THANKFUL FRIDAY

The room where I usually do yoga at work has been occupied this week for online conference viewing. So I had to find a temporary yoga space. Because the weather has been so nice though, I decided to take my practice outside. Every day this week, I have unrolled my yoga mat in a shady spot and have had a lovely practice outside. Each time I have left my mat feeling like the inside space between my brain and skull has been scrubbed clean and slightly expanded, which sounds like it would be uncomfortable. I can assure that it is far from uncomfortable. It is in fact a rather nice feeling. It sort leaves you feeling light and floaty.

I read a paper recently that was published this year in Environmental Research (because sometimes I read scientific publications for fun). The paper was a study on mental health and the effects of indoor versus outdoor greenery. The study found that students isolated at home during the COVID pandemic experienced better mental health when exposed to more greenery. This could be indoor plants and gardens or outside green spaces. It didn’t matter. Plants and green spaces make us feel better. For me, it is and has always been outside spaces, mostly because I am not good with keeping indoor plants alive. This, I am sure, stems from a childhood spent outside climbing trees, flying kites, or reading books while lounging on a blanket, in the tall grass forte I’d built for myself in the pasture. I would wander in around dinner time, scratchy and dirty, with that same light and floaty feeling.

I had forgotten about that feeling or maybe I just took it for granted. Maybe I didn’t realize it was missing from my life because it was a constant for so many years. For so many years, I didn’t need that feeling. I am living a second life now and it is a lot different from the previous one. Last weekend, I spent most of my time sitting on a covered deck and staring at a lake. I did yoga on that deck in the early morning hours while a light rain fell. I watched large herons swoop down and skim the water. There was even a bald eagle that flew across the water and at one point looked like it was going to land on the railing of the deck. It was this time spent at the lake that encouraged me to take my yoga practice outside this week.

I am a scheduler and I am working on scheduling more moments of light and floatiness into my daily life. I signed myself up for a restorative aerial yoga class next week and I’m thinking of making Wednesday evenings roller skating evenings. Every day, weather permitting, is going to be outside yoga day.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

I don’t know what triggered me. Wednesday morning, I was walking Josephine in the park and thinking about the Grand Canyon. Then I started thinking about my Gold Star Family pass and how to describe my relationship with J to people; how he was not so much a nephew as he was a little brother. Then everything bubbled up and I was back in that moment on my yoga mat when Mom called. Everything from that moment flooded my cerebral cortex. The sound of my mother’s hysterical voice. Our friend Cindy explaining to me what happened. Me saying “but he’s okay right?” Poor Cindy had to be the one to tell me he wasn’t alright. Then I was crying while walking Josephine through the park as I missed all of what I have lost starting with J. I got home, fed the dog and headed out to the chicken pen to let the girls out for the day and immediately noticed that there was something wrong. White feathers littered the pen and I could see Foghorn’s lifeless body. At that moment, I felt everything inside of me sink down into a dark pit.

I have been staying just afloat of a layer of depression for weeks now. I keep telling myself that I’m just tired. I just need to readjust and get used to being back from traveling. I just need to eat more leafy greens. I’m not exercising enough. I’ve just got to try a little harder. I slap a smile on face and head out into my day and pretend. The homicide of Foghorn was the final pin I needed to deflate my raft. My mood was not improved with my scooter ride home either. Heavy rains caused flooding on the street that I take home. Cars were stopping in front of me. Cars were going around me or cutting me off. Each time a vehicle passed me on the right, where the deepest part of the water was, their car would send a wave of water over me, soaking the right side of my body. I’m pretty sure after the third wave, I yelled out “All of you all can go fuck yourselves.” It was a dangerous and cold ride home, but I made it. Then I looked out the kitchen window and only saw three chickens and Foghorn’s white feathers scattered around the pen.

And I can’t believe I am so sad about the death of a chicken.

So, I gave myself some time to wallow in all that I have lost, which is a lot. I’ve lost a lot. I’ve lost a whole chunk of my heart. So much so, that I am surprised the thing still beats. After a bit of wallowing in my losses, I got on my yoga mat and practiced a true savasana; the act of dying. I laid down on my mat and started saying goodbye to this life and all of the people in this life. I was unable to finish my goodbyes before my timer chimed to end my practice. I have a lot of people to say goodbye to and this is how I patch my raft. I take a moment to remind myself of all that I have. I flip the coin over, changing the focus from lost to found. When we bought the chickens, I convinced Michael to buy an extra one in case one of the little chicks didn’t make it. We never intended to have four chickens. Yet, nothing happened to any of those baby chicks. Foghorn had a very good six years of life before her homicide and that scooter ride may have been awful, but I made it home.

