together enough right now to make a damn list. This infuriates me and I want to scream back at the Voice of Doubt, but I never scream back.

I’ve never been good at putting up much of a fight.

I have two choices right now. I can walk into this whole thing half prepared or I can snap out of it and get myself together. I know what I am doing. I have some really good bullet points of information I plan on sharing. I do not need much of anything to share these bullet points. I don’t need to be THE authority of digital photography. I just need to share the things I know. I have got this.

So fuck off, Voice of Doubt.

FACE FULL OF MUD

I am currently sitting at my desk at work, breathing through my mouth because that is the only way I can get air in and out of my body. The pile of used tissues is continuously growing on the right side of my desk. I stayed home yesterday because my cough sounded like a Tuberculosis cough and I did not want to alarm the people I work with. I don’t feel bad, other than the whole not able to breath through my nose thing and my sinuses feeling like they’re full of wet mud, but I question being at work today because I just sound gross. At least twice a year, my sinus cavity turns into an angry volcano and I am well past the stage of ‘evacuate all natives from the area’. If you were one of those natives who was all “Look, I’m not leaving; you can’t make me.” you are now dead from flowing hot lava.

The pandemic made me really rearrange my priorities around using sick time and my supervisor has made it clear that if you do not feel well, you do not come to work. In fact, today my supervisor said to me “You do not sound like normal Cindy. Maybe you should spend another day on the couch.” This is frustrating to me because I sound sick without really feeling sick. I do not have time for this current road block. Yesterday’s sick day was guilt free. I can easily take one day of rest, but two days of it is ridiculous. I have to be near death and even then I will be saying to myself “Get it together! You are stronger than this volcano!” The pep talks I give myself are dumb. So I had just decided to pack it in and go home, when someone asked for training on a microscope this afternoon. Of course, I agreed. Now that poor student gets to listen to me snort and hack my way through a microscope training.

It’s going to be great.

My biggest concern right now is all the stuff that I am not doing because I can’t breath through my nose. Walks. Any kind of exercise. Taking advantage of the rain free day to clean out the chicken coop. I haven’t touched the coop since monsoon season hit and it is unpleasant. Michael will not be home until late this evening because graduation is tonight. This is the perfect opportunity to clean the house. It might not make sense, but it is easier for me to scrub the kitchen cabinets when Michael is not around. Also, this might be the last chance I get to do a deep clean of the house before all of the travel that is happening in June. I am pretty much not going to be home for a month. Every time I look at the calendar for June, I have to breathe into a paper bag. Michael scheduled both vehicles for an at home oil change service on the second. On that same day, Josephine has to be at the groomers by 8:00 AM and I have an eye appointment that afternoon. I can’t take my car, but I can’t take the dog on the scooter and I can’t take the scooter if it is raining.

We are really good at getting ourselves into that critical thinking question with the fox, the bag of seed, and the goose. Michael keeps telling me that he’s going to get us all across the river.

Going from a year of not doing much of anything to a year where it seems like I’m doing all of the things at once is a jolt to the system. Did I learn nothing from months and months of solitary confinement?!? Look, of course I learned something from all of that. I just learned different lessons than what the self-help/self-care movement expected me to learn. Do as much living as you can while you can. Pandemics and lockdowns are no longer outside the realm of possibility and you never know when another 2020 year will strike. There is a difference between allowing grief and depression to keep you from doing all of the things and being forced into doing none of the things. Being forced into doing none of the things made me appreciate being able to do all of the things.

And right now, all of the things involves tissue.

BIRTH CONTROL AND RAZOR BLADES

Last week was the first whole week where I did not take a birth control pill every morning since I was nineteen years old. I am officially off the pill. And no, I am not trying to get pregnant. Y’all, I’m forty five years old. I know it happens. I know that some women get pregnant at my age on purpose, but I am not one of those women. The idea of getting pregnant at age forty five is an actual nightmare I have had several times. I stopped taking the pill because Michael finally got a vasectomy and I had been on the pill for twenty six years. That’s long enough. There are side effects to being on a birth control for an extended amount of time like higher cholesterol (which I have) and a higher risk of having a stroke. The medical expenses for Michael’s bike accident qualified him for a free vasectomy and once he made sure all things were not swimming (?), I stopped taking my birth control. I still reach for my package of birth control pills in the medicine cabinet every morning even though the packet isn’t even there.

That same week, I was shaving my legs in the shower and I knicked my toe. I was not even trying to shave my toe or my foot. I was just sloppy. My friend Sarah has been doing LaserDerm. She’s had three sessions where they laser the hair off your body and she keeps telling me how it has improved her life. So when I knicked my toe, I said to myself “THAT’S IT!” I asked Sarah for the phone number of the place and they were able to get me in that very day. I went in and laid on a table while a technician lasered the hair off my legs, underarms and bikini area. The whole time I could barely contain my giddiness at finally doing this thing to make my life easier and it didn’t even hurt. Well…there was some eye twitching while she did my bikini line and underarms. It is not perfect. I still have to shave; it will take five to eight session to reach ‘no shaving’ levels. Still, I could tell a difference already in how frequent I need to do this task.

I feel really stupid that it took me so long to make the decision to do both of these things. I should have stopped taking the pill ages ago. If ‘vasectomy required’ had been an option on the dating profiling questionnaire, I would have selected it. My dating profile should have said something like “I may or may not have sex on the first date. You must have to have had a vasectomy and must be able to prove that you are sterile and STD free before expecting any sex from me.” I’ll keep this in mind the next time I end up in the world of online dating (there will not ever be a next time). Someone once suggested that I just get my tubes tied and this suggestion always sat like a rock in my stomach. Why am I the one that has to get the invasive surgery? Particularly when I have never had any problems. I was making someone else’s life easier by staying on the pill.

Last year was the year for learning how to be still. This year is the year for making my life easier. It started with Rosie the Roomba. It began with just making it easier to clean the house, but putting things in place to make my life easier is spreading beyond the house and onto my whole body.

