THANKFUL FRIDAY

I have written about my yoga practice here so many times. All of you know how important this practice is to me and the health of this body. I believe so strongly in the benefits of a yoga practice that I went to yoga teacher training and became a teacher. I teach because I want to share the joy that I get from practicing yoga. I follow @goodtalkthanks by Mira Jacob on Instagram and she posted something in her feed this week that made me shake my head at myself.

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It was like she was pointing a finger directly at me and I immediately went to giveindia.org and made a donation. Then when I went to remind everyone about Yoga In A Tiny Space, I made it clear that donations for class would go to giveindia.org. When the pandemic was at its worst in this country, I gave frequently to Harvesters and bought extra food for food banks every time I went to the grocery store. I did what I could to help the people in my community. But I limited the size of that community. My community is not just my surrounding area. I work with and am friends with a number of scientists from India. I have been blessed with tupperware containers of homemade saag paneer. The daily practice that keeps this body whole and fills this heart with joy is a practice that comes from India. Though I may never get a chance to set foot in that country, I am forever grateful for the gifts their culture has brought to me. Those gifts, this practice, makes the people of India part of my community.

The massive COVID outbreak that is happening in India right now is devastating. The average reported death rate for just Wednesday was 3,645 people. There is a shortage of oxygen and hospital beds and other medical supplies. The US has urged people working in the US Embassy to leave India as soon as it is safe. Things are really really bad in India right now and they could really use our help. I am giving because I have been blessed by the people of this country. I am giving because it is the right thing to do. I urge you all to consider making a donation too.

Thank you.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

I fell flat on my butt this week. That’s not a metaphor. In an attempt to lighten my heart towards the falling snow, I stepped outside to take some pictures. I knelt down to take a picture of an ice covered tulip and when I stood up, I completely lost my balance. I stumbled back and then fell over, my left buttcheek hitting hard against the cold wet pavement of the circle drive. I fully embraced this fall and let myself roll all the way back so that I was lying flat on my back on the cold, wet drive. I laid there for a breath or two before thinking “I should get up before someone runs over me with their car.” and I peeled my body off the ground. I stood and assessed the damage. A rough spot on my left palm and a bruised left buttcheek. A wet coat. All in all, it was a pretty minimal list of damages.

I heard on the radio that Riders In The Sky will be playing at a local venue here sometime next month and I was instantly taken to that year I took Dad to see them in concert. Every detail of that evening swam around in my head. Dad had arrived at my house dressed in his best western wear. He had on his nicest bolo tie and his dress cowboy boots. Of course he had his white cowboy hat. I took him to Cattlemen’s Steak House, THE cowboy place to eat in Oklahoma. I bought him a steak and we split a dessert before heading over to The National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum for the concert. Dad was so happy that he cried. Later on, I posted Happy Birthday wishes to a friend from high school that included wishes for cookies. She responded with how she would much rather have my Dad’s roasted peanuts. She had been in the habit of driving over to my parents’ home weekly for bags of roasted peanuts particularly during baseball season when she would be rooting for one of her children in a game. Her comment made me chuckle. After all this time, people still miss those peanuts and their visits with the Peanut Man.

This was the week for nudges from Dad. While I was driving home, the radio host mentioned his gratitude to all who had reached out to him during last week when his father had passed. He said that week was the hardest week he’d ever had. I felt myself falling backwards with his words and I embraced the fall. When I assessed the damages this time, I was surprised to find minimal damage. Dad’s passing wasn’t the worst week I had ever experienced. I had been prepared for it and had accepted it without any shock or disbelief. My memories of time spent with Dad do not fill me with bittersweetness the way other memories do.

My balance has been wonky, leftovers from my vaccination. I have been working in my daily yoga practice not just on balancing on one foot for an extended period of time, but on slow transitions between standing poses. Moving one foot back at sloth speed to come into warrior I. Taking my sweet time lifting up and transitioning into warrior II. That place in between, when you are moving from one thing to the next, that is where you build strength. The moments in between are where we find our balance. This is where we learn to embrace the fall as it happens and to assess the damages later. I have found that after committing to the fall and moving slowly into that fall that I find there is less damage.

For this week at least, I am left whole and filled with some good memories.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

The outtakes; they are the pictures I did not intend to take. They are the pictures I end up taking while attempting to get a different shot. They are mistakes. These photos are often left behind and discarded before I can even consider editing. Sometimes there are a lot of them just sitting in a holding pattern between maybe and trash. About once a month, I go into my camera app and delete them all. The camera app I use to take pictures is not the in-house camera app and it gives me the option of only storing the ones I plan on keeping directly on my phone. This way my photo album doesn’t get cluttered with a whole bunch of first pancake images.

Yet, these outtake images were the ones that I was drawn to this week. They were the ones that made me tilt my head, raise an eyebrow and think “wait. there might be something here.” The wind blowing the tulip I was focusing in on so that the bloom shifted out of frame seemed more interesting then the straight on shot I was striving to achieve. My attempt to show off my new tulle skirt, a whimsical impulse buy that has turned out to be my new favorite article of clothing, came across as delightfully messy and childish. I haven’t been unhappy with the pictures I had intended to take. Those have been nice, predictable, clean. The outtakes from this week have been a happy surprise, like finding five cookies in a package that was only supposed to have four cookies.

