FAIR

Last minute and on a whim, Michael and I decided to check out the Leavenworth County Fair on Saturday. We didn’t really have much going on that day to begin with. We’re still in limbo with the garage clean out while we wait for the new garage door. That’s happening on Wednesday this week and I’m still trying to muster excitement and happiness over this purchase. I’m sure once I have a remote in my hand and a functional door, I will be thrilled and wondering why I hadn’t pushed for a new garage door sooner. Maybe it will be part of Friday’s gratitude post. Any way, Saturday seemed like an ideal time to visit a county fair.

When Michael pulled into the pasture parking lot, I looked over at the small fairgrounds and for a minute thought that we had traveled to my hometown county fair. I guess I was expecting something bigger for some reason, but this county fair was just like the county fair I attended every year while growing up in Collinsville. We walked into the one building of the fairgrounds that had been divided into a handful of exhibitor booths. The other half was filled up with fair entries and I found myself having to explain to Michael why there were tables of jams and pickles and ziplock baggies of half eaten cookies. He was floored by the whole process, that people enter baked goods or crafts and receive ribbon prizes. I was floored that I had to explain it all. Had he never been to a fair before?!? When we got to the photography entries, Michael paused and then said “Wait. Why don’t you ever enter anything?” I just shrugged. Eventually we made it to a display of participants in the 4-H dog show. Among all the smiling faces there was a picture of a girl with her beagle. I smiled and pointed it out saying “look! It me!”

And in a way, it was.

The first time we cleaned out my childhood home, I came across two large boxes filled with ribbons and trophies all from entering crafts and sewing projects into the fairs. The trophies and plaques were from the years I showed my beagle, Odie. We were good, grand champion good. It may be a surprise to some that I trained a beagle in obedience considering how little obedience training I’ve done with Josephine. I taught Josephine the bare minimum of manners and a number of tricks. Her down stays are pretty good, but she leads when we’re on walks. I threw those boxes of ribbons and trophies into the dumpster with no regrets. It’s not that I am not proud of those accomplishments. On our first day in obedience training classes, the teacher told me that I would never be able to train a beagle for obedience shows. Turns out I am as stubborn as a beagle and will never let anyone tell me what I can’t do. Odie was off lead by the time we won our third grand championship. Odie was the best dog and my first broken heart. I went years without a dog after he passed, just unable to open my life to another dog.

That’s not why I threw those ribbons and trophies away though. I tossed them because they reminded me of how hard I worked to contort myself into the kind of shape that would win medals. I didn’t make anything without asking myself “how would someone judge this? Is this good enough for a blue ribbon?” And it wasn’t even really about winning a blue ribbon. It was about winning many blue ribbons. The more ribbons, the bigger the potential scholarship. See? It wasn’t even for fun. My 4-H career was a long game for a bigger payout, college tuition. But it was also years of scrutiny and judging and aiming for an impossible perfection. So when Michael asks me why I don’t enter things in the fair now, I can only shrug because the actual answer is too complicated. It is hard enough putting my words and art out there knowing that there are some who judge the content. The only thing that makes it easy is that I don’t ever receive a written score card attached to ‘place’ ribbon. My art gets out there because I say it’s worthy of notice, I think the picture is good, I think the words fit together nicely. The big payout now is the joy I feel at seeing my stuff out there.

I sighed with relief as we left that building. I looked at Michael and said “let’s go see the pigs!” Then we wandered through the barns and Michael finally understands why we should get a goat. Michael ate a corndog while I ate a caramel apple and contemplated how much skin I would burn if I went down the giant slide. Michael asked if I wanted to ride the slide, but I looked at the sun reflecting off it and turned back to him and said “I’m good.” That was that. The county fairs in Kansas are about the same as the ones in Oklahoma and they haven’t changed much.

But I have.

WHEN YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT TO SAY

Yes. I still have a cough and it is just part of who I am now. So let us all just accept the way we are in this moment and move on with our lives. That’s really all I have to say. My brain is on a creativity strike and quite possibly all of the creative brain cells are forming a list of concerns and needs to be negotiated with management as we speak (figuratively). I’ve been doing work stuff. I’ve been doing stuff around the house. Yesterday, I spent the whole morning working in the garage, throwing way stuff and organizing some other things. I made sure to leave a giant pile of tools for Michael to deal with. I told him ages ago that if he cleaned out the garage, I would get him a bike stand for working on the bicycles. So far, I am the one earning the bike stand.

I guess I should add ‘learn to fix bicycles’ to my list of things to do.

I have been doing a little bit of learning these days. Maybe that’s why the creativity brain cells aren’t working. They’re not on strike; they’re just taking a vacation so I can learn some stuff while they sip cocktails from pineapples or coconuts. Michael and I started our Duolingo accounts back up and have been learning Spanish. We discussed a number of languages, but felt Spanish was the was most practical. When our new washer was delivered, the guy doing the actual install did not speak much English. He had to call in his helper to translate some issues with the connections. This happened many months ago, but I still feel embarrassed by the whole thing, because I felt like I should know more Spanish than I actually do. Okay, maybe it’s been twenty years since I took Spanish 101 and I never really used what I learned. I still felt inadequate in the moment. At least now I can say “Yo hablo Spanish, un poquito. Ve despacio, por favor.”

I also spent some time looking over the primaries ballot for Kansas City, which is happening next Tuesday. Because the ballot contains a list of a bunch of different people running for a bunch of different things, I needed know who was who and what was what. I have sort of been hyper fixated on getting rid of our current Attorney General because he is garbage. He refuses to let innocent people out of prison, but instead spends his time filing frivolous lawsuits against Planned Parenthood. I’ve emailed him so many times that the staff has just put me on their mailing list. I constantly get a newsletter detailing his weekly activities to which I usually respond “Stop waisting my tax dollars on lawsuits and free Christopher Dunn!” Anyhoo…I spent a good amount of time reading about who is on my primary ballot and deciding who and how I was voting. I even printed out a ballot and circled things.

Yes. I am that person who studies for voting.

So…that’s some stuff I’ve been doing in between work and illness and watching way too much TV. I’m learning stuff, but mostly I’m learning to lower my own expectations for myself. This is always the lesson. I will never be the valedictorian of self kindness and I will always be taking You’re Doing Enough 101.

THE ESCAPE INTO ROOM

Or the reason I’m not getting a new driveway. There’s a number of titles here. Getting into my garage from the outside is very much like an escape room situation. It’s probably why I avoid invitations to go to an actual escape room. My whole day is solving puzzles. My life is an escape room. First, I have to unlock two different locks on the front door. Once inside, the next thing to do is turn the alarm system off. If I delay on this or just tune out the beeping, the alarm company calls me. I’ve done it twice. Once the alarm is off, I have to unlock the two locks on the door from the kitchen into the garage. Then I slide my homemade bar lock aside and lift the garage door. I do all of this so that my scooter can be safely stored inside the garage and if I’m lucky, Michael gets home before me and has the door open when I get home.

I was not lucky on Monday.

Except this time, when I lifted up on the garage door handle, nothing happened. The door refused to move. I stood for a moment in my sweltering garage, studying the contraptions that aids in lifting a garage door. I couldn’t see anything missing or wrong, so I attempted to lift the door with more force this time. Nothing. I went inside and got Michael. He replaced one of the springy pulley things years ago. He still remembers it as his worst case of handyman’s Tourettes ever. He inspected all the things involved with lifting the garage door and noticed that one wheel of one of the pulley thingies (the newer one) refused to move. It did not take him long to declare that this was beyond his expertise. Which is fine. I’d rather he throw in the towel before seriously injuring himself. Also it was probably 110 degrees in the garage. The problem was that my scooter was still on the wrong side of that garage door.

We managed to wrestled my scooter in through the backdoor, finally using the ramp we bought eight years ago. It wasn’t easy and I nearly amputated one of Michael’s arms by smashing it between my scooter and the door jam, but we did it. My scooter is now safe inside the garage. And stuck there. While I made dinner, Michael got on the phone with a company and the end result is that we will be replacing the garage door with a brand new one. Really, this is the smartest option. I’ve lived in this house for thirteen years. The garage door was janky as F when Chris and I moved into the house. It is honestly a testament to my stubbornness that it has survived so long. The new door will not be janky at all. It will have a real locking system and an automatic door opener.