EASIER

I recently did something that every financial advisor usually tells you not to do, but have zero regrets about it because it allowed me to pay off all of our bad debt. Our finances were a leaking boat. One of us just kept on rowing while the other had the job of bailing out the water. Rowing and bailing. Rowing and bailing. Never really getting anywhere but not sinking. Well, I decided that I was tired of rowing and bailing and upgraded our boat so that neither one of us needs to row or bail. We are now in the process of adjusting to being debt free and putting money that would normally be spent on a card payment into savings. We have new rules for spending and doing a better job at taking advantage of ‘cash back’ deals. It has made things in life a little easier.

Since then, I’ve been thinking of ways to make life easier. I had Michael sign us for a glass recycling pickup service. Regular recycling does not take glass, but there are Ripple Glass bins placed in various locations around the city where you can take your recycling. I had a bin for glass, but instead of taking it in when it filled up, we would start putting glass into empty chicken feed bags. Three chicken feed bags later and a full bin, Michael would finally lug it all to recycling, which was always an ordeal. When they finally started a pickup service for glass in our area, I was like SIGN US UP I WILL PAY YOU ALL THE MONEY! Twice a month we set a reasonable amount of glass out on the curb and someone comes and takes it away and it feels like a gift. It is just one less thing, one less hassle and it is the reason why as I pushed our cart down the aisle in Costco, I paused at the home appliance section and asked “Can I get a Roomba?”

Asking for the Roomba was a big deal for me. I will probably never have a cleaning service come into this house or pay to have someone mow the yard because I am stubborn. As long as I am physically capable of doing these things, I will always just do them, but I have noticed that in the past year, I am always sweeping and vacuuming. ALWAYS. A chore that was something I did twice a week turned into an every other day chore and then an everyday chore. Maybe it’s because I spend more time on the floor because of my exercise classes or maybe it is because we are just filthy animals, but it just feels like the floor is always dirty. So when I saw that display of Roombas at Costco, I didn’t see a display of robot vacuums. I saw a life raft. At first Michael said ‘no’ but after doing a few minutes of research, he agreed and put one into our cart. During the rest of our time in the store, I could not stop petting the box and laughing with joy and this reaction tells me that I had become way too stressed about the cleanliness of our floors.

When Chris and Traci built their new house, Traci’s Chris talked about the design concept of that house. His intent was to make a home that did not require extensive maintenance. Everything from the concrete floors to the self cleaning kitty litter box was meticulously planned for less work and more relaxation at home. Truly, his ideas for their home was/is, a concept that I feel is worthy of its own TED Talk and something I have been striving for. I try to do a chore every evening so that I am not spending my Sundays scrubbing the house. Except I still feel like I spend part of Sunday scrubbing some part of the house. I think part of me believes I am undeserving of ease. In fact, as we watched Rosie (that’s what we call the Roomba) maneuver around the living room, I said “I don’t know what my purpose is now that I no longer have to sweep and vacuum every day.” Like my self worth is tied to being able to do those tasks.

It actually runs a little deeper than my self worth. It is a belief of mine that whatever is easy in life will be taken from me as soon as I let my guard down. This is why I refuse to let Michael just take over the bills. This is why I pushed for a chicken enclosure that I could clean and refill the water for the chickens without help. As soon as I get comfortable in not having to do things for myself, everything will fall apart and I will have to retrain myself to do stuff all over again. Somewhere in time, I learned that life was just meant to be hard work all the time and there were consequences to having anything easy. You for sure never ever let anyone else know that your life is easier either because that is bragadocious and in some circles of people the hardships of life is a competitive sport. You had to walk to school today? Well, I had to walk to school in a blizzard without shoes. It has taken this many years to just barely be comfortable making some things in my life easier for myself. It is a daily practice for me to allow ease in my life because easiness comes with time for stillness. Easiness also comes with time for the pursuit of things I love to do, activities that feed my soul. It is a daily practice to tell myself that I am worthy of having parts of my life be easy.

This doesn’t mean I’m tossing out my broom and vacuum. It just means I am only using them in emergency situations.

SILENCE

I stepped out into the backyard with the intention of closing the chicken pen for the night. The sun had just set and the stars were visible in the night sky. I paused to look up. Sometimes I am amazed at the number of stars that I can see in the night sky while still in the city with light pollution. As I stood there looking up at the sky, I suddenly realized how quiet it was. There were no sounds of cars on the roads, no bird song. There wasn’t even a rustling of the leaves from the wind. It was so quiet that I thought that I might have lost my hearing. Right at the moment I started to panic, I heard a car driving somewhere in the distance and I sighed a little in relief.

I live in the city. The neighborhood is always filled with sounds of traffic, cars blaring music with the base turned up so that you can feel the vibrations even though your sitting on the couch inside the house. Often, I can hear children playing basketball or some game that has them running up and down the street. Sirens and helicopters make an occasional entrance into this neighborhood orchestra. Recently, a pair of owls can be heard calling back and forth to each other. The other evening those two owls flew into a tall tree whose limbs dangle over our backyard. Josephine saw the big birds swoop in for a landing, her ears perking up. Her whole body went rigid and on guard as she barked at the closest owl. They stayed for a few minutes before flying off over the house.

My city is a far cry from New York City where you are constantly accosted with noise. Cars honking. People yelling. Construction. Sirens. The minute you step inside Central Park though, all of that noise dissipates. If you walk to the deepest center of the park, the noise of the city completely disappears, but only to be replaced with the sounds of birds and people laughing. For a moment though, you could easily believe that there was no city. In the moments when I realized I could hear a car in the distance, I thought about the last time I was in Central Park. There was snow. There are many pockets inside New York City where you can go to get away from the noise of the city. Once, I rode the elevator to the top of the Empire State Building and it was just me and the elevator attendant. It was a long, silent ride to the top. Central Park is still my favorite respite from the city noise.

So often, I have longed for peace and quiet. I long for moments of silence to sit and read without interruption. The chatter can be too much. There is always a TV on or music playing or someone talking at me. The demand for my attention can be overwhelming. I tend to savor those rare moments when there is quiet in the house. Those weekend mornings when everyone else is sleeping are mornings to be savored. Yet, I found the silence I had encountered in the backyard to be unsettling. It was a complete void of any sound and in that moment, my brain listed all the things it wasn’t hearing. Ever since, I have been making a point to pause for a moment each day. I close my eyes and make a mental list of all the things I am hearing. Then I list all of the things I am not hearing. If I have extra time, I think about the things I miss hearing. When I think about the things I miss hearing, I can hear them.