This is the time of year where I crawl out from under the depressive blanket I generally hide myself under during the winter months. I start to feel less like a dried up old husk of a person. Everything around me is beautiful again. I feel like making resolutions and actually sticking to them. My Instagram feed fills up with up close and personal pictures of all things in bloom and I start to feel a little bit like an actual artist. I even thought “these aren’t outtakes! This is art!” when I looked at those first pancake photos. Thinking of myself as an artist has never been easy for me. So when I have those moments that have me believing in myself, I grab onto them.

Camp Wilding, the adult summer camp where I’m teaching a workshop on phone photography, is approaching quickly. I bought a poster sized tablet to write down some talking points and I am thinking of devoting a whole page to outtakes. We are always striving for some preconceived notion of perfection. Sometimes that intense focus on achieving perfection causes us to miss the beauty of imperfection. So I would like to propose that we erase the word ‘perfection’ and shift that focus to the interesting, the beauty of the slightly off center, the deliciousness of that first pancake.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

One early morning this week, while Josephine and I were walking, we looked over to see four deer standing across the road from us. We startled each other and then the deer ran out into the street just as a truck pulling a trailer came barreling around the corner. All four of the deer leaped into the road, one right after the other, and I could hear the truck struggling to break and avoid a collision. The group of four flew across the path in front of us and into the park we were circling for our walk. Josephine’s body stiffened into high alert, her ears pricked up high and she bounced after them as far the lead would allow her to go. It all happened in a blink and I still can’t believe that truck didn’t hit any of the deer.

Then the deer completely disappeared.

We never saw them or encountered them again even though we walked in the direction they had fled. It is like they never existed to begin with and I made it all up. Or I imagined them all standing there, lit by the headlights of the oncoming truck. It brought forth a memory from a camping trip in Colorado. Chris and I had traveled with my parents and were set up on top of a mountain somewhere north of Silverton. Chris and I had pitched our tent a few yards from my parents’ camper. One evening, just as the sun had set, Chris and I were walking from our tent to the camper. We had created a space between us as we maneuvered over the rocky, muddy terrain. It was not a large space. We could still reach our arms out and brush our fingertips together. Suddenly, two large deer with big antlers ran right between that space Chris and I had created between us. It was so sudden and fast. I remember feeling the breeze the deer had created as they flew past us, leaving Chris and I standing there frozen. We slowly turned to look at each other, both of us with stunned looks on our faces wondering if that had just really happened.

There are moments I purposefully do not photograph, moments were I make a conscious decision to set the camera down. Sometimes the camera separates me from the moment and I am less engaged. There are times when I feel that it is more important to be engaged than to be the observer. Then there are the moments that I can’t capture in a photograph, like the deer or that first hummingbird to zoom up to the feeder. They are the moments that make you hold your breath for a few seconds as if to slow the moment, make it last longer. The moments I cannot capture in a photograph are those that are impossibly magical. This might sound like a challenge, but it is because I cannot take a picture of that impossible magic is what makes it so special.

Today, I am grateful for the impossibly magical moments.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Man…gratitude. I hate those weeks when I get near the end and start to write this entry and I can’t think of anything to write. That says to me that I spent the week being only mindful of the tasks that I need to accomplish each day and nothing else. My focus was seriously narrowed to work this week since it was my first full week in the office in over a year. That’s every day of packing a lunch, putting on a bra and driving my car to a place other than my house. It felt good. It feels good. I took advantage of my standing desk and I got more daily steps. I was finally able to get ahead on that mountain of slides I have to image, but I’m not gonna lie. I need a real hard nap.

I knew this week was going to be a difficult adjustment for Josephine who had gotten used to me being at home with her all day for two or three days in a row. At home days meant more snuggles, more playtime moments and (weather permitting) a good walk. I made it my goal to get up half an hour earlier every morning so I could do thirty minutes of exercise and take Josephine on a walk before getting ready for work. We have walked every morning except one because I thought it was raining. It wasn’t. The morning I thought it wasn’t raining, it was actually raining, but we were out the door before we knew what was happening. We walked in the rain anyway. On the mornings when I just didn’t think I could get out of bed early enough to do an X-tend Barre class or get on the rowing machine and do a walk, I chose the walk. And I am so happy I did.

I had forgotten how great those early morning walks could be. The neighborhood is at its quietest at this hour in the morning and at times it feels like Josephine and I are the only two people in the city. That might be an unsettling feeling for some, but I find that in those moments, my brain sparks with creative thoughts and words form a script for various scenes in my head. It’s still dark when we leave the house and the wet and chilly weather makes everything seem moody and dramatic. This morning we stepped outside into a thick fog and frost on the ground. I could not stop marveling over the way the fog and frost transformed the landscape. The way the street lights split the sheets of fog was hypnotizing and I paused often to take some pictures.

Before I leave the house in the mornings, Josephine gets two small cookies. The first cookie she gets after doing whatever trick I’ve asked her to do. Sit up, roll over, down and stay are all in her repertoire and sometimes she gets so excited that she will do all of the above before I can even tell her which trick to perform. The first cookie also comes with pets and love and a lot of words from me about how she is such a smart, wonderful little dog and I love her so so much. This morning, I spent a few extra minutes petting Josephine. I thanked her for our morning walks and then I said “Wait, I want to thank you for all that you do for me.” She looked up at me, slightly quivering with anticipation for the second cookie but obviously torn between receiving more love and devotion and the second cookie. So I stood up and said ‘okay’ which is her signal to head to her crate. She always makes a beeline for that crate and will be sitting there waiting for that second cookie. She’s very treat motivated, but aren’t we all.