I should be over the moon about all of it.

It will be at least three weeks before anyone can come out for the installation of the new garage door. My scooter is now safe, but also trapped in the garage. And this is honestly not how I wanted to be spending money this year. It feels like we’re starting to hemorrhage and barely have everything under control. I was hoping to be in a tightening the budget mode by the end of this month so we could start socking money away for a new driveway. I totally heard sad trombones while typing that last sentence. Why would anyone want to sock money away for a new driveway?!?! One might sock away money for a new car or a vacation to Italy. Not for a concrete road that leads from the garage to the actual road. It is a sad, boring and very expensive purchase.

Home ownership is an albatross.

The list of wants that I have for my house just keeps growing, like an upgraded electrical system so we can install solar panels and a charging station for the EV will we own one day. I’d really like to gut my kitchen, add some outlets (I have two and if they are all in use at the same time, the circuit blows), and make it a more efficient tiny house space. While we’re at it, it would be nice to turn the current pantry into a staircase to the basement, maybe replace the giant dining room window with French doors that lead out to a back patio and possibly add a porch to the front of the house with an easier entrance. Once that’s all done, we could see about really getting the basement leak proof and converted it into a proper living space. And then….

The list is never ending.

And I guess…the garage door is also on that list. In three weeks, I can take it off the list of wants for the house and I will no longer have to escape room my way into my garage.

SQUIRRELS IN THE ATTIC

I just bought a beginners embroidery kit because I saw an ad for it in my Insta Reels. I watched the whole ad, mesmerized as I watched a needle and thread travel through fabric to form a perfect little bee and something inside of me said “Cindy…this is a need.” Normally I skip right over those ads without blinking an eye. I don’t know, man. This ad just spoke to something in my soul. I listened to a lot of NPR as I traveled between home and Mom’s. I got the beginning of this episode of Hidden Brain and the episode started with stories from listeners talking about their time during the COVID lock down. Every single story was sad and mostly all centered around the isolation. When the lockdown lifted, the consensus was that people were happy to gather with friends and family. That first get together after months of isolation brought excitement and joy, but over time the same kind of gatherings started to lose that initial sparkle. On my way home, I caught the next part of this story where Tali Sharot, a neuroscientist, explained what was going on inside the brain as we habituate our daily lives and how to find that sparkle of day to day life.

Maybe that embroidery kit is an attempt to reintroduce some sparkle.

While the lockdown introduced a level of anxiety I had not experienced since Chris’s illness inside of me, I’m looking back on some parts of it and feeling a longing for the good old days of isolation. [Side note: Did I mention that moment when lockdown became official and I drove my car over a retaining wall and got stuck? Three large fellas happened to be across the street and they lifted (yes, lifted) my car off the wall, declared that everything looked okay and I drove off. I only told Michael about it months (possibly a year) later when we drove by the now broken retaining wall.] If I set aside those moments where I was panicking about losing my job and trying to climb out of my skin from feeling like a caged animal, the lockdown wasn’t really all that bad. My house was the cleanest it has ever been and I spent at least two hours every day on my yoga mat. We experimented with challenging Bon Appetite recipes and murdered our first two lobsters. I kept a sourdough starter alive, something that I need to restart because suddenly people in my house remember the pizza dough I used to make with it and want pizza.

The summer months are meant to be the time when I do what ever I want and forget about the daily chores. I have not transitioned into this idea very well. To be fair, we did hit the summer running. Between theater camps, kid camp, moose hunt and another theater camp our calendar’s have been full. Earlier this week, I opened my Google calendar on my iPad and it was sitting there open when Michael walked by. He said “Your calendar looks like Donkey Kong.” I think he was referring to all the color coded boxes arranged in each day of the week. I was in the process of re-doing our dry erase calendar for the month of July. Wait. I’m about to confess something that is going to make everyone’s eye twitch. I have my Google Calendar. Then a work calendar through my work email. Then I have a dry-erase calendar for everyone in the house. At one point in time, I had my Google calendar connected to the TV screen on our refrigerator as reference in case I missed something for the dry erase calendar. Our TV did an update and I never reconnected my calendar. Look, just forget the part about my fridge having a TV because TVs in fridges are dumb and unnecessary. Trust me. I see the crazy as I write this.

While my calendar might remind Michael of a video game, I will say that the month of July is the most open, unscheduled month I’ve had in ages. I finally see some space for doing whatever I want. Museum date with Melissa on a Thursday evening? Yes please. Yoga on Saturday mornings? My mat is already in the car. I’m going to turn my focus to the daily feeding of a sourdough starter. I am scraping out more time for yoga and while Michael and the Cabbage take their train trip to Saint Louis, I’m going to clean behind all the furniture. Okay…that’s a chore, but I want to do it and I’m doing whatever I want.

I’m going to poke a needle and thread into bits of fabric, making flower and bee shapes.

THE TIME I COULD HAVE BEEN OUTLANDERED

There’s a hiking trail head on the Gunflint Trail road that leads out to Magnetic Rock. Magnetic Rock is a 60ft natural monolith with magnetic properties. Any thing you read online about the rock suggests that you take a compass with you to hold up to the rock to witness the magnetic properties. The evening we drove the length of the Gunflint Trail, we stopped at this trail head with the intent of making the hike out to the rock. My head started hurting the closer we got to the trail head and by the time Michael parked the truck and we were dousing ourselves with bug spray, my head was throbbing. I said nothing about my discomfort. This was not just about seeing a magnetic rock. This was also an opportunity for a moose sighting. But ten steps into the woods, we quickly realized that this was not the hike for us. The trail path ahead was either slippery with thick mud or underwater. We turned around and hopped back into the truck, taking a cloud of mosquitos with us. We spent the next ten minutes smashing mosquitoes on the windows and the dashboard. I trapped two of them in the sun roof. As Micheal drove us away from the trail head, my headache started to decrease in intensity and was down to a dull ache by the time we reached our cabin.

Michael was not surprised by my headache. I am a walking compass, a super power that makes for a great party trick. Michael likes to joke that there’s a magnet in my brain. Maybe it has something to do with the iron in my blood. A doctor’s never told me that I have too much iron. They usually only say anything if you don’t have enough. It’s most likely genetic. My dad could do the same trick…until things went wrong inside his brain. So, for my future caregivers, if I suddenly can’t point you in the direction of North, you’ll know that there’s something terribly wrong with me. How ever I came about this superpower doesn’t really matter. I don’t know if magnets are a kryptonite. I’ve never tested this by rubbing magnets on my head. I did have a thought that this superpower makes me susceptible to things and that my headache saved me from being Outlandered.

Mom, my sister and sister-in-law and I have all been reading the Outlander series probably since the first book came out. What usually happens is that one of us will buy the book and then just pass it around. The four of us are all pretty vested in this story of a woman who has been transported back in time and the love affair that ensues. Each book contains anywhere from 850 to over 1,000 pages and it is the very reason why I switched over to eReaders. I’m not normally into romance novels (not since my teens), but these books are a less romance and more historical fictional SciFy. Though the sex scenes are decently steamy and it is nice that the leading heroine is open and bold about her sexuality. She is also not the typical romance heroine who sits back and waits for the man to save her. I am curious about the physics of her time travel, like what she can and can’t take with her. Here’s what I was wearing on this hike: hiking boots, overalls, tank, long sleeved shirt, rain jacket and the usual underwear. I had a water bottle in the long pocket of my overalls and my camera looped over my shoulder. I’m pretty sure my wallet was in one pocket and my cell phone in another. I was holding Josephine’s leash. Would all of those things travel with me, including Josephine? Would Josephine survive time travel or would I get to the past holding a leash with an empty harness?

I don’t think I want to know the answer to that last one.