They are whispers, barely audible, but I can hear them.

ROLLER SKATING WITH PANTHERS

I was roller skating through a park and at was marvelous. I was swaying and grooving, doing turns, and moving my skated feet in fancy moves. To the left, I saw a panther or a mountain lion, a very large cat. He was crouched low preparing for a sprint, looking for a chase. I picked up speed as the path curved this way and that way. Then I saw another panther crouched in a tree up ahead of me. I skated past as he leaped from the branch. Now I had two large cats chasing me as I continued down the path. I started to seeing more mountain lions and panthers crouching under bushes, near trees, in trees and all of them joined the first two so that now I had a herd of large cats chasing me through the park. Even though I had picked up my pace and was staying ahead of all the big cats, I was still swaying and grooving, doing an occasional turn and moving my skated feet in fancy moves.

I have gotten into the habit of sitting down on Sunday mornings and filling out a calendar for the week. This was a practice I started doing way before the pandemic. It got put on pause for a while because of the pandemic. Now that I have figured out a way to live a life during a pandemic, I have picked up the habit again. I write down what exercises I am doing on what days. I schedule the dog walks and my yoga time, what days I am in the office. I write in meeting times and seminar times and COVID testing times. Somewhere in the margins, I write down a couple of personal goals for the week. Things are written in different colors. Gray for exercise. Orange for work. Purple for all the other stuff because I like purple. I write all of these things down and then I never look at it again.

Not once during the week do I open up this calendar and review the things to be done or check off things that have been accomplished. It seems that just the act of writing it all down is enough. Some of the things on the calendar are just things that I do anyway. There isn’t even really any reason to write them down. It’s like one of Chris’s daily lists that included things like ‘take shower’ and ‘brush teeth’. The exercise. The dog walks. Those are things I just get up and do. I don’t need to write in a yoga time because I just always make space for my practice. That work meeting I have every other Thursday? I have to write that down because I forget about it every time. I cannot commit to daily journaling or a traditional meditation practice, even though both of those things have made an appearance in the ‘personal goals’ section of my calendar. This Sunday morning practice of writing down what I should expect for the week seems to be something I can commit to doing. It is something that makes me feel more focused for the week ahead. It establishes my intentions for myself for the week to come. Even if it is the same intentions from the week before and the week before that.

I believe it is this simple act of weekly planning that keeps me skating ahead of the large cats. I believe that in time, I will not just be skating ahead of the panthers and mountain lions. I will be skating backwards while I take pictures of those beast chasing me.

HALF WAY THERE

When Steph and I were maybe sophomores in HS, we signed up for all these different science camps for the summer. Steph got into the one focused on the environment and I got into a biology camp (yes, I am fully aware of the picture I just painted of my HS self for you). Both of those camps required an up-to-date tetanus shot. Steph’s grandpa usually picked us up from school every day and then he would take us to Sonic, or we’d stop to see Steph’s mom at the tag office. This day, Steph’s dad, Mike, picked us up and we went to the tag office. When we got there, Steph’s mom Jenny said “Mike, do you still want to take Steph to Claremore?” It was raining and sometimes there’s an issue with the roads between Collinsville and Claremore when it rains. Me, being all pestery and curious started bugging Steph about why she had to go to Claremore. Steph replied “I have to go…” then she paused and I could see her face light up with an idea. Then she said “I’m going to get a tetanus shot and Cindy needs one too! Mom, you should call Pat and see if Cindy can go too!” I laughed and said “My mom is not going to let this happen.”

And then my mom totally let it happen.

Wednesday, I called a random number my friend Jeff sent me for a vaccination place thinking I would make an appointment for later in the week. The woman on the other end of the line said “Can you get here right now?” and before I knew it I was getting my first dose of the COVID vaccine. Just like all those years ago with Steph, I started my day with no idea that I would at some point be poked with a needle. Just like all those years ago, it all happened so fast that I still haven’t really mentally processed it all. It took ten minutes to drive to the clinic. I spent another ten minutes in line and another five minutes filling out paperwork. Then it took a second to get the shot, after which I was herded to a recovery room to wait for fifteen minutes. I was so flustered that when I left the recovery room, I crashed into a National Guardsman. He was very very apologetic and all I could say was “Oh my goodness, you’re so so tall!” Then I was home, blinking and thinking “WHAT JUST HAPPENED!” I had a bandaid on my right arm and vaccination card in my left hand with instructions for coming back to get the second dose.

The pain in my arm today is not as great as the hope I feel in my heart. While I don’t believe we will ever go back to the normal we had over a year ago, I do believe that this new normal is going to be a happier one.

THINGS AND STUFF

Yesterday, I had my hairdresser cut all of my hair off really short. It is so short that I have a tiny bit of remorse when I look in the mirror. I have looked at my reflection and thought “Cindy, maybe that’s too short.” Then I shrug and tell myself my hair will grow. Give it a week and it won’t look so short. After our haircuts, I made Michael drive me to Ulta and I bought some temporary silver hair dye, but I didn’t have any disposable gloves in the house. I have to wait until I can snag some gloves. That is okay because even though deep down I know that silver dye on my non-bleached hair is going to make little difference in the color, I am still a little nervous about my hair turning out really silver.

That is not going to happen.

Maybe, deep down, I want something shocking and drastic.

March fifteenth, 2021 marks ten years working in my current place of employment. I feel like that is a milestone. In my line of works, labs are shutting down and laying off all the time. Research scientist is not as stable a position as some would think. Funding for science is highly competitive and that funding can make or break a lab. So ten years in one spot feels important. It is also coincides with Chris and I’s wedding anniversary. I had to do the math for this one, but it would have been twenty three years. This feels like a lot of years and not a lot of years all at the same time. That is probably because in reality we only got fourteen years when we should have had a whole lot more years. Often, it feels like I was jilted.

I am a glass jar filled with numbers, all of which are significant.

I wonder if my photography would have improved to this current level if Chris was still around. I wonder if I would still be writing this blog of Chris were still here. I wonder if I would care about either of those things. Every time I set up for Zoom yoga, I think about how Chris would have geeked out and purchased professional lighting and a real microphone. I wonder if we would have a cat or if Hooper would still be us. I wonder if Chris would have finished some substantial piece of writing by now. I am filled with questions about what we would look like today.

