MORE THINGS THE INTERNET THINKS I SHOULD BUY

In this episode of Things the Internet Thinks I should Buy, I bring you food mills, underwear, boots, and cat sweaters.

Let’s start with the underwear. That’s the most fun because those ads contain women in underwear and there you’ll be, harmlessly scrolling along in social media land, when suddenly there’s just a big lace clad butt picture or some woman adjusting her boobs in her bra. Sometimes there’s music playing in the ad. It has definitely made harmless scrolling a not safe for work activity. I do though appreciate the reminder that I could do better for myself in the underwear department. My underwear is not functional or sexy. It is a layer of fabric between my naked body bits and my pants and that’s about it. Maybe ‘buying nicer underwear’ should go on my New Year’s resolution. Right now and off and on since August, I’ve been just randomly bleeding and ruining underwear like in the days of my distant youth when the menstrual cycle was a new thing to me. So, I don’t really feel like buying anything nice until I’ve got this all figured out. I did see my gynecologist this week and we’ve made a plan to figure it out and with fingers crossed, I might be normalish by the new year. Until then, I don’t deserve nice things.

That’s not true. I am deserving of nice things.

The next ad I keep getting is for a certain brand of boots. I love this brand and love the boots. I mean I desperately want these boots, but ever time I click on the ad, I see that they are sold out of my size plus they’re not cheap. I’m almost willing to overlook the price because I know this brand and I know they’ll be comfortable, well-made boots. But I can’t overlook the size. If I’m going to spend that kind of money on boots, I should buy the right size. So now when I see this ad, it makes me sad. The same is true whenever I get the ad for a spectacular space cat sweater. First of all, the sweater is not my usual fashion choice. It’s brightly colored with a giant cat in a spacesuit gazing into the distance on the front. I don’t know why I love it so much, but I do. I want an oversized version of this sweater to wear with my leggings and the boots that they don’t have in my size. The sweater is not expensive, but the website is scammy. Like super scammy. I am guaranteed to loose all of my money and identities if I attempt to purchase this sweater. So I need some legitimate company to sell this sweater and I need those boots in my size please.

I believe those are reasonable requests.

Finally (not really…I get a lot of ads), I keep getting ads for food mill/composters. They’re like trashcans but only for food waste and they break up the food for compost. And I want one. Yes, I know that I could just throw my food waste into a compost bin in the backyard somewhere. Except I’ve done this, but you can’t just throw food waste into a bin. You have to stir it up and adjust pH and do things with the compost. I am lazy when it comes to gardening. Also, are you aware that compost bins can spontaneously combust? Especially if you do nothing but put stuff in the bin. The food mill/composters do all of the work for you. Then all you have to do is figure out what to do with the milled up food waste. I think I could manage that. Nope. I know I could manage this. I just have this vision that this product will reduce our amount of weekly garbage by half. Maybe more. I mean…we set out one to two bags of garbage plus a full recycling bin every week. It’s not like we’re big trash producers, but I can see where we can do better. The food mill/composters are expensive. Like really expensive. It’s like when the Roomba was a new thing expensive. I am a patient person. I waited long enough for the Roomba prices to go down and now I have a robot vacuum cleaner. I have no doubt the same thing will happen with the food mill/composters.

Sure, I do get a bunch of other ads every day trying to sell me some really useless crap. Those ads are easy breeze bys. I am not annoyed by, in fact I probably enjoy, the ads for the underwear, boots, sweater and composters and I’ll tell you why. Those ads are helping me dream of a better future for myself. A future of nice underwear and comfortable boots. A future of crazy cat sweaters and even a better environment. I like this dream. I like the idea that I can be that whimsical type of person that would wear bright colored space cat sweaters. I honestly don’t care much about the underwear, but I wouldn’t mind a nicer bit of fabric on my naked body bits. I am a practical person, so of course my dreams have a practical nature and if I have learned anything from my mother it is the importance of a good quality practical boot. And that composter thing would just make me a better citizen of the planet. Do I understand that this is capitalism at it’s finest and “they” have figured out my financial weaknesses?

Yes. And I do not care.