My heart may be missing large chunks, but it is still beating.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

About six years ago (more like seven), the Nelson opened a new exhibit in their sculpture garden and a group of us from work walked over to see it. We walked by the Kauffman Gardens on our way back and as I passed the open dumpster just outside the garden, I noticed a whole hydrangea plant laying there on top of a bunch of garden debris. I reached in and plucked that hydrangea out and then I planted it in my front yard. It did not die that first year. It did turn all dry and dead looking, but when Spring arrived the next year, the hydrangea sprouted new growth. My mother was in for a visit and we had been driving around. I was boasting about my garbage hydrangea as we pulled into my driveway just in time to witness Michael mow over it with the lawn mower. Despite being mowed down, that plant sprouted new growth again and it has continued to do so every Spring.

But it has never bloomed until this year.

Every year, I have searched this plant for blooms and not even a hint of bloom has appeared. It reminds me of a story my Mom told me once about the hydrangea starter that she brought home from her sister in Mississippi. Mom planted it in the dry Oklahoma climate and watered it daily. It survived for years without ever blooming. She said that one day she was out watering that plant and said to it “If you do not bloom this year, I’m ripping you out of the ground and throwing you in the trash bin.” Her hydrangea plant bloomed that year. I did not inherit my Mom’s threatening green thumb. I am pleased when something even grows and more than surprised when something blooms. There’s a link between the way I deal with plants and the way I deal with life.

The month of June has left me scooped out. It was a lot. It was emotional. Camp Wildling split me in two and I never really got a chance to process any of those feelings before heading off to the next thing. Every time someone has asked me about Camp Wildling, all I have been able to say before my throat closes up with tears is “it was good.” I cannot talk about it without crying. The stories from each person I met at camp and the hows and whys they made it to camp are roots implanted into my skin. To pull them out would stop whatever it is that is starting to grow from those roots, from the whole experience of Camp Wildling. I don’t have a clue as to what is going to grow out of all of it, but I think that it is really important for me to watch for whatever it is that blooms from this.

In the meantime, I have a lot of work to do and not just the kind of work that pays the bills. I need to move things from a list into an action. There are some actions that need to happen that I have no idea how to do or where to begin, but I will just have to stumble my way through it. For right now though, I am going to take a moment to be grateful for things that blossom and bloom.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

I am struggling with writing this post today. It has nothing to do with an inability to find gratitude in this week. There is a plethora of things from this week to fill up a Thankful Friday entry. We finally have a break in all of the rain, making it officially scooter season. I have managed to get up every morning for exercise and dog walks. I feel mentally prepared to teach my class next week at camp and a good idea of what I need to pack for next week. My optometrist told me that my eyes were not worse and I do not need a new prescription. Josephine finally got a haircut and is no longer tracking in mulch all the time. Things are really good right now. Hectic, but good. The thing I’m struggling with in writing about gratitude for this week in a meaningful way.

I was thinking about the things I wanted to mention during my class next week and my thoughts drifted to the word ‘practice’. During our staff meeting for camp this week, I heard so many of our staffers refer to a practice. A meditation practice. A self care practice. A mindfulness practice. Every part of daily life is a practice, but what are we practicing for? Every time I take out my camera I am practicing to be mindful of my surroundings in order to obtain a perfect picture. I am practicing for perfection. Now some of you will object to that idea and think there is no such thing as perfect, but hear me out. Some days in my photography practice, I only think about climbing up a retaining wall to take a picture of a magnolia bloom that is just out of my reach. Then there are the days where I don’t think, I just climb. And even though once I get up the wall, that magnolia bloom is still slightly out of reach, I take the picture any way. The picture I take may not end up as I intended, it may not be perfect, but the moment was perfect.

The concept of perfection is subjective and sometimes we need to set our own standards for perfection in order for us have something to work towards. I am practicing to create perfect moments in what is maybe a not so perfect day. I am practicing on sticking with my standards for perfection. Part of that practice includes being kind to myself and setting reasonable standards for perfect. That goes for what I write (or don’t write) in this space as well. So while I say this was a good week, I can also say that this was a perfect week. I am grateful for those moments during the week that have been perfect.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

We were out running errands and I cued up a song that I thought the Cabbage would like. Cibo Matto came on singing about “searching the city for SyFy Wasabi.'“ The Cabbage started laughing and said “How do you find these bands?!?” I then had to tell her the Cibo Matto has been around for a while and that I’m pretty sure they’re not together anymore. Then Michael said “No, really. How do you find these bands?” I just shrugged and said “I don’t know”, but Michael pushed the subject. I told him about hanging out at a dance club called the Icon when I was in HS. I did not elaborate, mostly because I wasn’t sure how to elaborate. Sometimes I feel like I made those moments up, like the Icon wasn’t real or that I didn’t spend late weekend nights flailing around the dance floor to alternative and techno music. I remember that the Icon had these giant speakers and there was always a group of goth kids sitting on top of them looking down on all of us flailing about.