While I find the stories entertaining, the very idea of being whisked back in time to before women’s right to just about anything does not sound remotely appealing or attractive. Life in general was pretty difficult and filthy in the 1700s but life for a woman in the 1700s feels more than difficult. It was fucking dangerous. I am sure that within my first two hours of being transported to that time, I would indeed be burned on a stake. I would probably beg for it because I would have no idea how to proceed in that timeline. Can I build a fire? Sure, if I have matches and newspapers and oil soaked dryer lint. I might be able to prop some sticks and limbs up against a tree to make some sort of structure for sleeping. I could forage some. I know what a wild onion looks like and dandelions are edible. I wouldn’t poison myself, but I am not ashamed to say that I am material girl, living in a material world. I should rephrase that. I am a modern girl, living in a modern world. Maybe I could endure the never ending labor of day to day living in the wilderness and the immediate danger of rape and or murder if there were was hot and cold running water and I could be clean.

That’s really the only difference between now and then, right?

THE THINGS I SHOULD DO

I picked Nurse Jenn up on Monday morning and we headed to a yoga class that ended up being canceled. Turns out most of Waldo had power outages. So we switched gears and I drove us over to a local coffee shop for coffee and pastries and chats. We sat outside at a table tucked out of the way. It was perfect even though at one point Jenn gave me her sweatshirt to wear because I was cold. It was very romantic. We sat there and chatted about all the things that were happening or about to happen. I told her about yoga therapy school and she told me about how her youngest is getting ready to move out of the house. We talked about nothing important and then somehow ended up talking about something important: Living Wills.

Y’all…I don’t have a Living Will or a Healthcare Directive.

Yeah, I know. This sounds like something I would have taken care of by now, like something I should have taken care of immediately after J’s death. But seriously, how many people do you know had that kind of shit together in their (very) late twenties? I mean, that feels forgivable, but then even after Chris, I didn’t ever fill anything formal out. I have verbally said what I want, but verbal words are not legally binding. Especially if no one ever actually really listens to you. Jenn pointed out that a Healthcare Directive should be pretty detailed. It’s easy to say I don’t want to be ventilated, but in reality I should say I don’t want to be ventilated unless it’s there to make it easier for me to heal. All treatments should be centered around what sort of quality of life I would expect to have after treatment. We talked about limitations for treatments, like ventilation or life support for a certain number of days. We talked about about what ‘quality of life’ looks like for us both.

It’s a lot to consider.

Then the very next day, I opened up Facebook and Amani had posted a Death Doula PSA about living wills and advanced directives. I thought “How did she hear us all the way over there in Seattle?!?!” but she also shared that EForms was a very good place for creating these documents. So now I have absolutely no reason for not filling out all of this and storing it someplace where others can find it. But wait! There’s more. Amani recommends that you revisit these forms every year to keep them up-to-date. This is not a one and done adult task. This is an adult maintenance task.

Now, I hear some of you sighing and thinking “oh how depressing.” but it doesn’t have to be. If you are like me and want all the control, this is your opportunity to micromanage and control your very life. I find this idea very liberating and comforting. I get to define my idea of ‘quality of life’ and since I’ve been thinking about that, I’ve come to realize that I have high standards. I don’t want to leave a situation where I am left with nothing more than the ability to sit on a couch, watching TV all day. I don’t want to need a round the clock caregiver. If I need to be ventilated for treatments that are meant to save my quality of life, that’s fine, but after ten days, turn that shit off. Pull the plugs! I have a pretty high pain tolerance. So if I say that I’m in pain and want it all to end, then I’m serious.

Give me all the pills.

Micheal likes to joke about how I’m going to out live everyone. That’s possible except death is unpredictable, but if that’s true there’s not going to be anyone around to remember that I wrote this blog post, let alone verbally declared an end of life directive. This is all paperwork I need to have available for my future doctors so some Doogie Howser doesn’t try to play God with my tired, dying old lady body. Since it is officially summer, most of my chore list has been handed off to Michael and The Cabbage (band name). I’ve purchased a yoga class pass and I’ve made plans to meet a yoga friend for breakfast one morning. I might be interviewing for yoga teaching job for a studio in Lees Summit. Other than yoga, vacation, and another trip out to MBL, I don’t really have all that much on my to-do list.

Creating a Living Will sounds like a great summer project!

CHARGED PARTICLES

The northern lights are an atmospheric phenomenon that's regarded as the Holy Grail of skywatching. Stefanie Waldek, Daisy Dobrijevic from Science.com

I’ve never been interested in seeing them.

It’s not that I would not want to see them; I just never thought about going out of my way to see them. The thing is, I’ve never really been all that interested in the night sky. Chris and a gaggle of friends would spend hours out on the oval at night, gazing up at the sky during our time at USAO. I think I tagged along a couple of times, but I found the whole experience to be uncomfortable. Laying on the ground with the night chill and swatting away mosquitoes while trying not to fall asleep was just not something that appealed to me. I’m not good with late night things. The Jenny Lewis concert I attended recently was a rare event and a struggle since she didn’t hit the stage until around 8:45 and my bedtime is 9:00. I’d pay extra for my favorite bands to put on matinees. To truly experience and see the night sky, one must wait until the sky is at its darkest and that happens well after 9:00.

When word went out on Friday that there was a possibility of seeing the Northern Lights in the Kansas City area, I was mildly interested. Then Chad sent me a screen shot of an email from the ham radio weatherman group he follows (of course he does) and it was all about the solar storms that were predicted for Friday and Saturday. So I replied to Chad with “ask the ham nerds about times.” and started to think about digging out my tripod. Friday evening rolled around and Michael and the Cabbage went to a school lock-in for the night. I FaceTimed with Amani and futzed around the house. I stepped out onto our front porch to look at the sky and my view was blocked by trees. I shrugged and went to bed. Then I woke up the next morning and my social media was filled with pictures people had posted of the Northern Lights.

Photographer Cindy experienced some serious JOMO.

Michael and the Cabbage came home from their lock-in and slept most of the day away, leaving me to my own devices and I just kept thinking about the pictures I had seen of the auroras. It was such a rare event to happen this far south, not that I’d consider Kansas City as ‘south’. I was just under the impression that if I were to ever see the Northern Lights, I was going to have to travel to Alaska or Iceland. I knew from Chad’s ham nerds that the solar storm would be even bigger and the auroras even stronger that evening. By the time Michael got up I knew that I wanted to go out and try to photograph the auroras for myself. The latest aurora map predictions said the peak time for seeing the lights would be between 11:30 and midnight. It didn’t take Michael much convincing to drive us an hour north to Smithville Lake. We started to set up in a parking lot, but the view wasn’t great. Also, as soon as I opened the truck door, my weirdo magnetic attracted another lights viewer who made a direct beeline to us with unsolicited advice. We quickly took a short hike to a more isolated area near the water.

Then we waited.

We sat on the ground, eating popcorn and swatting away little bugs while looking at the sky, all the things that are unappealing to me. Every once in a while, I would snap a picture and then look at the image to check my exposure times. It was around 11:10 and we hadn’t seen anything yet. Michael asked me what I wanted to do. I looked at the time and said “I want to wait. It’s still too early.” So we waited. We listened to the tree frogs and the murmurs of conversations happening around us. We watched a flat bottom boat hug the edge of the water on the other side of the lake and complained about the fisherman’s spotlight that he was using. Then I noticed a very faint green light. I pointed it out to Michael and said that it might be something, but most likely a cloud. So I snapped the shutter and we both gasped at the image. The camera captured a streak of green and purple dancing across the sky.

There are many many myths centered around the auroras, not surprisingly related to the afterlife. Japanese folklore spoke of the auroras as messengers from heaven. Native Americans believed the auroras were recently deceased loved ones, carrying torches on their way to heaven. This was a theme in one of the scenes from Almost Maine. In the scene, a woman has traveled to Maine to see the Northern Lights so she can say one final goodbye to her late husband. She’s carrying her broken heart in pieces in a paper bag and she meets a man who ends up taking that bag, dumping the pieces on the ground, and starts to fit those pieces of her heart. When Michael asked me to read this play with him, this was the hardest scene for me to read. Just the act of reading scenes itself brought up the memories of countless of hours of running lines with Chris. Mix those memories with that scene’s story line and it’s surprising I made it through it all alive. The aurora myths are easily believable if you don’t know anything about charged particles.

We were almost home when I said “Hey..remember that time we saw the Northern Lights?” as if it had been an event that happened years ago. I am almost uncertain that it even happened at all. The whole thing feels unreal, unbelievable. We never saw the auroras with our eyes, only through the camera and I had my camera set to a long exposure time. Our eyes just don’t have enough light sensors for seeing them at this latitude, but maybe in June, when we travel north for the moose hunt, we’ll have a better chance of seeing them with our eyes.