AND THEN I DIDN'T SMILE FOR TWO YEARS

Last Thursday, before leaving for my weekend with Heather, I went to the orthodontist to get Invisalign. I thought they would just hand me some plastic teeth covers and that would be it. That is not how this works. First, the technician had to glue a bunch of nubs onto my teeth as well as a metal hook because I have to wear a rubber band on the left side. I was not prepared for any of this. The place where the rubber hooks to the top is poky and has worn a sore into my upper lip. Maybe that will get better when I change them out on Thursday for the next round of teeth covers. Invisalign is basically like making a claymation movie, except instead molding clay, you’re moving teeth. And they’re probably not really called ‘teeth covers’. This is what I have decided to call them because they feel very much like the plastic couch covers of the 70s and 80s.

I hate them.

I keep telling myself that all of this is for the greater good and the health of my mouth. None of this is cosmetic. It’s all about securely setting roots into the jaw bone and maintaining a healthy jaw so that I won’t have to pull all my teeth and get dentures when I’m 80. This is a good and important thing I am doing for my teeth. So many people have told me that I will get used to the teeth covers. They have told me that I will become so well practiced in prying them off my teeth and popping them back on that I won’t need the special hook tool the orthodontist gave me to pry them out. This skill is important because I can’t eat with them in my mouth. There’s no such thing as a spontaneous snack for me anymore. It’s not that I usually snack between meals, but sometimes candy and other goodies are brought into the office. Halloween means that our break room will be filling up with mini-candy bars and skittles. I’m going to have to really want it. Since Michael and I have both been sick, I have not tested out what it’s like to kiss with teeth covers. The orthodontist said to not eat with them in, but did not say anything about leaving them in during sex. It’s either going to be real weird or someone’s new kink. I mean, I’m sure I would not have to search hard to find that porn. I am not going to do that search. This is just where my brain went.

I am growing weary and frustrated with the maintenance of this body. I spent about an hour on hold Monday morning just to leave a message with my intern doctor that I’d like talk about the blood test results from the blood work she ordered two weeks ago. Tuesday, my plan is to make an appointment with my gyno to talk about my ten day periods and the extra one I’m having right now. Maybe it’s just because it’s the week of Halloween, a week of all things gory and spooky. My body wants our costume to be a crime scene or a mash up between Carrie and Slimer (from all the snot coming out of my nose). I know by body is aging, but right now with the teeth covers and the erratic periods, I feel very much like a thirteen year old again.

Aging is living.

MY LACK OF GRATITUDE

I recognize that I’ve missed a number of Thankful Friday entries for the month of October. I also have not slept in my own bed on any Friday night of October. This weekend will be no different. Months ago, Heather got tickets to David Sedaris and then said “Come up for that weekend!” It has been on my calendar since June, well before a planned work trip and an unplanned visit to my mother. To say that the month of October has been a bit packed with travel and feelings is an understatement. I have mentally started compiling a list of things I’m thinking of putting off until next year because I’m loosing interest in doing anything with the rest of the year. I keep saying to people “When things slow down…..” and that really does sound like January to me. I know that in the winter months, there will large swaths of time of nothing because it will be too cold to leave the house.

I also came back from Oklahoma with a nasty head cold that is making it really hard to keep up any kind of momentum. When I texted Heather to warn her about my condition, she replied “Take it easy and we will continue to take it easy through the weekend.” Other than an evening with David Sedaris, we have foot spa plans which requires me to do nothing and I can’t believe how much I am looking forward to doing nothing with Heather. I will admit that returning to a weekly gratitude posting was creeping onto my list of things to be put off until next year. Then I thought about how my weekend to come is something I would normally use for a gratitude post.

I may have only stepped away from this gratitude practice for a brief moment, but I have noticed a shift in my mood and outlook and not it’s not a good shift. How easy it is to slip back into old mindsets of negativity! It is so easy to fall into old ruts and just get stuck following an old path. The good stuff, the moments that make you smile, a lot of times those moments don’t just happen. We have to make moments of joy happen and be open to recognizing hints of those moments when they happen spontaneously. It’s exercise. It’s lifting the five pound weight over and over until suddenly you don’t even notice you’re lifting the five pound weight. I do the work so that eventually I don’t realize I’m doing any work. Joy and gratitude just appears easily. Well…I’m noticing that I need to do the work.

So, I’m grateful for a weekend of rest and time with a friend.