THE UNKOWN

Free yourself from attempts to shape a future that’s beyond your control. - Cameron Allen

I’ve never been into Astrology, never really held any beliefs in what the stars have to tell us in regards to our future. Venus in retrograde is meaningless in my world. Sure, I have been known to read some Tarot but most always it is in jest with a roll of the eyes. Yet, I found myself drawn to that sentence that was tucked into an Astrology article in my latest issue of Yoga Journal. Other then all the work I did to gather scholarships for college, I am not sure that I have actively attempted to shape my future. I just assumed what my future would be. Last year was the first time in a long time where I made active plans to shape something. I wasn’t ready to put a name to that future and even now I am hesitant, but it had a whole lot to do with my photography. I had pretend scenarios in my head where people were wowed by the prints at my showing. In those moments, I imagined selling out and people asking for more. Then I would go and teach a workshop and sound confident and relaxed. People would hang on every word and really learn something about the cameras on their phones.

That little sentence of astrological advice would have been useful around this time last year.

I have gotten sloppy with my photography and have nothing from last year that I feel worthy enough to print and frame. Fifty percent of my photos are of Josephine laying in her bed, which may be an accurate representation of life right now for many of us, but still. How many of those pictures does the world really need? I have never been able to stick to a traditional meditation practice. Instead, I have relied on my camera for moments of mindfulness and grounding and I am beginning to feel the effects of not doing this practice daily. I should rephrase that. I feel the effects of only pretending to practice. I make a forced effort every day, but a forced effort by someone not fully committed results in a lackluster picture. I am not here to beat myself up over it. A year into a pandemic has all of us feeling a bit lackluster and a lot stalled out.

While I sat at my desk writing this piece, 10,000 Maniacs started singing These are the Days. It is a good song to belt along with and I sat there with a dog in my lap doing just that.

These are days you'll remember
When May is rushing over you with desire
To be part of the miracles you see in every hour
You'll know it's true that you are blessed and lucky
It's true that you
Are touched by something
That will grow and bloom in you

These are days

These are the days you might fill with laughter until you break
These days you might feel a shaft of light
Make its way across your face
And when you do you'll know how it was meant to be
See the signs and know their meaning
It's true
You'll know how it was meant to be
Hear the signs and know they're speaking to you, to you

Tuesday, while I was home for the day, I pulled out the accidental potato plant that I started growing last Fall. I decided to repurpose that growing space for some small onions and salad greens. When I pulled up the now sad wilted looking potato vine, I found a small potato dangling in the roots. I grew a tiny potato! These are the days to remember and I am thinking about things with in my control to mold and shape for fifteen minutes into the future. Not any farther beyond fifteen minutes. That fifteen minutes of future holds a tiny bit more mindfulness with a photography meditation practice.

Hopefully, it is a future that will grow and bloom.

SPEAKING ILL OF THE DEAD

I’ve noticed the back and forth happening in the social media world over the death of Rush Limbaugh. People are celebrating and other people are pointing fingers at the celebrators because they think it’s bad manners. If you’re going to celebrate a death, it should be Hitler’s, Bin Laden’s or any other awful human being who made the world around them worse. Wait…that was Rush Limbaugh. He built a career from spreading hate, bigotry and misinformation. He had a recurring segment on his radio show called “AIDS Update” where he ridiculed gay men who had died from AIDS. For those of you who are all “He spoke my language!”, all I have to say to you is that I don’t know if I’m embarrassed to know a person whose language is one of hate and bigotry or if I just feel sorry for you. The bottom line is that Rush Limbaugh chose to spend his time on this planet monetizing hate. He made the world around him worse. People are bound to celebrate having one less asshole on the planet.

But why shouldn’t we celebrate a death?

I can think of two times where I didn’t necessarily celebrate death, but I did welcome it. At our final diagnosis, the doctor told us that Chris maybe had six months left. I would give anything to have him still here with me, but I am so relieved that he left us well before that predicted six months. He was in so so so much pain. It was not an easy death. Liver cancer is no joke. While I mourn having to lose him, I celebrate the speed at which he was taken. The same could be said for my Dad. I feel like Dad had two deaths. First came the death of his mind, leaving his body to linger and suffer before finally letting go. When I got the call of Dad’s passing, all that came to mind was “finally”. I felt that death didn’t come fast enough for Dad and in a sense, I celebrated the arrival of it.

The exception is that with both Chris and Dad, there was a celebration for the relief from pain, but also a celebration of lives lived. It is easy to live the kind of life where people are happy to see you go and Rush Limbaugh latched on to that easy path. He had an audience. He had people who fed on his words of hate, who celebrated along with him as he mocked those AIDS victims. He had people who believed in the lies and hatefulness that came out of his mouth. While some of us celebrate his removal from the planet, we cannot forget Rush Limbaugh was awful because others wanted his awfulness. He had people who listened to him. To have such a platform and to use it the way he did was a waste. I would rather celebrate the life he could have lived.

It definitely makes me think about how and why I want people to celebrate my own death.

UPDATE

This week is trying really hard to kill me dead. I might be able to handle negative temperatures, but combining those temperatures with snow makes everything feel impossible. I remember all the times I pretended to be Laura Ingalls and setting up a homestead in the tall grasses of our pasture. It was always summer. I never played this game in the winter months. You know why? Because even as a child I knew that I could never make it as a pioneer of the 1800s. My body would have crumpled up and given out during the very first winter. True winter weather turns me into a ball of hate.

This morning I woke up to more snow and sticky note from Michael telling me to wake him up to shovel the driveway. I did not wake him. Instead, I pretended that nothing was happening outside and I did my morning workout. Michael had checked the weather the night before and it said that we would only get an inch of snow. So I figured we didn’t need to bother with shoveling. He came out while I was doing the core section of the workout, peeked out the window and then went back to his room to bundle up. When he came in from shoveling, he was furious. He said that there was more like three inches of snow and it was still coming down. He drove me to work so I could take my weekly COVID test and as I climbed up in the truck, I started complaining about everything. I had no where to knock the snow off my boots because the runner was covered in snow. My seat wasn’t warm. My life was ruined.