Maybe then I will change my mind about seeing ghosts.

CHANGE

Years ago, my yoga teacher told me that people both fear and crave change. There are a lot of emotions wrapped up in changes, not unlike the memory balls in Inside Out when touched by Joy and Sadness. Then there is the complexity of change itself. It something we can choose or sometimes chosen for us, often without warning. Those without warning changes that are thrust upon us often send a body into fight or flight mode. There’s trauma involved, but the changes we choose for ourselves comes with its own set of anxiety feelings.

Mostly doubt.

I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about mobility, the aging body and how this plays into my yoga teaching practice. As I was putting together some slides of shoulder anatomy for a yoga strap workshop that I want to do, I had to resist turning my strap workshop into an anatomy/physiology class. The more I thought about the shoulder joint and the things we task that joint with, the more my idea of teaching shifted. I feel moved to teach others to move their bodies in a way that supports their joints and overall mobility. This does not include teaching a student how to wrap their foot around their head or other such pretzel poses that most westerners associated with the term ‘yoga’. This thought planted a seed in the back of my brain. What if I got certified in Yoga Therapy, supporting healthy body movement by working with a patients health care provider? What would that entail and how would that change my current career? I’ve been sitting quietly with this planted seed and all of these questions for some time.

Then I asked these questions out loud and that seed sprouted.

I have found a program (thanks, Shannon!) that offers a Master’s in Yoga Therapy and is taught by MDs, which feels more legit than a lot of programs I have looked at online taught by other yoga teachers. No offense to yoga teachers, but most do not have doctorates in anatomy and physiology. Many 200hr teacher credit courses don’t really even teach anatomy beyond the basics of this is an arm and that is a leg. I have opinions about that, but that’s another ranty post for another time. This program would basically be like going back to graduate school and when I told those around me about this, I was hit with a wave of support. I still have some questions and planning to do. There are things happening at work that may change how I do my job in the future. It’s the reason I’m making a quick return to MBL at the end of June. That change comes with a lot of uncertainty and may or may not even happen. The potential of it happening has me stepping back and slowing down on the return to graduate school idea. I think I’ve waited too late to apply for the Fall anyway, but I think this is good because it gives me time to carefully fill out financial aid forms and the application. I intend to apply for the next Fall enrollment.

I talked to Michael about this and the possible work changes last night and when I had told him every thing, he said “How do you feel?” I sighed and then said “I feel anxious and scared and little bit like I’m going to throw up.” Then he reminded me that I could always say no to the work change. He is supportive of the yoga therapy thing and told me that I am probably the only one he knows who has stuck with the same job/career path for as long as I have. I’ve been a research scientist for twenty four years! Becoming a Yoga Therapist would not change that. It would be something I would do part time that I intend to transition into full time when and if I retire. The other thing would change that and I have yet decided on how this would make me feel. Both of these changes are of my own choosing. Both of these changes are not or will be quick and drastic. These are long game changes. This does not me that I am not feeling a bit buzzy right now. Just keeping up with my calendar right now is making me want to breath into a paper bag. I think I have jury duty this month too…but have forgotten to add that to the calendar. Anyway, I told someone recently that things were going to slow down for me in May. I was wrong.

Things are going to slow down for me in July.

Maybe.

SAY CHEESE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE BIG SAD

There was a small bit of graffiti that Michael and I passed a few times while roaming New Orleans. It simply said “Big Sad” with a sad face drawn under the words. I didn’t take a picture of it, which is weird because I took lots of graffiti pictures, but for some reason never pointed a camera at this one. It sparked a small conversation when we first noticed it. I said to Michael “You know how sometimes things make you a little sad? Like, I’m out of ice cream; this makes me a little sad. Big sad is reserved for things like when your favorite ice cream shop closes.” I told him that I think I’ll use Big Sad more in sentences.

Leaving New Orleans made me big sad.

On our first night in the city, we took a forty five minute walk through the Garden District to get to a dinner reservation at Basin Seafood. I was smarter on this trip and did some research, made reservations so we wouldn’t be floating with indecision on food choices. I found Basin on Eater in their best oysters on the half shell list. It’s a small but elegant restaurant on Magazine Street and the food there did not disappoint. Michael got the short ribs served on cheesy grits, which I tasted. They were the best grits I have had in years and the oysters and lima beans were so good that Michael, who does not really like raw oysters or lime beans, left thinking that maybe he was a raw oyster/lime bean eater.

On our walk to the restaurant, even on the walk back, we took turns pointing out various houses. Every time I saw a ‘For Sale’ sign I’d say “We could buy that one. We could live there.” I believe I even mentioned at one point that I had not seen any yoga studios in that area. “We could buy that one and I could open a yoga studio downstairs while we live in the top half.” Michael nodded and mumbled vague agreements each time I said something like this. While he agrees that we should visit this city often, he is less keen on the idea of living there full time. To be fair, summers would probably kill him. March is a tease in New Orleans. The weather was perfect with bright sunny days and cool breezes. The summer months are steamy and full of hurricanes (not just the fun boozy kind). I don’t know why I didn’t notice this on the last trip, but on our drive into New Orleans, we passed many stilt houses that you could only access by boat. “The only way to get to that house is by boat. What if we lived in house like that?” Those houses sparked more interest because Michael wants a boat. I think I wouldn’t be able to handle that kind of isolation. I need the street sounds and the strolling paths. I require the earth under my feet to be less squishy. Though, I wouldn’t mind kayaking through the swamps on weekends.

You know when your time in a place is time well spent if it breaks your heart a little to leave that place. In my case, I feel like I am always leaving something behind in New Orleans, something of great value so that I must return again soon to retrieve it. Then I leave something else and must return again, repeating this loop until maybe I’ll get that place out of my system. Maybe one day, it just won’t have the same appeal. I did notice a number of houses up for sale as though some of the residents of New Orleans have given up on the city. It didn’t seem as crowded with tourists this time around, but honestly we didn’t venture too deeply into those places. We skirted around them and into those residential areas that are often ignored by our government. That’s where you’ll find the best fried chicken and a Banksy that’s been left untouched by other graffiti artists or painted over by the shop owner.

We stopped in Mississippi on our way back north to meet my cousin for lunch, a cousin I haven’t seen in almost twenty years. I didn’t expect the feelings of joy and delight in seeing her face and hugging her tight. It was almost as if there had been no space or time between us since our last encounter and I confess that tears welled up in my eyes when we said our goodbyes. She had asked if we would be traveling up through Louisville, the town where our parents had grown up, where Pepaw’s house and shop used to be. I told her that I couldn’t stomach to drive through there knowing those places were gone. My cousin said she felt the same even though she lives close, she always makes a point to drive around. It’s too hard to see the empty spots that once held so much. I wiped tears from my cheeks as we drove north through that state, brushing away my complicated feelings. It might sound as if I didn’t have a wonderful vacation. Complicated feelings and tears and melancholy and all. The truth is, the trip was too good. Misti sent me a text asking if I’d had a good adventure and I burst into tears because this adventure had ended. I am still full of oysters and crawfish. Making this week’s menu was a challenge knowing that nothing I make is going to taste as good as the food we ate last week. I don’t cook with bacon fat or ham juice. And I ate plenty of things cooked in meat juice last week, plus a piece of fried chicken.

Recently, I sat down to evaluate the wordy collage I had created for the things I wanted to do this year. I listed all the things that had been completed, made a list for things that have been planned and a list of things that are still a work in progress. I was surprised by the number of things that I have already completed. When we got home, I took New Orleans from the planned list and moved it up to the completed list, but not before noticing that I have several adventures still sitting in the planned section. I’ll be back in New Orleans in a couple of years. I have to retrieve a valuable item and leave an equally valuable item behind. For now, I have hundreds of pictures left to be processed and I will take my time pouring over each photo, savoring the memories.

I’m big sad this adventure has ended but I’m really excited about the next adventures.