WHAT I BROUGHT BACK

Michael and I drove down to my mom’s Thursday evening, arriving just in time for us all to go to bed. The two of us and Josephine slept on mattresses that had been plopped down in Mom’s living room. I woke up early Friday morning, achy and frozen. We dressed and took Mom out for breakfast. The whole time, Michael and I steered the conversation to the positive and hyping up her big move. Then we went back to her house to load up the vehicles with the things for her new space. This did not take long. Her new space is basically a studio apartment with a tiny living area, a bedroom and bath and a small kitchenette with a small fridge, microwave and sink. We arranged furniture and that was that. Mom is now in her new home.

There were some moments of struggle, things she wanted to take but does not need like her microwave. For the most part, the transition was easy. It did not keep me from worrying about her for the rest of the evening. Michael, my brother and sister-in-law and I went back to my mom’s house to chat and plan the next course of action. I did manage to fill two garbage bags with trash just from clearing and cleaning the kitchen counter, but I quickly ran out of steam. There’s a lot of stuff. A lot of stuff that could be useful to someone. There’s furniture and dishes and pots and pans. I picked up at least five can openers while clearing the counter. There is not a table top surface that is visible from all the piles of knick-knacks and trinkets and just junk. The three of us, me and my siblings, all agree that we need time and space before tackling all of it. This will be how we spend Michael’s Spring Break.

I struggled to sleep that night. Partly because of comfort. Partly because I was so itchy. At some point on Friday, I broke out in hives and have scratched for two days. A big part of my struggle to sleep though was how I couldn’t stop thinking of Mom sleeping in her new space for the first time. Would she feel safe and secure or would she panic and have a restless night, jumping at every new tick or tock sound? The next morning, Michael and I got up early to head back home. I took my mom’s car and a small toy caboose with The Peanut Man emblazoned on the side. I also came home with a mild cough and lots of sinus drainage, which is not an unusual state for me when in Oklahoma, particularly in the Fall. I brought along a slight sense of dread and worry for my mother’s future.

I knew the hoarding situation was bad. I did not realize just how much my mother has declined mentally. I had been told and I had witnessed some of her fogginess, but it didn’t really register. It’s sort of like when the doctors told Chris and I that they found a tumor on his liver. We joked and called it a tortilla chip. It was cancer. Yet to this day, I can’t say that Chris died from cancer. The tortilla chip killed him. I was only seeing my mother’s decline in the times I could get down to visit, which filtered the severity. My sister was seeing and dealing with it daily. I talked to my sister right before we left Mom’s to head back home and she had finally gotten a good night’s sleep. I called my mother on Sunday to check in and she sounded almost like an earlier version of herself. She sounded strong and pleased. She said she had slept through two nights in a row. She’s making friends and I got a picture today of her participating in the day’s group painting project.

I’ve dropped the worry and dread.

I’m keeping the car and the toy caboose.

For now, we are all okay.

MARTHA'S VINEYARD CAMP MEETING ASSOCIATION

It’s easy to catch a ferry to Martha’s Vineyard from Woods Hole. Oak Bluffs has the most flexible ferry schedule. The first time I visited, I rode the ferry to Oak Bluffs, rented a bicycle and immediately cycled over to Edgartown. I didn’t really pay attention to Oak Bluffs, not even when I came back to return the bike and get back on the ferry. This time though, I learned something about Oak Bluffs that I can’t stop dreaming about.

In 1835, some men from the Methodist church in Edgartown purchased a half acre of land for holding religious camp meetings. They built a shed with a pulpit in the front and this was their area of worship. The worshippers attending would set up tents around the pulpit. The first meeting was a success and the tent city started growing. Sometime between 1855 and 1865, there were more family tents and people started to extend their time on the island. Sort of mixing their religious meeting with summer vacations. Eventually a local carpenter was employed to build cottages. At one time there were 500 small family cottages, now there’s about 300, some of them have even been insulated for Massachusetts winters.

Sarah and I walked by almost every single cottage. It’s not hard to do. They’re packed close together and they’re tiny. Yet each one is unique in color, trim and porch displays. I realize now that I never took any pictures of a whole cottage. I focused on the porch displays and the gardens and the neighborhood cat. We stopped in at the gift shop, where we asked all kinds of questions. I wanted to know how many of the cottages still belonged to original families. Only six out of the three hundred are still within original families. There are strict rules to owning a cottage. They don’t allow them to be rented out for more than six weeks a year. You will need three letters of recommendation, one of those from your religious leader, to purchase a cottage. These rules are in place to protect the community feeling of the place.

