ICE CREAM STORIES

I wrote this post over a week ago. It has just been sitting in my drafts waiting for me to do something with it. I’m posting it now for a number of reasons. One reason is that it is something new to read while I finish compiling some thoughts from the weekend. Not too long ago, Atlas Obscura was offering a four part writing workshop on telling stories through ice cream. They have been advertising in the daily newsletter that I get in my email and the first add asked “Can you tell stories with ice cream?” I did not sign up for the workshop. I am sure I could have benefitted from it but I already knew without a doubt that of course you can tell stories with ice cream. My whole life is linked to that creamy sweet wonderful dessert. It is genetically encoded in my DNA to love ice cream. It is also genetically encoded into my DNA for my gut to not love it so much, but I don’t care. I will eat the ice cream and suffer the consequences later. I’m talking about ice cream. Not custard. Midwest is all about custard, which is good, but it is not ice cream. Look. It’s just better to not get me started, but I will say that Michael was almost forty years old before ever eating at a Braum’s and that is a goddamn travesty.

“You mean I can get any flavor ice cream as a shake instead of a drink with my hamburger meal?!?!”

Mom told me a story once about my Pepaw, her dad. She said that Pepaw would make ice cream every evening. It always contained whatever fruit was in season and growing around them, but his favorite was peach. She told me about how they would all eat a bowl of ice cream after dinner. Then they might go to the movies or church or some family activity. When they got back, Pepaw would eat another bowl of ice cream. She said “Your Pepaw loved his ice cream.” Pepaw rarely made the drive from Mississippi to Oklahoma to visit. We most always went there, but I vividly remember the times that he did come and stay. One visit in particular was right around my high school graduation. I still had school activities every day, but when I would get home, my Pepaw would say “Let’s go get ice cream.” I would then drive us in my 1980 Chevy Cavalier into Owasso for ice cream. That car was the car that replaced my first hunk of junk and it was so nice, except the air conditioning didn’t work. Still it seemed like quite the upgrade from what I had been driving. At least this car had whole, working seatbelts. Pepaw was the only person I would allow to smoke in my car. The truth is, I would never have denied him anything. I got so little time with my Pepaw and of that little time I did get, only a bit of that was alone time. During that visit, it was just the two of us driving into town, sitting at a plastic table outside Braum’s and eating ice cream. Our conversations varied, but he told me his regrets. He told me that he loved me and that he was very proud of me. This meant more to me than the ice cream because I didn’t think Pepaw really knew me. We only ever saw each other once or twice a year.

Pepaw could be the first chapter of my ice cream stories, with several chapters to follow that. Ice cream is a link to every man in my life. That boy I had a I huge crush on my freshman year of college and how the two of us would always make the ice cream run for whoever was hanging out in the dorm lobby . Chris and how he always used “let’s go get ice cream” to trick me into going to Best Buy. Michael seeing me mad, cranky or sad saying “Do we need ice cream?” and then driving me to my favorite ice cream place. Dad and vanilla ice cream. I could go on and on because there are many ice scream stories to be told.

While I was wrapped up in a yoga silk the other night, I started thinking about physical pain and how that pain gets stored in our bodies. The facia is that membrane that surrounds the muscles. Think of it as cellophane. Each moment of pain twists, wrinkles and knots that facia. Some knots are bigger than others and those are the ones we tend to remember most clearly. I can still vividly recall the pain of getting my tonsils removed at age seven and the pain from doctors attempting to reset my broken right arm when I was ten or eleven. Strangely enough I do not remember the pain of breaking my other arm two years earlier. I guess breaking both bones in two doesn’t hurt as much as cracking a bone? Once, while riding Katrina’s bicycle, I turned a corner while going too fast and I laid the bicycle down, sliding the right side of my body down the road. The memory of that moment is more vivid due to my calm reaction as I stood up. The neighbor had watched the whole thing and asked me if I was okay. I leaned over, picked the bike up and shrugged while saying “I’m fine.” It wasn’t until I had the bike parked safely and was inside the house that I allowed that pain to flood over me and cry. All of those moments are stored in giant knots of facia in my body. It only takes a nudge to bring the memory of that pain to the surface.