NOW WHAT

There’s a part of me, that people pleaser me, that almost feels like I should apologize for the rage that I poured out onto these pages last week. I have to stop and remind myself that I am practicing the allowance of all feelings good and bad. Contrary to what some may think, I don’t walk around breathing fire like a dragon or punching walls all the time. My rage stays contained inside this body until I can furiously type it all out. A friend of mine referred to it as “Beautiful rage” and I love that so much, I’ve been thinking about where to have those words tattooed onto my body. But I don’t want this space to just be a rage against the machine page.

Saturday morning, I sat down in my usual space at Heirloom and opened up my Fortune Cookie Journal (so few pages are left…I don’t know what happens when I fill them all). The music playing that morning were all the 90s bands that made up the soundtrack of the end of my HS years and into my college years. Nirvana, Jane’s Addiction, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, Cake. I knew the words to every song that played through those speakers and I was pulled back in time to a place of great happiness and naivety. Those years smelled like burnt coffee, used bookstores, cigarettes and incense mixed together. These were the years of learning the importance of finding meaning in words and oh how we dissected lyrics and movies and scripts. I was a biology major, living alongside english majors absorbing their coolness while memorizing biochemical compound structures. We were carefree even though we had no reason to be so.

I watched Past Lives over the weekend and I have been pondering those moments that feel like past lives for me now, much like the one described above. It took me longer to get around to seeing the film than I had intended. I knew that it would be beautiful in a way that feels prickly and it was. It was full of the what if questions, the kind of game I have often played on my own. There are the choices we make and there are the choices made by others that have a ripple effect on the trajectory of lives and all of these lead to questions of what if I had chosen this way instead of that. If everything in life is a choice, half of those choices are how we have decided to react to the choices made by others.

Perhaps I was a bird and you were the branch I rested on. - Nora, Past Lives

I joke that in a past life I was a devout Catholic, possibly even a nun. Guilt was often my motivator and I would constantly stress over doing the “right” thing. I’ve never really thought much about who (or what) else I might have been in other lives. I’ve never really thought about the what if I’d gone to a different college, accepted that full music scholarship to OU or at the very least sent my MCAT scores in and applied for medical school. I don’t really think about it because I know how unhappy I would have been with those choices. I knew at the time of decision that choosing those paths would not lead me to a life of joy. I never started playing the What If game until after Chris died. Then I questioned all the choices I had made and what life would be like if I had made different ones. Except, I haven’t played this game with myself in quite some time. I didn’t choose those other lives; I chose this one. Has it led me to a life of joy? I heard someone say once that we can’t have all joy all the time. This is true for me, but I do have joy.

This is my life and I am living it with you. -Nora

Next week, I’m dragging Michael back to New Orleans, a place where if past lives are truly a thing, one of mine was lived here. The last time we went was the first time I’d been back since before Hurricane Katrina and I thought that so much had probably changed since then that I wouldn’t feel at home there anymore. What happened during our last trip was I became so overwhelmed by memories of previous trips, that I froze. I didn’t make tentative itineraries or search out restaurants. We just sort wandered aimlessly and hoped to stumble onto good food. The wandering aimlessly was good, the food finds were not. Reservations are needed in this post-Covid landscape. This time around, we’ve made better plans and we’re even doing an activity that I have never done before any all the many times I have been to New Orleans. We’ve booked a swamp tour in hopes of seeing alligators in their natural habit.

We’re not leaving until next week, but I feel like taking a break from this space. Maybe I’ll spend some time updating some photos and thinking about what’s next. I need to spend more time with paper and ink. This is how I conjure up the experiences I want for myself and I’m a planner at heart. Don’t worry though. I’ll be back.

In this life I am still a blogger.

MY FLAMING LIPS

Okay, this is not a real entry or worth a whole post but it is a ramble of things I’m a little bit proud of. First of all, most of you know about my peeling lips and how I pick at them. Most of the times my lips are in a state of scabbed, chapped or just a bleeding mess because I lack all restraint and cant’ keep my hands from peeling any bit of a possible flake of skin from my lips. It is a terrible ugly habit, but it is a habit of a lifetime. There have been short snips of time when I have not done this. Once when I was on a gluten free diet and once I don’t know why or remember, but I just didn’t. It has been three months now and so I feel like it is safe for me to disclose that my lips are healed and in the best shape of their lives. How did I do it? One morning I was smearing Aquaphor cream onto my tattoo and rubbed some extra onto my lips. Since then, I’ve been doing that twice a day and even though there have been times I’ve tried to pick at my lips, there’s nothing to pick off.

Pucker up! It’s a gosh dang miracle.

The second thing that I’ve done is print out cute little price tags that include a QR code for my Venmo account that I will place with the prints I’m hanging next month. Is this a big deal? Nope, but it makes me feel real tech savvy and hip like a young person. Some of you are sitting there thinking “But Cindy, you are savvy and hip!” and I’m here to say that I am savvy and hip for my age demographic. My generation invented blogging and online sharing of photos. I can do those things well, but Reels and TikToks and the Snaps? Forget it. I’m not saying I can’t do those things. I’m saying I have yet to create space for learning to do those things and I don’t feel like I’ll be making space for that learning any time soon.

Back at Christmas, when we were at Jenn and Wade’s, we all had to take turns saying something personal about ourselves. One of the questions posed was “what is something you lie about to yourself?” I tell myself that I am unhealthy. Like all the time. I have had people tell me that I am not enough in some way or fashion. Not every day or all the time, but eventually there’s been the review where I’m not doing my job enough or the relationship where I don’t praise enough. Commercials and ads tell me I’m not thin enough, eating healthy enough, young enough, happy enough. I am bombarded with outside ‘not enoughs’ and for a while I had started adopting this language when talking to myself. It’s like spending a week in London and suddenly picking up a British accent. That’s basically how the biggest lie came into being. The biggest lie I tell myself is that I am not enough.

Wait. That is also not true.

The biggest lie I used to tell myself was that I am not enough. I’ve been working on this for a while. That whole unhealthy lie I tell myself slipped by me and I was surprised it even came out of my mouth. Here I was smugly thinking that I had beat the habit of telling myself all the ways I am not enough. Habits are hard to dump. Celebrating small victories has become part of my strategy for dumping that bad habit. Neither of those above things are news worthy items, but both of them are small victories. I am not unhealthy. Look at my lips! They’re so healthy looking! I eat a bag of kale a week. Is that something an unhealthy person would do? Maybe? I don’t know, but you might also notice in that part on my second small victory, I did not allude to being not techy enough. I know enough things and I’d rather spend my time in other ways than spending it learning new tech.

Small victories for today (so far): I added my outside walking loop back in with my inside walking loop. I have taken over 8,000 steps today all before 10:00AM. I figured out a Jupyter notebook coding problem I was having last week. That’s amazing! And the day is young. I think I will celebrate with a dance party at my desk.

You should celebrate your small victories.

THE WEEKENDER

I met Amy and Deborah in a town that I have visited a thousand times. Honestly, it was not far from where I grew up, but we managed to see things and explore areas that I had never seen before. I actually went inside the Price Tower instead of just seeing it from the road and then we discovered another tower in a park that I had no idea existed. That was called the Play-Tower and it was built in 1963 by Bruce Goff, commissioned by Mrs. Harold C. Price. The spiral staircase takes you up six feet to a steel ball and is rather terrifying, because once at the top, you can feel the tower swaying back and forth. When we made it back down, the three of spent the rest of trip complaining about our old lady knees. As per usual, there was lots and lots talking and lots and lots of laughter and lots and lots of snacks.

My drive to and from our meeting space had me traveling old country highways and somewhere in Kansas, I passed a sign for a Little House on the Prairie homestead, one that I don’t remember every noticing before. Talaura, Michael and I visited the homestead in South Dakota and we dragged the Cabbage to the Laura Ingalls Wilder’s home in Mansfield MO, but I didn’t realize there was a place in Kansas so close to the OK border. So on my way home from the weekend, I followed the signs and took a detour. I was the only person in the parking space outside the homestead. It is currently closed for the winter, but you are still free to roam the property. There is a replica of the original log cabin built in 1870 by the Ingalls. The other buildings came later, after the Ingalls had moved back up to Pepin WI.

The Ingalls family moved around a lot and not from town to town. They moved state to state, which is impressive considering they were traveling by wagon.