This was it. This is the kind of place I’m always talking about where all of our friends build our own retirement community, except the houses are already built. The ocean beaches are an easy stroll away, as well as the grocery store and ice cream shops. We could take the largest cottage and have it fitted for a doctor’s clinic for the minor issues of aging and there’s a hospital in Oak Bluffs for bigger issues. We could have amazing trick-or-treat nights for the local children and caroling in December. Our Thanksgiving Table could be set up in the open air tabernacle that sits in the center of the community. Our parties would be epic!

Our community would be joyful.

Community and not taking pictures seems to be a recurring theme around here. But our stroll through this little village inspired more than retirement dreams and the pictures I did take. I thought up a whole story about two girls from different families spending their summers together, riding their bikes out to remote beaches and flirting with lifeguards. They change into different people during their time off the island, but return to being the same old same old every summer. They grow up. They have struggles, but they always come back to the village. It’s their sanctuary, their healing place. There are stories to be told here. Stories of love and loss. Stories of destruction and growth. Stories of finding something worth hanging on to forever. I want to rent one of those cabins for as long as I am allowed and use my time to research and write.

I want to go to camp.

SUNSETS AND NORTHERN LIGHTS

The sunset that evening was spectacular. Sarah called it a “Lisa Frank Sunset” and I don’t think there is a more appropriate description. We witnessed the electric pinks of the setting sun from the deck of the ferry as we traveled back to Woods Hole from Martha’s Vineyard. It was so cold and windy that I would have to take breaks, ducking inside to warm up before jumping back out into the wind for more pictures. This moment and then on our last morning when we stopped at the beach so I could get lighthouse pictures are two moments of joy on my timeline map, stuck in with thumbtacks. Both times, my camera was in my hands and up to my face and I was snapping away.

The night of the Lisa Frank Sunset, I got restless and walked outside. I looked up at the sky and could see brushstrokes of pink still lingering in the clouds. I thought it was leftover sunset and since I wasn’t really in a good spot for taking pictures, I didn’t bother. When I finally went back inside, I sat on my bed scrolling through Instagram. Chad shared an image of the Northern Lights taken by a friend and it suddenly hit me. I texted Chad to ask where his friend was and he quickly sent back an answer. His friend had taken the picture in Massachusetts. I hadn’t witnessed lingering sunset. I had been staring up at the Northern Lights the whole time and didn’t even know it.

And I didn’t take any pictures.

Months ago, when I dragged Michael out to Smithville lake to see the Northern Lights, the only way we could see them was through the camera lens. We saw nothing with our naked eyes. This is why I am not sad about not capturing any images from last Thursday’s solar flare event. Seeing the Northern Lights with my eyes is something I never thought I’d get to see or experience. So often, when we think of things we can’t imagine living through or experiencing, they are the negative life experiences. “I can’t imagine…” “I could never…” I don’t know how anyone could….” All of those sentences end in a description of destruction and loss. What if I started flipping this narrative? Not just flipping it, but making it happen?

I can’t imagine ever seeing the Northern Lights. Check

I can’t imagine eating a baguette while gazing up at the Eiffel Tower.

I can’t imagine ever having the kitchen of my dreams.

I can’t imagine watching the sunset over the Grand Canyon. Check

I can’t imagine going to Ireland with my mother. Check

I can’t imagine doing anything more than just taking the picture. Check

I can’t imagine ever seeing a moose.

I can’t imagine checking off everything from my list because my list will just keep growing. In the meantime, I will place another thumbtack in my mental timeline and start linking all the other thumbtacks together with string. Then I can pluck the strings and let the memories vibrate through my soul.

A CHANGE IN THE TIMELINE

The timeline for moving my mother to assisted living has been moved up. My sister is desperate to put my mom someplace where she’ll be too distracted with elderly activities to do dangerous activities. I guess there was an incident a week or so ago where my sister caught our mother standing on the kitchen cabinets, vacuuming the top cabinets. This gives me a real glimpse at my own future and the old lady that I will be because my first instinct was to shrug and say “good for her!” I had to pause and think about why this might actually be a bad or dangerous activity for my eighty three year old mother who has been prone to falls. My mom is bored. She needs stuff to do, preferably stuff that doesn’t involve electric hedge trimmers or climbing the walls.