Then I turned to Michael and said “Look, I’m really sorry, but I am super cranky about all of this and I’m going to probably whine a lot today.” I was preemptively apologizing for my bad mood and bad behavior.

We made it to work and back home on not really cleared streets and I made myself a pot of coffee. Then I reminded myself just how good I have it here. The rolling blackouts have yet to reach our neighborhood. We have heat and plenty of food. I am wearing a new sweater that is my favorite color and so so soft. The chickens are alive and even laying eggs. The eggs freeze and crack before we get to them, but it is a sign that the chickens are surviving this weather. I have ridiculous pink unicorn house slippers that are keeping my feet warm while I sit at my desk. I bought a set of aromatherapy roll-on oils and have slathered myself with the ‘awake’ blend. Occasionally I will bring my wrist to my nose and inhale the warm citrus scent of the oils. It is not making me more awake, but it does make feel like I’ve taken a break in Hawaii. The sun just came out from behind clouds while I sat here trying to think about what to type next.

Sometimes it’s better to not wait until Friday to find some gratitude.

WESTERNER

I turned right onto Troost, heading north to work. I suppose you could say that it was still early morning hours, though by the time I’m leaving my house at 8 AM , I have done thirty minutes of exercise, fed the animals, opened the chicken pen, showered, dressed, packed my lunch and had one cup of coffee while checking email. Mornings have always been my best time of the day. The day before, I spent an hour with tech support on a microscope, washed the dog, emailed IT, cleaned the bathroom, emailed IT again, dusted and vacuumed the house, emailed IT again, and took the dog for a walk all before lunch. It’s the afternoon where I start to fall apart. This particular morning, I turned my car onto Troost and about a block later, I noticed a young man walking down the sidewalk in my direction. The young man was of medium build, maybe in his late twenties or early thirties. My first thought of him was ‘hipster’. He sported a scruffy beard and a dark fedora similar to Indian Jones. He wore a long duster of a coat with a plaid button down and jeans. His shoes were boot like. The man, at first glance, made me think he was in costume. In a sense, he was. We all wear our own version of a costume. Mine is somewhere between seasoned yoga teacher and early 90s teen. Michael leans towards lumberjack. This young man’s look leans towards 70s Western.

His look was enough to trigger my imagination. I thought about him as I continued on with my commute, speculating about his life. I decided that he had a look of surprise at being awake at this particular time of day, that in fact, he had never actually made it to bed. He had spent the evening and early morning hours in a dark coffee house filled with cigarette smoke. He had stayed up drinking coffee while chain smoking and philosophizing with a group of like minded individuals. They had talked and argued and agreed and discussed until suddenly, blinking, they all realized that the sun had come up. Someone in the group yawned, while another stretched their arms overhead. My 70s Cowboy, stood and cracked his neck to one side. He stubbed out what remained of his ash laden cigarette before reaching for his hat and coat. As he shrugged into his coat, he tells the group that they should do this again next week. Then, placing his hat on his head, he walked out into the cold morning. He took a moment to savor the morning air and then started his walk home.

He triggers a song lyric loose in my brain. This cowboy’s running from himself and she’s been living on the highest shelf. Yet there is something nostalgic in this made up life I have given him. It harkens back to my own younger years, falling asleep on some raggedy old couch while voices of discussion railed on and on around me. I have never been able to stay up past midnight, but I would do my best and hope that I was absorbing the words flowing around me while I dozed. Eventually Chris would nudge me and walk me back to my dorm room or put me to bed in the room we shared in our first apartment. I always, desperately wanted to be able to hang because this was when all of the schemes and ideas would show up. Plans would be hashed. Brilliance would be revealed. I wanted to be a part of every moment of it. Not to contribute, but to be a witness to the marvels that would flow out his brain.

All the times I fell asleep are moments I missed.

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.

SCENE

A mug of coffee nestled between both hands. A dog curled up in her bed next to my chair. I lean back and turn my head toward the window. The yard is coated in a blanket of white, as snow continues to fall. I ponder the idea of leaving the house today to get a jump start on the grocery shopping. It is a sour thought that exhausts me. Cleaning off the car, bundling up, lugging a bag full of groceries up a snow covered walkway. It seems like too much work for the day. I look out the window again and notice that the chickens haven’t even come out of their coop. I knew they wouldn’t and I didn’t even bother to go out and open their pen this morning. Chickens don’t care to free range on snow days. Maybe I will just focus my efforts on laundry today.

Things I could do today instead, but probably won’t: declutter an area of the house, clean, work on a writing project, jumping jacks. I have a friend who posted about not being mentally prepared for snow. She’s in Oklahoma and to be fair, snow used to be a rare occurrence in that state. I commented that I am never mentally prepared for snow and it is a much more common occurrence where I live. I am not prepared even when I know it is coming, even when I have paid attention to the forecast. Michael talked about planning a social distancing pizza party with his Moms in a park for Saturday. I asked him if he was sure about that. I said “It’s supposed to snow.” He called me a liar and went on with his day. It’s fair. I usually tell the weather forecasters that they are liars whenever they tell us that it is going to snow.

I get up from my chair and walk into the kitchen to refill my coffee mug. Then I walk over to the front door and peer out the window. I look at the street which is relatively clear and then look over at my car in the driveway. It is not clear, but covered in snow in a way that makes it look like it is made of snow. A block of snow on wheels. I shake my head in affirmation of skipping the grocery store today. I turn back to my desk and chair and plop down while wrapping a blanket around my shoulders like a grannie. I have stalled. I am idling. I am settling into my boredom. Actually allowing myself to be bored. Ideas sprout from boredom. I’ve been thinking of a business plan, a service. I either teach a chef to take better photos or I take the food pictures for them for their website. The classes will talk about lighting and building a cohesive and attractive online presence. The service would be photographing and editing photos and then providing digital files to be used on a website. What’s that worth? How much would you pay for a class or a service like that? That’s the sticking point. I’m always underselling myself. Even now with the idea, I feel unqualified. So the idea will just sit in the back of my brain until the next moment of boredom rolls around.