As I made my way around the property, a very vague and dreamy memory kept nudging the back of my brain. I could have sworn a preschool version of me, along with a group of other preschoolers ran around this place like the feral children we were. I can almost hear the slightly stern voice of a woman trying to wrangle us up. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and juice boxes made up our picnic lunch. If this is a true memory, I can assure you that I was wearing a prairie inspired dress with a matching bonnet. I don’t know what my obsession with all things Little House is all about. I read all the books and watched the TV show and reruns of the TV show, but I don’t remember reading the books over and over the way I did Little Women. Yet there was, is, still something about prairie life that hooked me. I spent hours building an imaginary homestead in our pasture when I was little. I spent hours imagining living life on the prairie while I was actually living life on a prairie.

Building something from nothing.

I think this is what I am drawn too in these stories and the real places that birthed those stories. Laura Ingalls Wilder and her family reinvented themselves over and over, move after move. When the first life they tried to build broke, they moved on to build a new life, starting practically from scratch each time. And there were times when it may have felt impossible to rebuild. There were times so awful, that Laura Ingalls Wilder couldn’t or wouldn’t write about them. Yet the family not only survived, but thrived so much so that we know their names and the stories Laura wrote feel like stories about our own grandparents. Life on the prairie forces resilience. I may have been raised in modern times, but I was still raised on prairie land. My high school’s neighbor was a dairy farm and we participated in more tornado drills than fire drills. Though, my HS was evacuated more than once due to wildfires. Bouquets of prairie flowers were clenched in my hands often wilting before I made it home from whatever pasture adventure I had been on. I know the tunes from the area songbirds.

I told Michael my plans for a moose hunt this summer and he is onboard for this adventure. We have started planning and plotting our route, a route that will take us very close to two other Laura Ingalls Wilder homesites. Homes I have yet to visit. I am placing pins in those towns with intentions for stopping on our way back home. I figure this could be my consolation for hunting imaginary creatures and coming up empty handed.

MY TWENTY TWO YEAR OLD SELF

There was a thing floating around last week on Instagram that challenged people to post a picture of themselves at age twenty one. The funny thing about this was that so many of the people in my community only have actual print images of themselves from that time. We were all twenty one in the years before digital. The closest picture I had of myself on hand and printed was taken when I was twenty two. It’s a photo of Chris and I on our wedding day. He’s in a tuxedo and I’m in my wedding suit, a flower headband on my head. I’m holding a bouquet and our marriage license. It is one of the few pictures I have of the two of us where Chris is actually looking at the camera. It is the only decent photo of the two of us together on our wedding day.

We went with unconventional as our theme.

That is the picture I shared on Instagram but with a note that I was twenty two in the photo, but only just barely and that it was the closest I could get to twenty one right now. I’d have to dig through a box if I wanted something from when I was twenty one. There were a couple of people who responded to my post in disbelief and declared that I still look pretty much the same. I responded to these people with gratitude for the kindness but also an assurance that this can’t possibly be true. Though one person argued with me, holding firm to their belief that I still resemble twenty two year old Cindy. And again, I hold firm to my belief that it is impossible that I look the same as I did twenty six years ago.

I am the same weight now that I was then, but take better care of my body now. My haircut is the same, but my hair has more white in it now, but when I look in the mirror, I don’t see a twenty two year old me looking back. When I look at twenty two year old me I see more than the surface stuff and the reason I don’t believe for a second that I still pretty much look the same as back then. This was before I had finished undergrad and entered into the soul crushing world of graduate school. Chris always backed me up, never telling me “you can’t” or that I was doing things wrong or not good enough. I believed I could do anything and in time that confidence would be whittled down to nothing, but Chris would be right there helping build that confidence back. Without him around, my imposter syndrome is magnified for the whole world to see and to point at with critical pointer fingers. I am the house built on sand, continuously rebuilding my confidence levels while new tides come in to wash it all away. That picture was taken when I was at the beginning of what felt like everything, before bad career choices and bad financial decisions. Before I knew real heartbreaking loss. Before I even knew anything about imposter syndrome. Before I learned that I have to be my greatest ally. Before I knew anything about anything.

Aging is living. Living is aging. -Radiant Rebellion by Karen Walrond

That picture is of a woman just beginning to live. If I could go back and tell that young woman in the picture to do things differently, make different choices, would I? There’s maybe one or two things I’d recommend, like don’t buy that time share you’ll never use or think about clinical microbiology as a career. Otherwise, I’d say make the choices you’re going to make, but soak up every single moment of joy, even the smallest thing that makes you smile. Take millions and millions of mental pictures of those moments and there will be millions and millions because you will experience more joy than pain. In fact, I will argue that the amount of joy you experience is what will make the painful moments stand out and sting the most.

I would tell her that some times are not going to be great, but you’re going to be okay.

THE WHALE

I spent the whole day on Saturday attending a chair yoga teacher certification class. I was supposed to go again on Sunday but woke up with a sore throat and a slight fever. After showering and eating breakfast, I didn’t feel much better. So I opted to stay home and not spread my germs, but I was very happy to see that pictures and videos from the day had been posted for me to scroll through. It was also really nice to watch a video of our teacher demonstrating how to get off the floor and it is exactly how I teach my students to safely get off the floor. The course was helpful and validating. Michael said that the experience seemed to have energized me, which is funny because I ended up taking a four hour nap on Sunday.

Early on Saturday, our teacher passed out a deck of oracle cards. I thought that oracle cards was just a Roze thing, but turns out it is becoming a popular yoga studio thing to do. It’s cleaner than goat yoga. I treated this experience with the same eye-roll as I’d use for Roze. The card that I pulled from this deck is a card I have pulled before from one of Roze’s decks. It was the Whale: True Voice card and I half read the description knowing full well that somewhere in there it was going to say something about speaking with compassion to yourself and others. I have no problems speaking with compassion to others. I might even be real good at that. I don’t want to talk about the ‘yourself’ part of that sentence. There was one part of this description that I hadn’t noticed before and it reads “Getting in touch with the mystery and unseen realms of life.” To which I responded “Shut the fuck up.” I turned my ghostbuster trap into an Idea trap.

The description on this card also said this:

Singing your true song from a place of compassion.

Somewhere along the way I have forgotten my true song and I have been working really hard these last three months to remember that song. It has slowly been coming back to me, but in a really annoying way. It’s like I can plunk out a few notes over and over again in my head, kind of like hearing Chris try to sing out the tune to Brazil, which if you knew Chris, you knew he was tone deaf. It’s like I hear something that is kind of familiar, but not yet clear and I know some of that is from trying to hard. Every one I know has struggled with January and it has not turned out to be the fresh start to the New Year that we all wanted. I know I jumped into January first with the idea that I was going to figure everything out on week one.

Then January tried to kill me.

More than a few notes of that song revealed itself this weekend. The revelation came by immersing myself in a community of yoga teachers of various of levels of teaching experience. Teachers can and do learn from other teachers. I loved learning from the others in our group and I loved sharing my own knowledge with the group. At one point on Saturday, we were paired off to practice teaching sun salutations. My partner was a woman who is still working on her teacher training and still finding her teacher voice. She was nervous when it became her turn to teach me. She’s normally a Spin teacher and I said if you can teach a class while riding a bike, you can teach anything. But really, the best advice I gave her was that the more she loved this practice, the easier it will be for her to share her knowledge of the practice. And then I started speaking whale like Dory in Finding Nemo. (Not really)

This post is about to get real long because finding your voice and loving your practice ties into something I started writing last week.

Last year, I purchased a new camera backpack to hold my Nikon and the (potential) extra lenses and gear. I did a whole lot of research on camera packs and what I wanted in a backpack. That also meant narrowing down what it was that I didn’t like about the camera bag I already owned. The deciding factors included comfort and ease of packability while not being bulky. I didn’t want to settle on any of these things for cost and I spent monies to get what I truly wanted. It was worth it. I love everything about this backpack. It has specific and easy to get to pockets for just about everything I need while traveling. It fits my body and does not feel like I am wearing a pack meant for a month long excursion on the Appalachian Trail. It hangs nicely on my closet door and I generally just leave my camera in it.

The bag and camera have not moved in over two months.