I have to admit that I straight up panicked when my sister sent me the text that she was trying to get Mom moved by the end of October. Between work and Michael’s school schedule, October is FULL and I don’t know how I’m going to get down there to help out. My sister is all ‘you don’t need to help unless you want to help’ and I of course don’t want to help but I don’t want her to have to do this alone. I am also struggling to find an estate liquidation company that a. works in the area b. will handle smaller houses and c. call me the fuck back! I do not want to be cleaning out the same stuff I’ve already cleaned out once in the middle of winter. Or any time really. To make matters worse, any time anyone asks me how I feel about moving my mom into assisted living, I start crying. I can’t talk about it. Thursday, after my sister’s text, I got on my yoga mat and started sobbing in child’s pose. No one had asked me anything. I was just doing my practice while sobbing uncontrollably.

Nothing to see here.

I think the reason I can’t talk about my feelings on this subject is because they’re so complicated. I truly believe that the assisted living home is going to be wonderful for my mother. She will have people her own age to talk with (or at), tons of activities available to her and outside gardens to wander. She will have a community, something she hasn’t had since leaving Collinsville. On the other hand, I am worried that my mother will isolate herself and find excuses and or complaints for not joining in with her new community. I can only imagine that the feelings are similar when sending a child to their first day of school. Will they make friends? Will they be liked by others? Will they be sad the whole time? These are all the things I worry about with my mother.

Then there’s anger.

Honestly, I’ve been angry with my mother since 2013 for a number of reasons, one of them being not listening to some sound wisdom from her children to not rush to sell the old house. But she refused, was adamant that this had to happen RIGHT NOW! At the end of the day, she did what she wanted without considering the consequences or her own future. She purposefully isolated herself and she didn’t take care of her body. It’s like she gave up on life without having the gumption or follow through to truly give up on her life. Instead she takes out her frustrations of still being around on her children. We are the ones that have to sit and listen to all the ways she is unhappy, disappointed and unsatisfied. We are well aware that her unhappiness, disappointments and unsatisfaction began well before any of us were born, that we are just part of the long line of it since her birth. Knowing this does not make listening to it all any easier.

I let go of the idea and feelings that I am part of my mother’s long list of disappointments some time ago, mostly because I have no control over it. I’m not angry at being one of her many sources of unhappiness. I am angry that she never took responsibility for her own happiness. I am angry at her choice to take her life lemons and turn them into just straight up lemon juice, refusing to add sugar for a nice refreshing drink. Instead she has just marinated herself in that bitter lemon juice and I am angry at her refusal to take responsibility for her own actions and choices. And this lemon juiced soaked woman is who we are moving to assisted living. My sister confessed that she’s been having nightmares about our mother getting kicked out of the facility and I couldn’t assuage her concerns.

That’s a valid nightmare.

I suppose my tears come from worry that my mother will not be able to take advantage of her new home and will not find joy in the company of new friends. I worry that she will park herself in a chair in her room and never venture out of her room, not even trying. This thought along with no longer having a home to go back to in Oklahoma are the things that send me over the edge. My touch stone is broken and unrepairable and my mother is sitting in a room choosing misery. And the estate liquidation company will not call me back which means that we will have to deal with the contents of our mother’s house on our own.

For most of my life I have felt unprepared or trained for the task of adulting. I didn’t know how to go about buying a house or even saving money properly. There are adult things I purposefully avoided because I knew I was ill-equipped, like motherhood. I just straight up avoided the things I knew for sure no one had even bothered to mention to me, let alone teach me how to deal with. All right, there were some tasks I had to deal with because they were unavoidable. Bodies don’t cremate themselves. While I was making it up as I go, I did manage to do those very hard adult tasks. I didn’t say I was not capable. I am untrained to deal with the aging parent side of adulting.

But I’m dealing.

SOURED

The first quote in my new Saturday morning journal is something from Amelia Earhart and because Michael left multiple pages between the quotes, I have spent multiple Saturdays on the same story. The story that came forth was one of a woman trying to make a loaf of bread from a sourdough starter she had also created. So, it’s an autobiographical tale. I had left off the previous Saturday with the woman, Amber, eyeing her sourdough starter with suspicion. When I picked up the thread from there, I wrote about coming from a family that didn’t bake loaves of bread. This is true. We baked cakes, cookies and pies. Cornbread and biscuits. Rolls for Thanksgiving dinner. Never loaves of bread. I was raised in the west by people raised in the south. The leavening agent of choice was baking powder or backing soda and yeast sold in tiny square packets. Sourdough was something someone made in the north, on a coast.