I have zero memories of the pain of brain freeze from eating ice cream. Oh, I know I have had it happen to me as a child and even as an adult, but the memory of that pain is not held someplace in my body for later recall. I suppose that is why I repeat the action that causes this pain over and over again. It’s why we all do. The reason that brain freeze pain doesn’t stick itself into the fascia is because the action comes with sweetness and joy. There is usually some giggling involved. Brain freeze is a physical pain of joy and that joy tends to overrun the pain. It’s like love. We love even though we know at some point we are going to end up broken hearted because the sweetness and joy outweighs the pain aspect of loving.

WHAT WE ENDED UP NOT DOING

We went into IKEA looking for two things: something to replace the old hutch in the dining room and some sort of storage unit with a trash can for the bathroom. We found the thing we want to replace the hutch. It’s name is Billy, but they were all out of Billys (Billies?). The storage unit for the bathroom turned into a whole moment of “we’re completely remodeling the bathroom”. New sink. New sink cabinet. New medicine cabinets. We were going to strip the bathroom down and repaint and then put in all of these new things. Except when we got the area to load up all the pieces, IKEA did not have the sink. So, we bought new cushions for the dining benches, a new light fixture for the hallway, and three boxes for our Billy that we will eventually get.

We got home and unloaded all of the things and then I said “Wait. How are we supposed to turn the light on with this new fixture.” Michael said “I don’t know what you mean. You just turn the light on.” Then I said “But you need a light switch. There’s not a light switch in the hallway.” The current light is a pull a string light comes on system. Michael was still confused, so I had to physically show him the differences between having a light switch and not having a light switch. Then his light switch turned on and he said “Oh no.” The next morning while watching CBS Sunday Morning, I put together my three boxes that are intended for Billy and realized very quickly that those boxes were not going to fit in Billy. They are made to fit the Kallax. The only correct purchases that we made at IKEA were the new cushions on the dining table benches and more kitchen sponges.

It’s fine. We’ve decide to put the new light fixture in the kitchen and I did some reorganizing to use the boxes in our Kallax.

I did a lot of reorganizing this weekend. By the time I decided to stop, I had filled three and half garbage bags with clothes, shoes, bags and some other useless items. Michael joked with the Cabbage that he didn’t know what was going on but that he was just happy he wasn’t in one of those bags. Then I heard Michael say something like “Cindy’s going crazy.” and I cringed while trying not to take it personally. He just thinks that he’s being funny, but what he doesn’t know is that there have been so many moments where I am decluttering because my brain has gone a little crazy. Clearing out useless stuff is an action I can fall back on in the moments I am feeling anxious or out of control. My decluttering moments do seem to put him on edge even though it is my own stuff I’m cleaning out and he’s regularly complaining about not having room his things. He doesn’t see it when I am decluttering to make more space for him or that I hear his complaints about not having a place to put his books and things and I am trying to remedy this for him. His failure to see that I am trying to make space for him makes me feel as if I will never be able to clear out enough space for him. It is a never enough situation.

I did not allow that to happen this weekend. I ignored every little joke or comment on my sanity and I cleared space in my house for me. Not because I was feeling anxious or that I need to feel in control. I cleared it because I want to be able to easily access things in my closet and in my dresser. There were a lot of failures this weekend. Some of those failures were beyond my control. We still do not have a couch and probably won’t for another two weeks. I was unable to make any headway with the dining room furniture. Those three and half garbage bags of no longer useful stuff is a win.

Maybe even a bronze medal level of win.

A HOUSE ON A LAKE

Last week, I sat down and made of list of things I wanted/needed to do. It is time to make some updates to the blog, maybe put in a page for Yoga in a Tiny Space and freshen up some images. I finally decided to renew my Yoga Alliance membership and I am looking into teacher insurance with the idea that I might be doing more teaching. Don’t hold your breath on that one. I love teaching, but I’ve gotten very comfortable in my home practice. Teaching changes how I practice and I’m not ready for that kind of change. I am ready to get my name on some sub lists and have plans to bring back my online class sometime near the end of August. I made the list and have even crossed things off of the list because I did the thing. Then we spent the weekend at a lake house with friends and if I’d made the list on actual paper, I would be setting it on fire right now because nothing on the list matters anymore.

All I want to do now is live on a lake and eat tomatoes with mozzarella.