I have fallen completely out of practice with my Nikon. In fact I can pinpoint the exact time when I felt joy in taking photos and that was when I was in Woods Hole back in October. Lately, when I’m sitting in bed in the mornings with Josephine and drinking my tea, I will stare at that bag and start to stew. I sit there and think about projects I could/should start to practice using this camera. Last year, I was gifted a flash along with a set of diffusers and I have yet to take time out to learn when and how to use it. That’s just stupid because now in the dark cold months when the last thing I want to do is to go outside is the best time to stay inside and learn about flash photography. When you look for the light, but can’t seem to find it, then you make your own light.

This weekend I was reminded that when you truly love the things you do, then of course you find time to do those things. But there is also joy, great amounts of it really, in sharing those things with others. Yoga. Photography. Words. These are my things and I’m clearing space for more doing of these things that I love.

WHY DOES JANUARY EVEN EXIST?

Three of us braved the icy, snow crusted roads this morning to come into the office. I had no choice. I have service people in town right now to do preventative maintenance of some of our very most popular microscopy systems. Rescheduling would be a difficult option for all concerned. But honestly, I probably would have made the treacherous drive here any way because I have become the First Law of Motion. The act of getting ready to go in to work is the applied force this ball needs to start moving.

And this ball really needs to start moving.

But that’s the thing with January. It is the first month of the year and should feel like a month of possibilities and fresh starts. The reality is that the month of January is my old 1976 Buick Skylark that took three to twenty turns of the key to get the engine started. This is where you decided if you are a ‘glass half full’ or a ‘glass half empty’ kind of person. If you lean towards the half empty way of thinking, you might think that January is here to ruin all of your plans. Michael attempted to make reservations for my birthday dinner in two weeks and there was zero availability at my first two choices. That weekend kicks off Kansas City Restaurant Week and there is the potential for an important Chiefs football game on that day. When Michael asked me for another option, I said “just forget it.” Then four to six inches of snow got dumped on the city and there’s more coming on Friday, canceling plans I had made for my mother and sister to visit so we could celebrate my mom’s birthday. So it really feels like January is looking at me and saying “Hey…I get that you want to do things. I really do, but nope.”

January. Wrecking plans since 1976. Or 2012 (if I’m being generous).

The month of January is named after the Roman god, Janus, the god of new beginnings and transitions. Janus is not the god of good new beginnings or bad new beginnings. He is the god of just new beginnings and new beginnings of any kind requires some transitioning. Back in 2012, I did not see January as a month of new beginnings. It was a month of painful slogging tasks. It was a time of conditioning for a transition into a new beginning that was most definitely not a good new beginning. All Januarys since have been compared to this and treated with an expectation that January is going to be hard as fuck. But I so desperately want to see January with ‘glass half full’ eyes, so here goes.

What would a ‘glass half full’ person think about January’s shenanigans?

January is your therapist telling you that all those things that you want to do requires you to put in some work to do them. There’s no waking up to written manuscripts or finished marathons. Goals are not met by happenstance. You have to put in the work, but January is also forcing you to focus only on the things you can control. It’s going to throw all these obstacles or tests out there that you have no control over to train you both mentally and physically to focus on the things you can control. To a ‘half glass empty’ person, this looks like the bare minimum of activity, but ‘glass half full’ people know that looks are deceiving. The hardest pose in yoga looks like you’re doing nothing while doing nothing, but this doing nothing time allows for molecular level recovery for our bodies.

I can’t control the snow, but I am able bodied enough to shovel my driveway and dig my car out. I made it to work, but did concede to canceling my yoga class this evening (safety first). Plans are not ruined; they have just been rearranged to different dates and venues. Everything could be so much worse right now. January could be really making me do much harder things this year than just navigating snowy terrain and cold weather. Maybe I should give the month of January a new slogan.

January, the month that is the kick-you-in-the-ass trainer you didn’t know you needed.

HUNGRY FOR WHAT

I opened up the editor side of this website and looked around like it was brand new territory. This was not unlike the feelings I had when I walked into the microscopy room at work Tuesday morning. In fact, after taking all of the objective lenses off of one system and cleaning each one, I set them next to the microscope and walked away to do something else. It was about twenty minutes later when I remembered that I never actually put those lenses back on the microscope. I have been away from work (and here) for a week and two days. I let my emails fester in my inbox for nine days before finally giving in and clearing things out. I barely took or posted any photos. After returning home from Oklahoma and furiously cleaning my house, I was down right lazy, not leaving the couch unless it was absolutely necessary. Do I have regrets?

Just one. I don’t feel as though I ate as much cheese as I could have eaten in the last eleven days.

Well before the holidays, I was feeling a constant gnawing hunger twinge in my guts. I wanted to eat all of the things and none of the things. I wanted to fill my body up with something, a lot of different things and not necessarily food. I was hungry for changes. My social media ads went into overdrive, filling up my feed with food prep services, fancy ramen noodles, weight loss programs, face yoga and shape wear. For the most part, I ignored those ads, but every once in a while one would sneak its way into my brain. I’d click on the link and search for price tags. Then I’d come to my senses, shake my head and turn it off. Being so well organized for Christmas allowed for some reflection time and I sat down and wrote out a detailed list/flow chart for what I want in 2024. There is nothing unreasonable on that list, except maybe the part about seeing a moose, but I woke up on January first feeling a little bit guilty for not getting right to work. Instead of getting up and getting on my mat or playing my seven minute exercise app, I snuggled back under the covers and watched three episodes of The Diplomat.

When I finally did that seven minute workout on Tuesday morning, I thought “Damn, why is this so hard?!?” while I coughed between squats and mountain climbers. That head cold I had the week before Christmas turned into a cough that still hasn’t gone away. It has at least changed from sounding like masses amounts of wet cotton is about to explode from my body. The cough has been reduced to an irritant and a wish for a zero gag reflex (yes, place all of your dirty thoughts here) so that I can scrub my esophagus with a bottle brush. Half of the people I follow on Instagram posted pictures of New Year’s Eve plans that included cold medicines and tissues. I don’t feel alone in thinking that a mere seven minutes of exercise right now feels like two hours of torture exercise.

On Christmas Day, Michael and I went over to our Jenn and Wade’s house to have Christmas dinner with them and their family. Upon walking into their home, every visitor was handed a card that contained some kind of conversation starter and then everyone in the room would take a turn at answering what ever question was on the card. One of the questions that came up was “What’s a lie you tell yourself?” Look, there’s a number of lies I tell myself on a daily basis, but the one I was willing to speak out loud to the group was this. I tell myself that I am not a healthy person, that I do not take care of myself. Some of that stems from a month of sporadic yoga practices and a pause in dog walks because of the weather. Some that stems from allowing someone in my life to speak to me on a daily basis in a way that is not healthy and letting it go on because I just didn’t care enough to stand up for myself. But also, if I don’t speak kindly to myself, how can I expect others to speak to me in a positive way?

This is something I’ve been working on before the new year, not just being kinder to myself but demanding kinder and more thoughtful speech from others. So by the time New Year’s Eve rolled around, I wasn’t as hungry for change as I was in late November. Just the act of writing down the things I want for this year, filled up some of that empty gut feeling. So many things on my list are not resolutions of self improvement, maybe only two or three items. Everything else is all true wants: camping, joyful movement like roller skating, bike rides. I treated my resolutions like they would be part of my Life List, filling the year up with activities of joy and spacing those activities throughout the year like tapas plates of snacks. I’m walking into this year with a little trepidation (the world is very much a dumpster fire and it’s an election year), but mostly I’m walking into this year feeling peckish and excited about snacks.

I’m going to treat this year like Rick Steve spends an evening tapas bar hopping in Madrid.

THINGS CHANGE

The Facebook memory that popped up the other day was a picture of a collage of holiday cards that I had stuck to the side of my refrigerator. For a tiny moment, I almost shared that memory but then I looked closer at some of those cards. Many of the cards were photo cards containing pictures of my dear friends and their families. I didn’t share the memory because first of all, it’s not a great picture, but secondly a few of those cards do not reflect a few of those families today. In fact at least two of the families in that picture have had drastic, heart breaking changes in the last five years. One photo card is from a college friend with her husband and two children all smiling brightly for the camera. I considered the husband to be a great friend too, but he left my friend in a surprising and shocking way. He turned out to be not the person I thought he was or who anyone thought he was. After deciding not to share this memory, I studied that photo looking for signs on his face or in his eyes only to shake my head and realize he was the best actor of us all.