I am not genetically predisposed for baking a loaf of sourdough bread.

Yet…I keep trying, tossing my failed attempts into the garbage each week.

As I tossed the latest failed attempt, Michael told me for the thousandth time about how he used to make really good bread. He worked at Subway and Planet Sub in his late teens, early twenties. So he knows how to make corporate bread for the masses. Then he asked if I just wanted him to make me a loaf bread, obviously oblivious and clueless about my motivations for my own attempts at making a loaf of bread. The truth is, I could also make a really good loaf of bread using the very same method Michael would probably use. I too have done this thousands of times. What I have not done, is create a loaf of sourdough bread with a crispy outside and a light, airy inside. I have not produced anything I want to slather with butter and jam or smashed avocado. Not ever. Not with the old starter and for sure not with this new one.

But it doesn’t keep me from trying.

Michael keeps asking me what he can do to help with the things I’ve been worrying about. “What would be easier for you?” is his go-to question. The answer I never give him, the truth, is that what would be easier is not have to answer the question at all. Just step in and take some action. He still hasn’t learned that while I am a very independent woman, it sure is nice to have someone else just step in and do something without having to be asked or told. You see it needs to be done, so you do it. But in all fairness, there is nothing I can do to fix or change or make things easier for myself either. I just have to accept the process and give in to the knowledge that there is nothing I can do.

All this time, while making my sourdough bread, I have meticulously weighed flour and water. I have had complete control over the ingredients, yet no control over the outcome of mixing those things together. And that’s the lesson. Each batch of bread is a reminder that there are only parts of a situation that you have control over. The moment I place the dough into the oven, I loose all control over what kind of loaf of bread it’s going to turn out to be. I just have to wait and see. If it fails, it fails and I just try again maybe with a different recipe or doing more to adjust the temperature of the house to accommodate a better rise. The important part is that I try again. And again. And again. And again. With each attempt, leaning into the unknown, knowing that I made an effort. I carefully weighed and measured.

All that’s left is the wait and see part.

I'M FINE

Last Thursday, I was in the middle of my morning walk with Josephine when I stepped and then rolled on a walnut ball. I twisted my left ankle and fell hard onto the sidewalk, scraping my knee and the palms of my hands. I laid there for a few minutes wondering if I was dead or just broken. Then I carefully peeled my body from the ground and hobbled home. And I treated the day like any other day despite having an ankle the size of a grapefruit and a bloody knee. I went to my chiropractor and literally said to her “I do not have time to take care of my body right now. Pop things together and let’s go.” RICE doesn’t work for someone who finds it impossible to be still.

Now, I have been sitting a lot with my foot propped up. In the evenings, I have been sitting with an ice pack draped over my ankle. I also have not taken Josephine on a morning walk since last Thursday. I am sitting at my desk now and stressing about the number of steps I am not getting today. I hardly ever sit at my desk. I’m mostly always standing because sitting is the new poison. I have an appointment this week for my yearly cholesterol checkup and my doctor is a new intern. I get a new one every two years, but this one didn’t want to authorize blood work before we meet. So I guess we’ll talk about my weight and my sporadic exercise routine. I can show her the lovely shades of purple and blue surrounding my left ankle. I can talk to my doctor about how I’m really trying to incorporate exercise into my daily life even though I’d really like to be taking a nap.

I kind of feel little bit like Artax stuck in the Swamp of Sadness.

About a month ago, I started my own sourdough starter. I had let my old one rot and die in the fridge and since I had already replaced it twice by asking my work friend for some of his, I didn’t feel like I could ask again. Also, I thought that by making my own starter, I might be more vested in taking care of it. Olga. I’ve named her Olga and she looks bubbly and smells ripe. I think it’s working but I have spent the last two weekends testing it out by trying to make a loaf of bread. Both experiments have produced hard dense, discus like structures that are very wet on the inside. To be fair, I never really made a spectacular loaf of bread with the old starter. It was mostly used to make spectacular pizza crust and maybe that’s how I should be testing out Olga. But I just want to get a loaf bread right. This feels like something I should be good at. Wait…this is something I used to be good at. The number of loaves of wheat bread I baked during my 4-H years was equivalent to a bakery and the bread was good. We liked eating the bread. All I can do now is produce lumps of dense dough very similar to the shape of my body.