So I didn’t get in thirty minutes of some form of exercise on two days this week. No biggie. I did get on my yoga mat everyday. Really, the most important part of this week were those morning walks. I don’t have to look hard to see the gratitude in those moments.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Talaura sent me a message saying “I think Chris would have pivoted from writing to podcasts.” and I instantly heard Chris’s voice in my head. This is significant because the sound of his voice has eluded me for years. I see Chris all the time, but he never speaks. The result is that I can’t remember the sound of his voice. I don’t have any recordings or outgoing messages to play over and over to remind me. That’s probably a good thing because how many times can you stab your own self, but still his voice is something I have missed. After all, it was his stage presence and voice that first attracted me. The moment he stepped out onto the stage in Much Ado About Nothing, I sat up in my chair and took notice. I thought “this guy is more than meets the eye and someone to pay attention too.” In that moment, I decided to put myself into is orbit. I did everything to make myself noticeable to him. I even changed desks in a class we had together so that I was sitting closer to him.

Chris was a man of few words, but those words were always significant. While he was the one making us all laugh with those few words, it was not as easy to make him bust out in laughter. You might get a chuckle. On those occasions where I made him laugh, really really laugh, it was like winning a goddamn prize. When I realized that I could no longer recall the sound of his laughter or his voice, it was like realizing I had lost my own hearing. I had grown resigned to the idea that this was something that would be gone forever, just another symptom of death. That simple one sentence of text flipped a switch inside my brain and suddenly there was Chris talking about Star Wars and laughing with his guest podcaster. It is a given that Chris’s podcasts would be SciFy related, but part of me also thinks he would do one on things that don’t really go together. Like nuts and gum or hotdog straws. I am sure he would have a lot to say about the xenophobia and racism plaguing this country, particularly because he would be a target for some of that xenophobia and racism.

You would think that all of this would make me feel sad, but quite the opposite has happened. I am filled with joy. It is like finding that favorite earring you lost ages ago but it was under the dresser the whole time. I am grateful that Talaura was able to help me move that dresser to find that earring.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Or should I say LIGHT AT THE END OF A LONG DARK TUNNEL?

Michael received a COVID vaccine this week. The two of us have been scouring websites to get him on a list to be vaccinated and we were reaching a panic point. His school is resuming all in-person classes on the twenty second. This pandemic has been harder on him mentally because he was pretty sure that if he contracted the virus, he would die. The day after his vaccination, he started talking about living his life again. I’m still waiting, but happily waiting with the knowledge that Michael can relax a little. I’ve put my name on every list and maybe, hopefully, by April I will also have been vaccinated.

Then we’re going to party like it’s 1999.

Except with masks if around people who have not been vaccinated.

Lately, my weeks have started out just fine and dandy. Until Tuesdays. I don’t know what it is about Tuesday. Usually Monday is everyone’s arch nemesis, but mine is Tuesday. If I am home on Tuesdays, the day stretches out into the longest day. There are added minutes between regular minutes and even sticking to some sort of normalish routine does nothing to shorten the time. Dusting, vacuuming, scrubbing the bathroom and kitchen cabinets, an hour (sometimes more than an hour) on my yoga mat, walking the dog, answering work emails, troubleshooting the problems I can troubleshoot through remote desktop, eating. All of those things takes up seconds of the added minutes in between the minutes. If I am in the office on Tuesdays, I seem to be so piled under the mountain of samples I need to image for a particular project that by the time I head home, I cannot see and my right eye is twitching. Even then, I can be found at my home desk, remotely accessing the microscope to transfer data or on a workstation to process that data until bedtime. It is not uncommon to walk past my open computer at home and see fluorescent images of planaria flashing across my screen while it is being processed through a macro.

My friend Sarah who is dealing with work and virtual school (her littlest, most mighty one is in virtual kindergarten) confessed to me recently that Tuesdays were her hardest days too. I can remember when the dreaded week day was Wednesday. Wednesday, smacked down in the middle of the work week, was the day that was going to determine if you were going to finish the week victorious or battered and bruised. When you woke up on a Wednesday, you thought if you can just make it through this day, everything would be smooth sailing for the rest of the week. Well, for me, Tuesday is the new Wednesday and I have decided to full on embrace it. I know now that Tuesdays are the days where I need to be kinder to myself. Maybe even lower my expectations for that day. Tuesdays are days for setting firm limits on attempting to fill up all of the time or when to stop working.

Who knows if Tuesdays are going to remain being my hardest day once I return to an ‘in office’ every day work schedule. The lesson learned here is that there are going to be days of the week that challenge the fuck out of you. The key is to finding ways to make that challenge work in your favor. Claim it. Own it. Beat the day back with a chair and a whip, but also know when to cry “UNCLE!” and give yourself a rest.

There is always gratitude in lessons learned.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Today, I pulled a blue egg from the chicken coop. It was perfectly intact and not frozen. I figured that Marguerite, our chicken of the blue eggs, was thinking about laying an egg when she hopped into the garage the other day. I heard her clucking around, hunting for a new place to set down an egg. Last year, she took to leaving eggs in the window well of one of the basement windows. When she was feeling really lazy, she’d just leave them in the middle of the yard. It is an Easter egg hunt year round at this homestead.

These are signs of Spring.