I take a sip of my coffee and wince. It has grown cold as I sat there dreaming up ideas. I sigh as I realize that the list of things I should do just continues to grow longer. Then I get up and head to the kitchen to pour out my cold coffee and refill the mug with warm coffee. As I pour the fresh coffee into the mug I realize that this process will be the loop of the day. Drink half the mug. Allow coffee to go cold. Dump. Fill up mug. Repeat. It is a familiar loop. Start writing something. Set it aside. Dump half of it. Start writing something else. Repeat. Come up with a good idea. Set it aside. Tell myself I’m not qualified or I don’t have the time. Return to that idea. Repeat. I sit down at my desk and look at my keyboard. Today, I am determined to finish this one cup of coffee before it gets cold.

Life goals.

DON'T ASK

Michael put a few Nutella Happy Hippos in my stocking for Christmas. The other day, after lunch, I opened one up and chomped off the nose of a hippo. I suddenly turned into someone who had just walked for days without food and crammed the rest of that hippo into my mouth like my life depended on it. Then I opened a second Nutella Happy Hippo and repeated the process. I don’t know how I managed to pull myself together before finishing off all of my Happy Hippos (seriously though, how can they even be happy. they’re filled with Nutella and are going to be eaten). I know what you’re thinking. “But Cindy, you can always buy more Happy Hippos.” This is true, but they’re not sitting in with the Hershey bars in the impulse buy area at the grocery store. These guys come from the same place as where the whole Table Incident of 2020 happened. I have been back to that store once since then and I tried to make myself as unnoticeable as possible because I am still embarrassed to show my face there. So again, why are these guys called ‘Happy’ Hippos?!?

When I was a kid, my Dad installed a monkey swing for me in the backyard. It was a wooden disk with a rope running up through the center so you could swing in every direction. I feel like I am on the swing right now. When the swing moves to the east, I flip into a rage. Then the swinging motion shifts north and I am sitting on the bathroom floor sobbing while Josephine brings me all of her toys and two of her bones. There’s occasionally a direction the swing goes where I mellow out, but only long enough to shift into a new direction. There’s a large basket of fancy chocolates at work that someone gave our department as a thank you Christmas gift. I am embarrassed by the number of them that I have shoved into my face on the days I am actually in the office. Not taken a bite and savored, but eaten without even really taking a moment to taste it. I do a lot of online window shopping at some very high-end expensive stores. I spent an hour browsing around the Container Store website, dreaming about putting all of our food into clear boxes. My right collar bone is sitting almost half an inch higher than then the left one.

Eneviatabley, someone will ask me at some point in the day ‘how am I doing?’ and I always respond with “I’m good.” Because I am a liar. Really, I lie to spare the person who asked me that dumb question in the first place. Also, I lie to myself as if mental health has no playground here. I’m still COVID free, my family is still healthy. We’re alive. We still have our jobs. ‘I’m good’ seems like a reasonable thing to tell people. At night, just before I go to sleep, my grief settles in next to me and whispers memories into my ear. They are not always good memories and many nights, I place my hands over my ears and squeeze my eyes shut tight until my grief gives up or I succumb to exhaustion. Usually it’s the latter. The winter months are never really my better self months. Toss in a country I no longer recognize and a pandemic that’s killing about four thousand people a day and I am truly not my better self. Every venture outside of my home is stressful. I don’t think I even know how to talk to people or be around people. I’ve become feral. I’m a hormonal, feral, chocolate devouring Homo sapien and I will eat your children. Or maybe just their fingers.

Not really.

Only maybe.

I don’t write all of this so that you know what’s really going on with me. I write it all down here so that I know. It’s me taking inventory of my own mental health. It’s me telling myself to stop working so hard at making it look like I’m doing well. What many of us do not stop to consider is just how exhausting it is pretending to be okay and how that added exhaustion just makes everything harder. Writing everything here is a reminder to allow myself to feel the things I am feeling in that moment. It’s me telling myself that it’s okay to shove chocolate into my mouth like it’s the first meal I’ve eaten or sit on the bathroom rug and cry. Or just sit anywhere and cry. Because it is honest. Because I know that swing always shifts directions and eventually I swing around to a better mood.

ACT YOUR AGE

It was an early Sunday morning, right after the New Year. I was sitting on the couch, watching CBS Sunday Morning and texting with my sister-in-law, Katrina. We were pondering birthday gifts for my mom, tossing ideas and links back and forth. Then Katrina asked “What do you want for your birthday?” I never know what I want for my birthday. I take that back. I never know how to ask for what I want for my birthday. I told Katrina that I could use a new bag for my yoga mat. My current one has a hole in it and it’s getting worn. Then I added “or roller skates” to my reply. The next thing I know I was measuring my foot with a ruler. The skates arrived while I was in lab meeting. We had reached the end of the meeting and we were just socially chatting about our holidays. I couldn’t wait, so I opened my skates during the meeting. All of my coworkers got to see my brand new roller skates and my giddy face.

Last year, before the pandemic, I got high and went roller skating at a roller rink. While the crowd of other skaters were slightly annoying and I was way out of practice, I soon got my skate legs back and a rhythm to maneuvering around others on the roller rink. I entered a sweet spot where everyone around me disappeared and I was the only skater on the rink. It was just me gliding along to the tunes playing. In that moment, I knew that I wanted to do this all the time. No fancy moves, just gliding along the hard wood floor with moody flashy lights and music. When those roller skates arrived, I was not in the best of moods. That changed the minute I put those skates onto my feet. Y’all, the wheels light up! Are you fucking kidding me?!? I skated tiny figure eights in the small space without rugs in my living room. Josephine is not a fan. She chased me and growled at my feet. I’m going to clean up the basement and turn it into my personal roller rink. It won’t take much. Sweep the floor and hang some twinkle lights. Hire a DJ.

I had a gift card for Anthropologie to spend recently and I put a bunch of stuff in my cart and waited. I would go back and look at what was in my cart, take something out, put something else back in. At one point I had four different tunic like dresses in my cart, all in some shade of blue. I left one of them in my cart, took all the others out and then added a yellow tunic sweater dress and salmon colored jumpsuit. Both items are a compromise of styles I would wear but colors I would shy away from. My wardrobe is the one I dreamed of as a teenager except it contains more color than I expected. On gray, dark days, I’m going to wear that yellow dress and imagine that I am the sun, the softest sun because it feels like it was knit from the softest muppet hair. On mean red days, I’m going to put that jumpsuit on, lace up my roller skates and skate tiny circles in my basement. Tunics with leggings, jumpsuits and roller skates. I am finally the teenager I always wanted to be.