Lump of my lump.

I get that I have a lot of mental space and energy being spent on other things right now. I have a day job that requires brain power and problem solving. I’m teaching a four week yoga session on building up a strong and healthy plank pose. I’m still teaching chair yoga once a week. I am always thinking about a current family situation and ‘always thinking’ really should translate to ‘always worrying’. Things will settle and be easier…next week…next month…next year. This is what I keep telling myself. I will be able to commit to my own body once some other things are settled. Once I’ve healed.

Or once I’ve made a decent loaf of sourdough bread.

ROASTED VEGETABLES

This isn't a recipe post. I just didn’t really know how to title this one. Depending on your general philosophy, the title can express negative and positive feelings. Are you a glass half full kind of person? Then you might find this post to be mildly pleasant. Who knows? And since I will not be advertising this one in my Facebook timeline, very few of you will end up reading any of it any way. I guess I could have titled this “The Things I’m Not Prepared For” but that’s such a big list of things. Or it’s a short list.

Things I’m not prepared for: everything.

We are preparing for my mother to go to assisted living. Now, I have been a huge advocate for assisted living. In fact, I urged my mother to consider moving into a retirement village when she sold the old house. Unfortunately, retirement communities had already taken up negative mental space in my mother’s brain and she flat out refused. Instead she bought the house next door to my sister, which further isolated her from her usual activities. Bit by bit, since moving into that space, my mother has become less active. We are now at the point where she doesn’t leave her house unless my sister takes her somewhere and the toll it is taking on her mental and physical well being is very obvious. Her doctor recommends we make the move by December.

I want to believe that my mother’s mental health is going to drastically improve once she is in her new little studio apartment. It is the time between now and when she is actually settled is the part that is making my stomach hurt. My mother took almost everything from the old house. Boxes of things I know I personally put into the dumpster while cleaning out the old home will randomly appear when I arrive for a visit. “Oh I found this stuff of yours. Do you want it?” I have stopped arguing or trying to make sense of it. Instead I enthusiastically say “yes!” while putting the box in my car. Then I drive it away and dispose of it properly, saying goodbye once again to things from my past. And I honestly do not think I have the energy to do this for a whole house again.

Every time I have visited my mother this year, she has been almost frantic with what she was going to do with all of these things. My sister and I have both told her that she only needs to think about the stuff she’s taking to the new place. A love seat. A full size bed. A dresser and nightstand. Clothes. She won’t need fifty bath towels or twenty sheet sets. She won’t need her pots and pans even. My sister and I both have told her this and that we will find someone to help us take care of the contents of what’s left. I have a number for an estate sale company, but these are all things we can not do until my mother is settled in her new space. We are at this uncomfortable holding pattern.

I was not prepared my mother to age so quickly. I was not prepared for her confusion or how soft her body feels now. I was not prepared for the boulder of guilt that I am now carrying around with me because I feel like I am not doing enough or I’m using my distance as an excuse to not do more. Some of that guilt boulder is made from apathy. I just don’t care about all of the stuff in my mother’s house. I don’t value it the way she does. I have never valued the things as much she does. This has always led to contention. She sees it all as her memories and I am inconsiderate for not placing the same values on these memories as she does. I will be taking her car and I feel guilty for that even though I have the blessing from both siblings. I don’t like asking for things, even when it will make my life easier.

Today, while trying to figure out a visit for Thanksgiving, I was looking at Airbnbs and it just felt so expensive. This is when it hit me. I no longer have a home in Tulsa, at least not one that accommodates all of us, Michael, the Cabbage and Josephine. I know I am always welcome at my brother’s. They have a spare bedroom or at least I think they do. But all four of us visiting is cramped and I hate doing that my brother. And all of these feelings and anxieties have been festering inside of me for weeks now. I don’t dare write about it all because my mother doesn’t react well to anything I’ve written about her in this space. I’ve been considerate of her feelings for oh so long, but I’m filled up to the max. I’m not sharing this to Facebook with the idea that this is the only way she knows how to get here.

The things I wasn’t prepared for was the hard stuff. Yet every time I am presented with the impossible, I have moved forward in some way….hopefully healthy. I may not be prepared for it, but I seem to be pretty good at improvising. Macguyvering my way through life, one sheet pan full of roasted veggies at a time.