The week has been full of these little hints that Winter is waning. I turned a corner while walking the dog and nearly stepped on a small patch of flowers that had sprouted up on the edge of the sidewalk. Temperatures were just barely warm enough to ride the scooter to work. The green parts of my tulips are poking up out of the ground. These are the things I am grateful for this week. These are the things that have kept me going while fighting with a slide loading robot. By the way. If you are under the delusion that robots are going to take over the world, you should work with the ones I have to work with. Sentient beings they are not. Those signs of Spring have helped me battle the head cold that decided to invade my sinuses this week. I thought of all of those things while I cleaned the wall and floor behind the stove. A new one arrives tomorrow and I want everything ready to go. It was gross, but not as gross as I thought it would be. Actually, this week really threatened to kill me. If it wasn’t for that first scooter ride of the season and the flowers popping up, I probably wouldn’t even have the energy to be grateful for anything today.

So, here’s to signs of good things to come.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Recently, Michael was lamenting the lack of humor in teenagers. He had taken a small jar of hand cream into Ulta. It was one he really liked and was almost out of. He asked the teenager working there if they happened to sell it in a five gallon drum. The young woman replied very seriously “Sir, I don’t think we sell it in that size.” She did not understand that he was joking. Michael told me this story and said “I don’t get it. Didn’t you laugh all the time when you were that age?” I replied “Oh my god. Stephanie and I would laugh for hours at nothing. We laughed all the time!” Then I told him about a senior trip to San Antonio and a bathroom mishap that had Stephanie and I crying with laughter. In fact, thinking about the incident still makes me giggle.

Later on I sent a text to Stephanie relaying the conversation I had just had with Michael. She replied immediately with “OH MY GOD!” and then added exact details of the incident. She said “I’m laughing about is now and Cati is looking at me like I’m crazy.” Cati is Steph’s seventeen year old daughter and just the thought that Cati is now seventeen, makes me want to throw up. I was there when she was born and I don’t feel seventeen years older. Stephanie and I then continued to text back and forth about how hilarious we were and all of our shenanigans. I told her I would do all of it again and she replied “Oh girl, me too.” We ended the evening knowing that this was truth. Stephanie and I were our own sitcom right in line with Lucy and Ethel, Laverne and Shirley and the precursor to Liz and Jenna.

Before Chris, there was Stephanie. There is Stephanie. Our paths may have diverged. Physical distances can take a toll on friendships. We both have demanding jobs, but Steph has the added job of keeping up with her brood and all of their activities. Yet Stephanie and I have managed. We always seem to just pick up where we left off from our last talk or visit. It’s kind of like each of us are a tin can and we’re linked by a really long string. Every once in a while one of us will tug on the string and yell out. The other always hollars back. Stephanie is always there when I need her and good Lord, I hope she knows that I am always here when she needs me.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

I spent three days, four really, not leaving my house. I did venture out early Wednesday morning to take my weekly COVID test, but then I was right back at home sitting at my desk and staring at a computer screen. Occasionally throughout the day I would get an email asking for help and I would log into whatever microscope the user needed help with and troubleshoot their problems remotely. The problem with being stuck inside my house for this amount of time is that I start coming up with remodeling projects. Like when we replace the doors, can we make the kitchen door swing out instead of in? I shopped for new stoves. I imagined tearing out the kitchen and replacing everything. I thought about the possibility of cutting up into the attic and making a loft of some sort.

Then I did nothing.

On Wednesday, I checked on a coworker/friend and he replied with that gif of the dog sitting in the room that’s on fire and “I’m fine.” I told him to go eat some colorful fruit. Then I took my own advice. I forget to drink water and eat fruit when I’m at home. I also put my headphones on and listened to some Harry. This led to some chair dancing and outrageous lip syncing. Michael was in the process of calling parents, so I couldn’t sing out loud, but sometimes outrageously lip syncing is more fun any way. It is definitely some good silliness.

On Thursday, the sun came out and I went in to work. I had signed up to scan a whole batch of slides on our confocal spinning disk that has a slide loading robot. Lately, me and this system have not been getting along. There’s an issue with the robot that requires it to be turned off, unplugged, plugged back in and turned back on before it will connect with the software. Then there have been issues with the software where it will just decide to flip to a different objective in the middle of acquiring an image. Setting up a batch of slides has been taking hours and has left me crying and furious. So when I walked into the microscope room yesterday, I was ready for whatever gremlin this machine was going to spit out at me. I set up the batch and the darn thing ran without a hitch. On the first try! I don’t even care that later on in the day, it crashed twice.

Last night, I dreamed of Spring. Brightly colored flowers where lifting their petals to the sun and I walked through them, gently brushing them with my finger tips. In the distance, a thunderstorm brewed and a tornado funneled down from the sky. I turned my back to it and continued to walk through the field of flowers. The temperatures here are warming up, but snow is still predicted for Sunday. We are not on the edge of Winter, but fully in the thick of it. It will be weeks before those brightly colored flowers even begin to peak out of the ground. So for now, I will turn my back to the cold, but my face to the sun. I will eat colorful fruit and engage in some good silliness.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Last year, I signed myself up to teach a digital photography class at Camp Wildling, an adult summer camp hosted by my friend Kelly. Then the pandemic came along and wrecked all plans. I mean all plans. That photography showing that I was supposed to have, didn’t happen. In fact, I’ve started giving away the photos I had framed for that showing. I gave one to my therapist and two to my brother and sister-in-law to hang in their cabin. I don’t need to tell you about my wrecked plans because we all experienced wrecked plans. Last year was the year we all sat on hold with the tunes of elevator music playing woefully in the background. We are still on hold, but there is at least a glimmer that we won’t be finishing another year like that.