I have written many versions of various entries over the past few weeks. One was devoted to the amount of sleeping I did during the month of June. I miss June. I fell asleep during a massage while sitting in one of those weird face down massage chairs. I fell asleep in the middle of a side stretch during a yoga class. I took at least three long naps during our camping trip in the West. I did so much sleeping that I thought it was post worthy. Then I let that post sit in the unpublished list and after a week or so of not ever hitting 'save & publish’, I hit ‘delete’ instead. According to the Astrology report in my latest Yoga Journal, we entered July with plantes across from one another and the energy bodies of those planets are at odds.

This opposition will fuel a drive to pursue your heart’s desires, while also calling for discipline and restraint. Strive to stay present during this challenging period.

It might be the discipline and restraint part that I am having trouble focusing on and this is a fairly normal feature(?) of my mental state during the summer. I used to blame my malaise on the heat, but it hasn’t even really been all that hot this year. It’s Wednesday and so far this week has been the most focused, task accomplishing week I have had in over a month. I have peeled my body out of bed every morning at 5:15 AM for X-tend Barre or rowing and walking the dog. I have made it onto my yoga mat and I am drinking water. Now if I could just stretch this discipline into some other areas of my life, I might write some stuff that I feel worth publishing. I mean…I’m probably going to publish this one, but only because I went to the trouble of quoting an article.

If astrology is your thing, it’s looking like August is going to be more suited for wrangling scattered thoughts. For now I’m going to just strive for staying present with these scattered thoughts.

COUNTDOWN

I woke up this morning and the first though in my head was what if I can’t get my laptop to connect to the projector or the wifi at camp. How am I going to get a slideshow to work? What about music? What if I have a tech failure? I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m a liar. A fake. A fraud. I’m a gosh dang imposter, but I have a tent and a whole carton of eggs and some snacks. So maybe no one will notice the whole fraudulent part. They’ll all be too dazzled by the pretty multicolored eggs from my chickens.

I am about to step into something that is a little (okay… a lot) outside my comfort zone and make myself vulnerable on purpose. Last night, Kelly (the camp director) asked me how I was doing and my response was “antsy”. I am not packed but I have neat stacks of things I plan on taking scattered around the house. While, I’m gathering stuff into piles, I am also thinking about the Grand Canyon and how unprepared I feel for that trip. Instead of focusing on right now, I am thinking about what I need to get done in the two days that I am home before we head out for Arizona. I feel like I’m standing in a doorway with one foot in the room that leads to summer camp and the other foot in the room that goes west. I know I need to step into the summer camp room but I am just sort of stuck with indecision. One minute I feel like I have everything together and the next minute I’m breathing in bag.

I don’t even know where I’m going. I have yet to download a map. This realization has me tilting my head like a curious puppy because it does not sound like me. I am a planner. I mean my weekly meal-plan/grocery lists are legendary. My daily life is organized. Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays are X-tend Barre class and smoothie days. Tuesdays and Thursdays are rowing and avocado toast days. Tuesday evenings are declutter and dust days, while every Wednesday I clean the bathroom. Laundry starts on Friday evening and is finished by Saturday evening. When I attend a science conference, I start reading abstracts and talk lists weeks before I leave and I have made a list of talks that I specifically want to attend. This is why I am really surprised that I have only taken glances at the camp schedule or only have a basic idea of where I am driving to on Wednesday.

The space between my brain and forehead feels tight. I am sure that if someone held a crystal pendulum over my head, my crown chakra would cause it to spin wildly out of control. There is a whole lot happening inside my head and it isn’t really all summer camp. It’s mostly all the thoughts on the rest of my life. In fact, summer camp might be the best place for me to be this week. I’m so mentally distracted that last week I failed to secure anything in my scooter crate and lost a sweater (Michael found it for me) and my work badge (lost forever). Four days in the woods with sketchy cell phone signal and a group of campers to keep track of (I’m a camp counselor too….I’ll be channeling those 4-H days) might just be the thing I need to settle my head space. I just need to throw everything I can think of into my car and drive far far away. The only downside is that I can’t take Josephine with me.

I just want to be there already with my tent set up, and all settled in. Once that happens, everything will fall into place. The doubts will float down the river and I will have some space to breath proper without the need of a bag.

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.