LETTERS

Before we parted ways for different colleges, a friend and I agreed to stay in touch by writing each other letters. We had known each other since well before pre-school, our lives entwined through church and then school. A friendship born from just living in a small rural community. We joked that we had neighboring cribs in bed-babies class. This is how our Southern Baptist Church separated children out by age. It was a place to leave us while parents attended or led Sunday school classes. We were unavoidably tossed together and it was either be mortal enemies or just be friends. While I was chomping at the bit to escape for college, I was also a little nervous about leaving people behind and he was like a security blanket. So we agreed to write each other as often as possible.

The letters lasted for maybe two or three months, long enough for each of us to settle into new lives. I caught a recent episode of This American Life and the theme for the episode was about writing letters. It started with Ira interviewing some expert on letter writing and brain function. The expert letter writing person talked about the importance of hand written letters, how they convey emotion to the reader but also how the act of letter writing benefits the brain. This is what reminded me about those short few months my friend and I wrote to each other. Every letter I received from him was hand typed while I sent messy scrawling nonsense. Of course our letter writing didn’t last, nor did the friendship. I mean, we’re acquaintances. We both just sorted of faded off into separate worlds. I think he’s doing well, living the white man suburban dream with a wife and two kids, a job in finance. We haven’t seen or spoken in probably twenty years. Our worlds do not align.

That episode on letter writing sparked an urge to maybe write some letters, but then I couldn’t imagine what to tell people. The weather seems to always be a topic for letters. The weather here has been a week of pleasant followed with a week of being boiled and steamed alive. It just swings back and forth like that. In my visions, I picture myself writing in neat loopy letters, not my usual scratch. I think of telling someone in a letter about my tiny garden in the back that has grown wild and messy. There’s swallow tail caterpillars on the fennel and I’ve left them there unharmed in hopes of seeing them transform into butterflies. I think of writing to someone that I feel slightly hopeful for the future, seeing those letters neatly looping across a piece of paper, but the thing that keeps me from writing is the idea that I do not have enough words to fill a page.

Yesterday, I pulled the mail from the mailbox and sifted through the junk and the bills to find a postcard from Amani. It felt like she must have been reading my mind from two thousand miles away. I smiled back the picture of her smiling and flipped the card over to read the short message of love. Then it dawned on me that I did not have to fill pages with handwriting about sweltering temperatures and the next prediction of rain. A couple of sentences will suffice. So then I wasted an hour of time ordering a new set of postcards of some of my photos.

Maybe I’ll practice loopy cursive letters while I wait for the postcards to arrive.

THE THINGS WE DO NOT KNOW

I spent the weekend in Oklahoma not seeing everyone I wanted to see, but spending quality time with those I needed to see. I was able to see for myself that Talaura’s Sarge was alive and well. I was able to squeeze Talaura and hopefully give her a tiny break and an empathetic ear. Most of the rest of my time was spent with Robin, Traci and Chris. I dragged them all to the First Americans Museum, a museum Chris and I watched being built but never got to see its completion. The front of the building looks like the sun and for years, we watched as this sun rose because we passed the construction site on our daily commute to work. It was lovely to finally step inside this sun and see the tragic beauty of our first Americans.

Then Traci, Robin and I spent the rest of the day floating in Traci’s pool. As we floated about, rotating with the shade, we talked about all things and no things. This was the first time Traci and Robin had really gotten a chance to talk to each other and I watched a friendship begin as they learned the stories of each other. At one point, when our fingers were pruney from our time in the water, I told Traci about the hand written note I had found in Chris’s office while cleaning it out. The note contained half a date, a date I couldn’t account for and the thought of it has haunted me all this time. I asked Traci “Is it possible he knew he was sick before we moved?” and without blinking an eye she said “I would not be surprised.” She told me that he would have done anything for my happiness.

This is when I learned something about Chris that I didn’t know.

Traci told me that Chris had not always been the kind, empathetically generous person that most of us knew. She told me about him telling her he had met a girl and all his fears that this girl wouldn’t love him. She told me how I had changed him. I rolled my eyes at this thinking that it couldn’t possibly be true. All the years. All the time. My core belief is, has been, that Chris was the one who made me a better person. Definitely not the other way around. He’s the one who built a place for me to write, to put the camera in my hand, to put my career first. This is how I learned that support is not words but actions and I have spent lifetimes worried that I didn’t act enough in return. Turns out that was not necessarily true.

We made each other better.

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.