Kelly is offering two summer camps this year, a June one and another one in August. I told her to put me on the teacher list for the June camp. At the time I told her to do that, I was not in a place where I felt confident in being able to teach people to take better phone pictures. I still do not feel qualified, but I’m going through with it all anyway. I found this NPR article on Imposter Syndrome to be helpful. Although it is not a ‘syndrome’ in the medical sense, I can admit to being plagued by Imposter Syndrome in pretty much all aspects of my life. I almost never applied for my current job because I did not feel smart enough to work where I work. Once I was hired, I had so many doubts that I would ever be able to fake it enough to keep my job, but I have had enough interactions with some post-docs to know that I am very well qualified to do the job that I do.

So how is this class any different?

When I really start to dwell on it, I can see all the reasons why I am an imposter photographer. For one thing, it is not a paid gig. It’s not even a side hustle. It is a hobby (?). I think calling it a hobby is weak. I don’t consider my yoga practice a hobby and I would put my photography practice in the same category as I would my yoga practice. It is who I am. It is the only meditation practice I’ve been able to make stick, but does having a hobby qualify someone for teaching a class on the subject? This is where that article came in handy because it shared five easy steps for overcoming Imposter Syndrome. The first two steps sang true to my heart. Step 1 tells you to stop judging yourself and ask yourself how you are really feeling. I have never cared a blip about what other people thought of me, but oh boy can I turn myself inside out with how I think of myself. All of those doubts are symptoms of how I am truly feeling, which is really fucking depressed right now for reasons that don’t need to be listed.

This is where step 2 comes in to save the day because this step tells you to take stock of your true talents. This step forces you to look at the good parts of yourself. I may desperately hate giving presentations for work or performing on a stage, but I excel at teaching subjects that I am passionate about. It is what makes me a good yoga teacher. I love doing yoga and teaching is just sharing that love. I love taking pictures. I love finding ways to improve the photos I take with my phone. I am not ‘teaching’ a class on digital photography. I am sharing my knowledge and love of digital photography. There’s a difference. As long as I remember this, I’m going to be just fine. I am thankful for the opportunity to do this thing that takes me out of my comfort zone, this thing that scares me just a little bit.

I am thankful for the opportunity to share.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Here are the reasons why a daily and weekly gratitude project is so important: I have not slept more than four or five hours a night in over a week. My brother tested positive for COVID on Saturday. He’s doing okay, but I’m worried that my sister-in-law will get it and I don’t think she’ll be able to handle it so well. My chin is going through a second puberty and is broke out worse than I ever had breakouts as a teen. Chris’s AARP card showed up in the mail recently and it was a kick in the gut because Chris would be turning fifty tomorrow if he was still with us. It makes me furious that he’s not here so that we can laugh about him turning fifty and taking advantage of all the discounts. I watched a number of stories on this week’s CBS Sunday morning that left me ugly crying on the couch and one of the surprising one’s was the interview with Stanley Tucci. His wife has been gone for eleven years. He has remarried, but he said that grieving his first wife never gets easier. It is the same now as it was eleven years ago.

It is the same now as it was nine years ago.

On the outside, I look like I’m holding my shit together. I nod and smile at people. I try to speak with a light tone of voice. I tell when I am asked that I am fine and good and I hope that I’ve put on the appropriate disguise to make that look believable. On the inside, I am a dark hole of nothingness. I feel like I am two people, the one I present to the world and the sad old lady I’m trying to hide from the world. Pandemic fatigue has settled in deep, creating an even heavier blanket over the grief that comes with February. This grief has me questioning every aspect of my current life. It always does and then I feel the failure of not living my life in honor of Chris. I am stuck looking through the album of the things we never got to do together instead of turning the pages to the pictures of all the things we did get to do. I keep telling myself that I am doing my best, but I really don’t think that I am.

This week, Harry Styles the Caterpillar attached himself to the lid of his new habitat and built himself a cocoon out of his own hair. We learned that Harry has already been living for sixteen years and when he emerges as a moth, he will only live for about two weeks. His timing for turning into a moth could not be worse. Temperatures here are going to plummet and stay cold for the next few weeks. When he emerges, our choices are to let him free inside the house to lay eggs somewhere or release him out into the freezing elements. The moth is Chris. We did all that we could to make the last two weeks of Chris’s life comfortable with as much joy as we could muster. This is what I will do for Harry Styles. I’m going to make his last two weeks with us as comfortable as I can because I cannot control the weather and that is the lesson here.

Learning to accept the things you cannot control.

That is a real hard lesson for some of us. Am I grateful to have learned it? I guess… not really or maybe the assignment for this particular life lesson didn’t need to be so harsh. But I’ve learned it and I’ve learned it well. I’ve learned what I can control and that is the memories I choose to conjure up in my mind. Those memories trump the last two weeks and even the last two months of Chris’s life. Those memories include every goofy face he made, every kooky hilarious idea he came up with, and how he made me laugh every single day. Those memories are what I am grateful for today.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Weeks ago, Michael discovered a woolly bear caterpillar on the rug outside our garage door. I don’t know how the little guy never got stepped on or froze to death, but when we found him there was a thick layer of snow on the ground outside. So, we didn’t want to just toss him out into that kind of weather. Michael scooped him up into a mason jar and I named him Harry Styles, for obvious reasons. Not long after we saved him, the Cabbage was with us. She was sitting at the coffee table, eating dinner, when Michael asked me how Harry Styles was doing. The Cabbage sat up straight and exclaimed “Something’s happened to Harry Styles?!?” in a panicked voice. I quickly reassured her that the real Harry Styles was fine and then I explained that we had named our new pet after the famous (cute) pop star.