I’m sure my friends remember my holiday cards of the past and how different my cards look today. I wanted to hold onto a tradition that could not be recreated with any other person but Chris. I have given up on the idea of elaborate and funny holiday photos. I like to think of my cards now as more of a sarcastic head nod to the suburban family unit. I’ve stopped trying to get a nice photo of all of us together and instead, I patch together individual pictures of us. I’m the hardest to find because I am rarely in front of the camera these days. Maybe it’s time for another 365 day self portrait project. I always seem to quilt something together just in time to take advantage of a big holiday card print sale, even if the picture of Josephine on this year’s card was actually taken last year. It was the best I could do this year. A series of unfortunate haircuts made Josephine not as photogenic as usual and let’s face it. We’ve all experienced a year of unfortunate haircuts.

I had Talaura on speaker phone Saturday evening and we chatted while I roamed around my house doing chores. I had a stack of unopened cards sitting on my desk and I began to open them one by one and then tape them up on bookshelf for display. Anna and Greg greeted me from the cover of their card with a drooling half grinning baby. They referred to themselves not by name but as “Mateo’s grandparents”, as they should. I am kind of in love with their new empty nest status and how they have entered a stage of life that is less parenting and more spoil the grand baby. The card also arrived from a different address than where I sent my card to them. So, hopefully that gets returned soon so that I can put the correct address on it. Then I opened the card from Todd and I said out loud to Talaura that these children are unrecognizable. That’s not entirely true. I still recognize Todd’s boys, but they’ve mostly lost that ‘boy’ look and have moved on to ‘young man’. Talaura and I chatted about how strange that those two were now closely resembling adults.

Michael has been struggling to get the Cabbage to send them a Christmas wish list this year. They finally responded with “I’m a teenager now. I’m not supposed to want or like things.” They have grown past the surprises and excitement that comes at Christmas when you believe that a white bearded old man is going to break into your home, not to steal your toys, but to give you more toys. I still plan on setting out a nice beer and some pretzels for Santa because I like a bit of whimsy with my holidays. It feels strange to see everyone growing up and getting older when I feel as though I have not changed. It took me so long to finally do “adult” things like buying a lawnmower and a house, cremating a husband. I feel stuck at an in between stage of life where I’m just responsible enough to stay employed.

For a brief period of time as a small child, I can remember spending hours pretending to be Wendy from Peter Pan. I’d interrupt adventures and insist that it was bath time or tea time or bed time. I would tell my stuffed animals who were playing the Lost Boys to be more sensible. I’m sure many of you are nodding your heads and thinking “of course you did, Cindy.” Commanding sensibility is my brand, but as I watch my dearest friends’ children growing up, I find myself wanting less sensibility or more silliness. I don’t want to be a Wendy any more. I don’t want to be Peter and leader of the pack, but I think I’m ready to try fitting in with the Lost Boy crowd.

JOSEPHINE IS NINE

On the very first day of December, I lugged all the boxes containing the Christmas decorations up from the basement. I put together our little tree and decorated it with my favorite ornaments. I set out the menorah and Abominable Snowman. I hung the wreath on the front door and set my light-up elephant on the front stoop. I hung all the Christmas stockings on the wall by the tree. Then I packed up the boxes and put them all back into the basement. I was like a Tasmanian Devil of decorating and I only half noticed the order in which I had hung the stockings.

But the Cabbage noticed straight away.

You see, the order of the stockings from right to left is me, Michael, Josephine, The Cabbage and finally, Albus. The Cabbage saw how the stockings were placed and viewed the order as order of importance. Meaning Josephine trumps the Cabbage. When the Cabbage mentioned this, Michael said “I’m less important than Josephine.” Now…that’s not…true…..Maybe there’s a little truth there. Anyway. I’m the one that decorates. I can do what I want. The only time the other two have any interest is when I decide to not decorate and then there’s complaints. So if the stockings end up in an “order of importance” so be it.

Josephine turned nine on the eighth of December (I believe this is right because the earliest picture I have of her is for December 2014 and her eyes were barely open). We didn’t really celebrate. There may have been an extra treat that day and the discovery of an old lost toy. [Complete side note: I’m missing two spoons from my silverware set that I received from a favorite college professor when Chris and I got married. I made Michael look under the couch for them because who knows?. Instead, he found an old bone and Josephine’s stuffed snail. The spoons are still missing.] I don’t think to celebrate Josephine’s birthday in December because she didn’t come home to us until late January, but also I tend to celebrate her existence every day.

It is winter temperatures and that means, Josephine and I opt out of our morning walks for snuggle time under the covers. She will go outside only because I’ve told her to go outside, but then she runs back inside as soon as she’s done, and hops up onto the bed to burrow under the comforter. The two of us lay there with me scratching her ears or belly until it is my turn for the shower. Sometimes, there is competition from the cat where I’ll only be able to pet with one hand because the other hand has to scratch Albus’s ears. I don’t think Josephine likes sharing, but she tolerates it because like I tell her every single day, she is the best puppy in the world.

And she is.

Josephine is everything I could have asked for in a canine companion. She’s smart and inquisitive. Her personality far exceeds her size. Everyone who has interacted with her all tell me that she is the sweetest puppy. She is so much more than a pet. She is a member of my family and a true companion. Josephine is always by my side. Or on my lap. I choose to celebrate her life every single day because the life of a dog is shorter than a human’s. Which, come to think of it, is how we should probably treat each other. Every day is a gift.

Take a moment to celebrate that gift.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE

Look, the world is a bit of a dumpster fire right and I don’t have anything nice to say about it. So I’m not saying anything. I am subbing yoga classes for a fellow yoga teacher this week and my life currently looks like 2010. Which is busy. My life looks busy and not in a Christmas Holiday busy kind of way, but I’d like to leave you a list of things that are bringing me a lot of joy and happy distractions during this time.

• My wonderful, adorable friend Amani has started a tiny mic series where she critiques her neighborhood Christmas displays. The one with the giant Abominable Snowman is my favorite so far. The look of joy on her face is infectiously wonderful.

• It is advent calendar time and my favorite thing has been watching Ollie and his little brother Tato, doing things from their advent calendar. Last year’s advent calendar was the one that brought Tato into the family. So watching these two together this last year has been wonderful. I love their adventures.

• Speaking of advent calendars. Every year I get a newsletter that waxes poetically over the Aldi cheese advent calendar. The newsletter always warns that this calendar is hard to get. This year, I was in Aldi at the exact right time. This cheese advent calendar has been sitting in wait in my fridge since the beginning of November. So far, it does not disappoint. The cheese portion has been the perfect size for cutting into two tasting pieces for the both of us. We’ve had a super sharp cheddar, a pepper Gouda, and a smokey cheddar. Monday night’s was some weird apple blend. I did not love it, but I did not hate it. Even though it is early days, I give this advent a 10 out of 10.

• I am terrible at crossword puzzles. Word finding games, matching games, hidden treasure finding game. Those are fine, but the crossword has always confused the crap out of me. Last week I started attempting the New York Times daily crossword. I go through and get what I can and then after dinner, I make Michael help me finish the crossword. Tuesday’s I did most of it all on my own and only needed help with four clues. I’m learning the tricks of the crossword. Go brain!

• All of my Christmas decorations are up and cards are in the mail. Hanukkah starts on Thursday and after much debate, we(I) decided to continue our tradition of celebrating. I have reasons that I might expound on later. We have latkes planned for our evening meal and I am looking forward to lighting the first candle.

• One of my coworkers eats a breakfast burrito from our grab-n-go area of the cafeteria almost every day. Each burrito comes with a packed of La Victoria hot sauce. He never uses the sauce, but doesn’t feel like it’s a good idea to throw them away. Our office fridge has a crisper drawer full of these packets. They have become an enormous joke to all of us. We needed a topper for our Christmas tree in the office and I made this:

This is probably the best craft I’ve ever done.

What about you? Where are you finding light these days?