If you need me, I’ll be in the basement practicing my roller girl moves.

VISION

A few days after Christmas, I kept seeing a bunch of positive memes about how it is okay to do nothing for the last week of the year. I tried really hard to take those words to heart, but I’m not good at doing absolutely nothing. As I laid in bed early last Sunday morning, I was already thinking about how I should not spend the day on the couch. Except my motivation for doing the things I believed needed to be done, was pretty low. So, I sat on the couch watching CBS Sunday Morning and cried into my coffee because it was their ‘People We’ve Lost in 2020’ episode. Then I got up and cleaned out my closet so I could justify spending the rest of the day on the couch. And because I can’t do nothing while sitting on the couch, I started thinking about vision boards.

I’ve never done a vision board.

Vision boards have been around for quite a while. Oprah made them famous. Women have built blogs and careers helping others build vision boards. There are psychology studies that show how visions boards can help you reach your goals and there are psychology studies showing how vision boards can hinder you in reaching goals. It’s a thing. It’s a thing I never really gravitated to, but I am not one for cutting out pictures and pasting them to poster board. I did enough poster making crap in my youth, but I’ve just spent a year where my plans got derailed. I’ve started giving away the prints I framed for my art showing and we have talked about hanging the rest somewhere in the house. When plans got derailed, I couldn’t really make new ones. Last year was a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of year. This year? This year I think things are going to be a little bit different. I think we can make plans in moderation.

Still…I do not cut things out of magazines and paste them to poster board. Instead, and I felt really environmentally proud of myself for this idea, I decided to make myself a digital vision board. I spent my Sunday afternoon, nestled under a pile of blankets and animals, dragging photos and images onto a blank screen in one of my drawing apps on my iPad. When I felt like my vision board was complete, I posted that crap to Instagram because…well…just because. I needed a witness? I don’t know, but now I look at the vision board and shake my head. There are two pictures of things on that board that I am not already doing. One is a picture of the Grand Canyon because that trip is happening this summer. We are dragging the Cabbage to the Grand Canyon and about five other National Parks in Utah whether she likes it or not. I have no idea how I have made it through forty five years of life with out ever visiting the Grand Canyon. We went all over the place in a camper when I was I kid. Our three week adventure to Florida was epic, filled with moments like Dad driving into a restricted area at the space center and nine foot alligators and Mom’s constant panic about how far out into the ocean we were swimming. Too far. We were always out too far. The camper could not go farther than the Colorado border. We flew to California. We flew to Hawaii…because you can’t drive the camper there, duh, but we never drove West of Colorado. This year, I’m driving West of Colorado.

The other picture is one of a row of small kitchen gardens. I only want one of those rectangular kitchen gardens. I have approximately the same size garden bed right outside the back door. It currently houses oregano, sage, rosemary, I think what might be a citronella plant and half of the leaves from our neighbor’s tree. This was the first summer when I did not have to replant the rosemary. I definitely do not use enough of any of these herbs and they could stand to be thinned out and moved around. That space would be nice for some greens and maybe a tomato plant, a few things we can eat. It would still be small and very manageable. The chickens will eat the the stuff we don’t eat. It’s a win win for everyone. Besides the garden and the Grand Canyon though, those are the only ‘plans’ I can vision up for this year. The rest of those pictures, the yoga, the exercise, the reading and photography, are all the things I am currently doing. An organized desk drawer? I did that last week. Either I suck at creating a vision board or I am already the vision of myself that I want to be.

I am already the vision of myself that I want to be.

Shut. Up.

A friend of mine turned forty last year and she lamented the loss of her youth. I said to her “No no no. Forty is wonderful. It is the age where you truly stop giving a shit about all the unimportant little things.” It’s true. It’s like dumping baggage. Ever since I turned forty, I feel like I have been dumping luggage like that scene in The Darjeeling Limited as they run to catch a train. Big clunky luggage, the kind without wheels, just dropping away as each year passes. Last year, I lost a trunk filled with all the plans I have ever made for my life. I have always been a planner, mapping out my life since childhood. I will do this, this and then this, all in that order and I was never prepared for the events that fell outside of that plan. And they did! So many events that I never planned for! Of course, some of those events were terrible, horrific even, but so many of them were good. I never planned for Chris to show up in my life or this great family of friends that I have. I didn’t plan on Michael being a permanent fixture. I didn’t plan on having a dog that I would fall so deeply in love with that sometimes it hurts. There is just so much goodness in my life that I never ever planned on having.

So really, I guess my vision board for this year is to keep on doing what I’m doing and living a life less planned. Happy New Year to you all.

SPACE

My friend Sarah and I were having a text conversation recently about tub soaking and I confessed to her that I felt that soaking in a bathtub was torture. I find no pleasure in the act, no peace, no nothing. I know women who love it so much they have their meals in the bathtub or read whole books while their fingers and toes get all pruny. I cannot, but as we chatted about it, I said “maybe I should give it another try.” I bought some bath salts, filled up the tub and set a timer for twenty minutes. I did not hate it. I didn’t love it, but it was not the torturous experience that I remembered it to be. I might even do it again some time. This time last year, you couldn’t have paid me to soak in the tub, but pandemics change you. What I can say about this year is that it has given me some time for mental space. It might have been forced on me and I might not have always been open and accepting of that time. In fact there were moments of actual tantrums over this forced time, but I mastered the art of doing the things I don’t want to do ages ago. This year is easy compared to some others in my timeline. Maybe that’s why soaking in a salt bath wasn’t so bad. I’ve learned there are worse forms of torture.

The culture of “everything’s fine” that is inbred in most of us women is a dead culture. I have spent the year shedding myself of this culture, accepting the moments when everything is most definitely not fine and embracing the moments when everything is fine. At the end of our time together last Monday, I decided to not schedule another appointment with Dr. Mary. I realize this sounds like a bad idea. This is not the best time of year for me with or without a pandemic. My anxiety is pretty high right now with all the things work/life related, but I had already dropped our weekly session down to once a month. So I don’t think it was a big surprise. Also, I am handling myself well enough. I gave Dr. Mary a print from what was supposed to be my first showing and she immediately set it up on her bookshelves. Her reaction to the photo filled me with joy and pride. We ended on a happy note and I have her number. She said that I could always call and schedule an appointment. Our sessions over time became less about fixing me and more about general conversation. I ran out of things to say that was not just blatant whining and complaining.