And he/she really has become our new pet.

This week, Michael carefully extracted Harry from his jar so that he could transfer the woolly bear to new a clean jar filled with kale and spinach. This is something we do once or twice a week. Every time one of us does this, we are amazed that Harry is still alive and well. Neither one of us have any skills in caterpillar husbandry. From internet research, we know not to fill the bottom of the jar with water. A misting of water every day is great. We have learned by watching that Harry prefers the stems of the spinach to the actual leaf. Michael had provided him with a stick so that he can form a chrysalis and eventually make his transition into an Isabella Tiger moth. By the time all of that happens, it should be warm enough outside to release him back out into the wild. Somehow, between the two of us, we have managed to keep this little guy alive.

This feels like a miracle, but I don’t know why. We have managed to keep several living creatures alive. We bought four chickens instead of three because I was worried one would die. All four chickens are happy and healthy. There have been days when I didn’t feed the Cabbage because she never asked for food. She’s still alive. The cat, for goodness sake, is surprisingly still with us. Josephine’s the only one in the house who I am not surprised is still happy and healthy. She is the most well cared for creature in this house. Pretty much every day, I will cradle Josephine’s head in my hands, look her in the eyes and sing I Honestly Love You to her as I am sure every dog owner does with their dogs. Maybe what makes Harry Styles the Caterpillar a miracle is that he exists at all. He made it through the dog door and into our garage during a snowstorm. That in itself is miraculous.

We are surrounded with tiny miracles. The scientific explanations for those tiny miracles only enhances my feelings of amazement for them. Beck isn’t wrong when he sings “It’s like wow!” because it truly is ‘like wow!’

THANKFUL FRIDAY

When day comes we ask ourselves,
where can we find light in this never-ending shade?
The loss we carry,
a sea we must wade
We've braved the belly of the beast
We've learned that quiet isn't always peace
And the norms and notions
of what just is
Isn’t always just-ice
And yet the dawn is ours
before we knew it
Somehow we do it
Somehow we've weathered and witnessed
a nation that isn’t broken
but simply unfinished
We the successors of a country and a time
Where a skinny Black girl
descended from slaves and raised by a single mother
can dream of becoming president
only to find herself reciting for one
And yes we are far from polished
far from pristine
but that doesn’t mean we are
striving to form a union that is perfect
We are striving to forge a union with purpose
To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and
conditions of man
And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us
but what stands before us
We close the divide because we know, to put our future first,
we must first put our differences aside
We lay down our arms
so we can reach out our arms
to one another
We seek harm to none and harmony for all
Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true:
That even as we grieved, we grew
That even as we hurt, we hoped
That even as we tired, we tried
That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious
Not because we will never again know defeat
but because we will never again sow division
Scripture tells us to envision
that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree
And no one shall make them afraid
If we’re to live up to our own time
Then victory won’t lie in the blade
But in all the bridges we’ve made
That is the promised glade
The hill we climb
If only we dare
It's because being American is more than a pride we inherit,
it’s the past we step into
and how we repair it
We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation
rather than share it
Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy
And this effort very nearly succeeded
But while democracy can be periodically delayed
it can never be permanently defeated
In this truth
in this faith we trust
For while we have our eyes on the future
history has its eyes on us
This is the era of just redemption
We feared at its inception
We did not feel prepared to be the heirs
of such a terrifying hour
but within it we found the power
to author a new chapter
To offer hope and laughter to ourselves
So while once we asked,
how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe?
Now we assert
How could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?
We will not march back to what was
but move to what shall be
A country that is bruised but whole,
benevolent but bold,
fierce and free
We will not be turned around
or interrupted by intimidation
because we know our inaction and inertia
will be the inheritance of the next generation
Our blunders become their burdens
But one thing is certain:
If we merge mercy with might,
and might with right,
then love becomes our legacy
and change our children’s birthright
So let us leave behind a country
better than the one we were left with
Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest,
we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one
We will rise from the gold-limbed hills of the west,
we will rise from the windswept northeast
where our forefathers first realized revolution
We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the midwestern states,
we will rise from the sunbaked south
We will rebuild, reconcile and recover
and every known nook of our nation and
every corner called our country,
our people diverse and beautiful will emerge,
battered and beautiful
When day comes we step out of the shade,
aflame and unafraid
The new dawn blooms as we free it
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it
If only we’re brave enough to be it

- Amanda Gorman

We have a short amount of time to show the world that we are better than our past. I believe we can do it.

Today I am grateful for hope and the belief that we can be better. I am grateful for the inspiring words from this amazing young woman., Amanda Gorman. I have made bold some of the lines that have been swimming in my ears since hearing her speak. I am grateful to have celebrated my birthday on such a historic day. I am grateful for all of those beautiful wishes of happiness, love and joy.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Today is my mother’s 80th birthday. She probably doesn’t appreciate me telling the world that she’s turning 80 today, but I find the idea of aging and living a great number of years to be wonderful. Have you y’all watched Soul yet? It truly is a work of art and shows the beauty of living. That movie and I share a life philosophy. Each year, your life fills up with something wondrous and by the time you’ve come to the last year of life, you can look back and say ‘Wow!’ Every year you survive is a year worth celebrating.

The year my mother was born, the US had not yet entered World War II. During the month she was born, Franklin D Roosevelt was sworn into his third term as President of the United States. Starting on January 13th, all persons born in Puerto Rico are considered US citizens by birth. On January 23rd, Charles Lindbergh tells Congress that the US should negotiate a neutrality pact with Hitler. On January 27th, The US Ambassador to Japan tells Washington that there’s a rumor of a planned surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. A lot happens in that first year of my mother’s life. Captain America and Wonder Woman make their comic debuts. Joe DiMaggio starts his 56 game hitting streak in May against the Chicago White Sox. The Mammoth Caves become an official National Park and Roosevelt signs an order to make every fourth Thursday in November, Thanksgiving Day. Walt Disney would release Dumbo, it’s fourth animated feature. That rumored attack on Pearl Harbor would happen in December, near the end of the year, and catapult the US into World War II.

All of that was just one year. Just think about all of the stuff that has happened between then and now. All the amazing discoveries and art and music and culture. My mother has been alive for all of it and is still well and kicking enough to see and experience so much more. Her life is so full and yet there’s still room for more. This is what I want for myself. I want a life so full that by the time I get to the end, my body can no longer contain the fullness of my soul. Of course, we are not under ideal circumstances to celebrate my mother properly. We’re going to do the best we can without exposing her or others to COVID. Hopefully this time next year, we can have a big Happy 81st Birthday party or I can take Mom on a trip. Something non-virtual. It doesn’t matter to me how we celebrate Mom’s birthday this year. I am just grateful that we get to celebrate another year of her life. I know how fortunate I am to still have her with us.

Happy Birthday Mom!

THANKFUL FRIDAY

The other day, I watched a How To video for expressing anal glands on a dog. I should probably tell you why I was watching this video. You see, Josephine has been licking her butt more than anyone should ever lick their butts. She has not been scooting around on the carpet or anything. Just licking and making annoyingly gross smacking noises while she does it.

Warning: This is going to get real gross.

Michael keeps telling me that we need to reel in our spending. Christmas put a dent in our budget. I thought I was being resourceful by looking into Josephine’s problem with out paying for vet visit. I started looking into Josephine’s butt problem and the number one reason for this behavior is anal glands. So as a way to save us some money, I thought maybe I could teach myself to express her anal glands. I watched the video and I saw things I wish I had never seen. Ever. I am doing you a favor. DO NOT EVER WATCH SOMEONE PERFORM THIS PROCEDURE! This is not an area for cutting back on spending.

So I decided that I was calling the vet. I could also have them look at a suspicious lump Josephine has on her right shoulder. It’s been there for ages, but it has recently gotten bigger. I thought I’d just get her into the vet and get all of these little things taken care of, but before I could make that call, that bump that’s been getting bigger burst open. And some awfulness ensued. I managed to clean the area without throwing up and then I called the vet and told them what happened. They managed to find me an appointment for that evening. My vet is still doing curbside service. Someone comes out and gets your pet and then the vet calls you talk about her discoveries. So I spent the evening waiting in my car while Josephine got poked and prodded. The bump, though very very very gross, is not a big deal. It’s just a simple sebaceous cyst, that now is clean. If it returns, we’ll have to discuss options, but for right now there is no need to worry. Josephine is on antibiotics just in case and after flushing out the cyst, the vet took care of Josephine’s butt.

There is a list of gratitudes here. At the top of the list is that Josephine is okay. A very close second is for the privilege of being able to pay someone to care for my dog. There are 10 million fewer Americans in the work force this year as compared to last year. Many have considered surrendering their pets because they can’t afford to feed them, let alone pay for veterinarian care. I am very grateful that I do not have to make such a difficult choice. While Josephine’s excursion to the vet will tighten our budget, it will not break the bank. I read a blog entry a long time ago about a woman’s massage experience. She ended it with “Life is gross. Carry a flashlight.” That line has stayed with me. Those two simple sentences are such sage pieces of advice. It says to me that you should always have a light to guide you through the grossness of life.

We should all be carrying flashlights right now.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Michael and I are both members on the Nextdoor app. If you are not familiar with this app, it’s like Facebook for neighborhoods. I tend to ignore most of the postings because often they’re someone complaining about a person walking in their neighborhood. Earlier this month, one woman posted a “Be On the Look Out!” post about seeing a woman wearing a ‘beanie’ taking a picture of a house. Michael and I were sitting on the couch when we read that one. We looked at each other and I said “That could have been me.” Really…it might have been me she was talking about. There’s just too many ‘be suspicious of everyone’ posts for my liking. Sometimes the app comes in handy when you’re getting rid of crap or when you want to know what animals have been spotted in the area recently because some guy posts a monthly animal sightings list.

This week, we noticed a post from a woman asking the neighborhood “Is this your cat?” with a picture of a white cat that could have very well have been Albus. She said that the cat in the picture looks just like her cat, Zero (I’m real jealous I didn’t think of that name for Albus), but that it wasn’t her cat. She said that she knows there are two identical white cats because on one evening, she had both of them in her house at the same time. The woman was okay with this cat being in her home. She just wanted to know where Zero was. Michael responded to her post saying that we have a white cat that looks just like the cat in that picture, but our cat was home with us. At least we think he’s our cat. Now I don’t know. I don’t think it was Albus at that woman’s house because she said he was snuggled up with her kids. Albus is skittish with people. He is a rare sighting for strangers that walk into this house, but now I’m wondering if sometimes these cats switch places. Like they are Parent Trapping us. It is even possible that there are three identical white cats out there, since we know that Albus isn’t the cat in the picture she posted. These cats are just rotating through houses around the neighborhood.