But I also came to a realization that I don’t need to be fixed.

I have feelings. Sometimes, understandably, those feelings are feelings of deep sadness. I used to be really uncomfortable with allowing myself to feel anything but joy and happiness. There had to be something wrong with me for having those darker feelings. There was something wrong with me for shedding tears in public or even in private. Expressing any feeling other than happiness meant that I was broken and then I would begin an Olympic training regime of some sort in order to fix this brokenness inside of me. Those broken parts do not define me as a whole, but they do make up a part of who I am. We can not truly live through this life without ending up with some broken parts of ourselves. I told Dr. Mary that I am allowing myself to feel the things I am feeling in the moment I am feeling them.

Without guilt.

2020: The year I learned to have feelings and find an ounce of pleasure in soaking in the bathtub.

HOLLY JOLLY

I had our Christmas card design ready for ordering almost two months ago. Then I received a coupon and ordered those cards a month ago. I have a stack of cards on my desk waiting to be addressed and I don’t even know who I am any more. The card design came to me by accident and started with a picture taken while hunting for the new dining room table. That table is currently taking up the space where I would normally set up our Christmas tree. So while I may be ahead on the cards, I am at a loss on how I might decorate this year. I’m thinking of only putting out the stockings, hang a wreath on the door and set up the Menorah. There are also no presents. I have a brilliant idea to take the box my mattress came in that I stored in the basement and fill it with individually wrapped gifts for the Cabbage. Except, at this point, I don’t know what to get her because she’s reached that weird age of not really being into anything but her tablet.

How excited she’ll be to open a giant box containing nothing but a pair of earrings.

This year, I am surprised with how much I seem to be embracing the jolliness of the holiday season. I have always disdained the appearance of Christmas on the day after Halloween. Those radio stations that start playing all of the Christmas tunes in November get banned from being played in the car. I once worked at a department store over the holiday and was stuck folding clothes to Christmas songs on a loop for a month. That was enough to turn me into a right Grinch for all things Christmas. This year seems different. Early last week I found myself playing Andrew Birds’ new Christmas album, Hark!, on loop. Man, can that guy whistle and his rendition of Souvenirs makes me dance a silly jig. On Saturday as we drove to Costco, Michael flipped the radio over to a station already playing Christmas songs and the car turned into my own personal choir concert. He let me get through at least three songs before he turned the station with “that’s enough of that.”

With the infection rates being so high right now, we will not be traveling anywhere to visit with family and friends. Our mayor is set to announce new restrictions at noon today. Michael and I have decided to have our Thanksgiving dinner on the Friday after Thanksgiving. They have dollar oysters at Whole Foods on Fridays and our plan is to buy up a mess of them for an Oystergiving. Let’s face it, as we get closer to the end of this year, there seems to be a real urgency to celebrate. It is not so much an urgency to celebrate the end of 2020 as it is to celebrate surviving this year. Oystergiving and singing Christmas tunes at the top of our lungs seems like a pretty nice way to celebrate right now.

SOME THOUGHTS

Saturday morning, I raked the leaves in my mom’s front yard and then we gathered them up into leaf bags. Then we just sat outside in her patio swing, talking and laughing at the cats that like to hang out in Mom’s yard. Two of them belong to my sister next door. One is a stray that comes up to Mom’s front door and just stares in. Mom will talk to him through the door. “I’m not going to feed you.” she tells him. Ten minutes later, she’s grabbing the cat food and pouring it out on a paper plate for him. Mom’s cat, Button, who is strictly an indoor only cat, sits in front of the door and chatters at all three of the hooligan cats. The little black cat is still very much a kitten and we laughed as we watched him instigate some tussles.

We sat out there until almost noon and when I came inside to check my phone, it was full of confetti and champagne messages. I took the win silently. Quietly. Oklahoma was a weird place to be this weekend. There were times I was a little scared that someone would somehow see the democrat in me. For once, I was glad that my car didn’t have any obvious stickers. I’ve put them all on the Vespa. I was uncomfortable any time we went out in public. I saw more people without masks than with masks and social distancing was just not a thing. I stopped in Joplin on my way into Tulsa and when I walked into the gas station, no one had on a mask. There wasn’t even a plexiglass shield up for the cashiers. I didn’t realize that stop was a foreshadowing of what was to come. The suburbs of Tulsa were the same way. Outings left me twitchy.

I met my brother and sister-in-law for lunch after I got the news that Biden had won the election. We drove around for a bit looking for a place to go and then we drove by a restaurant with a lovely outdoor seating area. We could see all the waitstaff wearing masks and all three of us sort of sighed with relief and relaxed a little. Lunch was perfect. At one point, I noticed a couple come in. They were seated at a table six feet away and had champagne delivered to their table when they sat down. The man was wearing a Biden 2020 pin. When the three of us got ready to leave, I stood up and made eye contact. I said “Hey! Air high five!” and lifted my hand. The man grinned and stood up, raised his hand and said “BOOM!” That was it. We didn’t say anything about it. My celebration was an air high five with a stranger in a restaurant in the reddest of the red states.

But good Lord, there’s a lot of work to be done.

I had a conversation with my brother that made me realize that most people have no idea what is happening on a weekly basis in our government. They don’t know about the bills being presented or the executive orders being signed. The current administration has been brutal for science. It has defunded government scientific institutions. It has disregarded pear reviewed research. His immigration policies has made it nearly impossible for some of our very talented graduate students and post docs to renew their visas so that they can continue their education. We have scientists who have dual citizenship with other countries, considering moving their research (that means their employees and their funding) out of this country. This administration has made it very hard to be a scientist and be taken seriously. He has removed reasoning while at the same time fueling hatefulness.

I am thinking about doing a monthly entry here about what’s happening in the White House; a break down of bills and amendments and what those bills and amendments mean for the rest of us. This would be my way of staying informed and helping others stay informed. I want to bring back reasoning.