There is a peace of mind in knowing that Albus has a safe, loving and warm place to go to when he gets fed up with us. He’s never happy with us when we leave him for a weekend with a bowl of kibble. Albus has been very vocal about it whenever we return home from a trip. Every time he starts bitching, I’m surprised by it because he’s so indifferent to us in general. Well…except me. He comes to me when he can see the bottom of his food bowl. My lap is his favorite sleeping spot. Albus wants nothing to do with Michael, the guy who saved his life. Last night, I really studied Albus’s face while he was curled up in my lap. I took particular notice to the two scratches across the bridge of his nose. He has a nick in one ear. Not a big one, but a tiny little notch. His tongue sticks out a little bit because he has teeny tiny front teeth, like he never lost his baby teeth there. His eyes are yellow-green but sometimes they look black in certain lighting. I’m trying to memorize him in case I have to point him out in a line up of white cats.

We’ll keep our pet door open for Zero too, if he ever needs a place to stay.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Last night Michael and I celebrated the first night of Hanukkah. We lit the menorah candles. We ate latkes and some candy we’d purchased for the holiday. We said the Hanukkah prayers. Three blessings are said on the first the night of Hanukkah. The last blessing is the one that made me pause.

Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Sovereign of all, who has kept us alive, sustained us, and brought us to this season.

Neither of us are Jewish, but I, at least, have found that lighting the menorah during Hanukkah to be a grounding and meaningful way to celebrate this time of year. In the times that we have been doing this, I have said the prayers with more of an emphasis on just saying the words correctly. More reflection has gone into the act of lighting the candles than the words being said. I realize this now probably because the previous years have been fairly easy. I have been taking these blessings for granted. Isn’t that just the way? When life is good, we take it for granted that it will always be good. Sometimes I think that I should be above that. That after all my losses, I would always remember that each day we survive is a blessing.

Today I give thanks for this reminder. I give thanks that we have survived and that this family has been lucky enough to survive this year without any losses.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

On Thursday, I finally dug out some Christmas decorations. I wasn’t thinking about the Christmas tree when I redesigned the dining room and I ended up not leaving any space for it. There’s no option to move furniture around to other rooms. This is a small space and I have puzzle pieced my furniture into it in a very specific way. Maybe it was a subconscious decision. I always get a little bit twitchy about Holiday decor. It is too much clutter and it seems like such a hassle to lug all of the decorations out, set them up and then take them all down. I do it and every year I complain about doing it. So I thought, maybe this year I’ll just hang our stockings and set out the menorah. I’ll make a new wreath for the front door and be done with it all.

While I was in the basement, digging through a box of decorations that usually get recycled for wreath decorations, I came across the small aluminum tree that I had purchased many many years ago. I ignored it at the time, but later on I kept thinking about that little tree. I thought about how it wouldn’t take up very much space and could even sit on the dining room table. I pulled all the little aluminum branches out of that box and plugged them into the old wooden stand. Then I strung a small strand of battery powered lights all around it. I dug out the ornaments that Michael and I had collected together and the Babar replacement ornament Chris found for me. I carefully hung them onto the little tree, set out a funny gnome and the Abominable Snowman. And Voila! We have a Christmas tree. It is small and simple and represents the Christmas we plan on having this year.

The memories of Christmases of past are sometimes too much for me. Last week, I finally finished the Table Story about fried oysters and it was the hardest thing I had ever written. It is a story of Christmases of past. Finishing it left me feeling hollow and raw around the edges. Like a scraped out pumpkin. Honestly, I haven’t really felt like writing anything since. This time of year is difficult under normal circumstances. As I placed the final touches to the tiny Christmas tree, the Flaming Lips’ Do You Realize started playing through my speakers. I sort of melted because I do realize and sometimes happiness does make me cry. Sometimes remembering happiness of the past makes me cry a lot.

There is gratitude here. Gratitude for the happy memories of the past and gratitude for the happy memories we are creating. Gratitude for this big bowl of bitter sweet soup.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

The first week of November, I entered my word count on the website for NaNoWriMo, all 1,535 words of Table Stories. I have not been back since, but I have been slowly working on this project. On Wednesday this week, I started work on the fifth story in the series. It is a story about fried oysters and our family’s Christmas dinner tradition. I even had a text conversation with Katrina about what goes into making fried oysters. I still have no idea what goes into making fried oysters. Sometimes there’s milk involved. Cornmeal seems to be always involved. All of that is making its way into the story, but as I started writing, some feelings bubbled up inside me that I didn’t know I was holding onto. Then I wrote the most painfully honest sentence and the weight of that sentence slammed into my chest so hard that for a moment I could not breathe. I sat in my desk chair, with my head resting back and cried. I was not prepared for the memories those words would end up conjuring. I sent a text to Katrina telling her that I did not think I could write this story. It was too hard.

But I kept writing.

Because at the heart of that story is a story of joy.

I may not be keeping up with the required word count for NaNoWriMo, but I have noticed that I am more organized this time around. Creating an outline centered around meals has brought order to the stories rattling around inside this brain. Though many of those stories are happy ones, there are moments that contain great sadness. I am finding ways to blend the joy with the sad. That’s not right. I think I have always known how to blend the joy with the sad. That is what this exercise in writing has really done. It has reminded me that while I know too well how to tell a sad story, I also know how to tell a joyful story. I know how to blend the two together with words the the way I live my daily life. We live in a blend of emotions.

November is not over, but I don’t see me hitting a 50,000 word count in a weeks time. Still, it has given me a start. It has given me a direction. It has brought me a clear path. Sometimes that is all I need.