But thinking on it, the Icon is not where I first heard of Cibo Matto.

The music I listened to then and sometimes even now was not easy to find. Radio listening choices where I grew up were country, classic rock, heavy metal, a top hits station and gospel. Mostly country and gospel. Indie alternative music did not have much of an audience. The Flaming Lips have more fans that live out of state (and country) than they have within their home state of Oklahoma. If I tuned the radio to an obscure AM station late at night, I could sometimes pick up a college radio station that played songs by The Smiths, Bjork and the Pixies. I would write down the names of artists and then search the music store for tapes. I would listen to those tapes over and over until every word and order of each song was memorized. I gravitated towards people who also liked this kind of music and from them I would learn about other bands. My friend Amy in HS, who was a year older and who I thought was the coolest (still think she’s probably the coolest), she had long red hair and then she shaved the bottom half of her head. She introduced me to the Melodramatic Wallflowers, a band no one probably even remembers.

From Chris, I would gain a greater appreciation for Oingo Boingo, Pink Floyd and Dire Straits. I met Chris right around the time I was really into Sting and the Police and we would listen to Ten Summoner’s Tales over and over in his dorm room. I lost my virginity while the Fields of Gold album played through the speakers. Traci would be the one to introduce me to Belly and the first time we were in a car that had satellite radio, we squealed at finding FRED radio. The two of us sat in a not too crowded area at a Snow Patrol concert once. It was the tour they did with the release of Chasing Cars. We were the only two in the audience who knew their other songs and our enthusiasm earned us VIP passes to the front of the stage for the end of the concert. Todd was responsible for the Shins and possibly Wilco. Cibo Matto came from a woman I worked with right after grad-school. I am fortunate enough now to have access to a public radio station that continuously plays music by independent artists.

The long answer to Michael’s question is that I found these bands by surrounding myself with people like myself. None of us really fit into any mold. We were popular without being popular. A mix of all the members of the Breakfast Club. Our choice in music keeps us all curious and willing to share our finds. “Oh, have you heard of…? You need to check them out.” I get texts like that from Chad all the time. I can link most of the artists I listen to to the people in my life, even to people met in passing or strangers. Robin and Neko Case. Talaura and Josh Ritter and every new musical to hit Broadway. Katrina and the Bee Gees. Randy and Joe Cocker. Dad and the whole Hollywood Cowboy genre. Mom and old musicals. Potatobiker Amy (which sounds like it’s own band name) and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. Sarah and Lizzo. Jason and Lo-Fi Chill. I mean the list could go on forever.

Michael and I do not listen to the same kind of music. Our separate playlists are as different as night and day, but even this has had me going out of my listening way to discover new music that I think we can enjoy together. It comes down to surrounding myself with people that encourage me to stay curious. That’s the long answer to how I find these bands and I am grateful for all of it.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

I had a rib out. I visited my chiropractor this week for a routine maintenance and she discovered my bottom rib was not where it was supposed to be. I told her that my left wrist hurt when ever I was in plank and my right ankle hurt every time I pressed into child’s pose. I don’t know what part of my body surprised her the most, the misaligned rib or the sound my ankle made when she put it back into place. I left my chiropractor feeling different. I hadn’t even noticed the whole rib thing so there’s no telling how long that’s been wonky, but I did notice the difference it made to have it back in place. I like things in order. I am at ease when things are in order. Tiddy, straight orderly lines are soothing. This is my weighted blanket and why I love roaming the isles of the Container Store. When my surroundings become too clutter and messy, I get real testy. Turns out the same is true when my body is out of place.

This week has been a full and busy week, but not in bad way. Mask mandates have been lifted at work for all who are fully vaccinated and all of us scientists tentatively took off our masks. Then we all grinned at each other because many of us had not seen each other’s faces outside of a Zoom meeting in well over a year. There has been an obvious lifting of the strain we have all been carrying on our shoulders since all of this started. Some of us, including me, have been face to face with all of the COVID data on a daily basis for over a year. Every day, I watched the numbers of deaths steadily increasing while at the same time I watched a portion of the general public ignore all guidelines. It did not take long to see the correlation between the two and the feeling of hopelessness to settle in. As scientists, we walked around with the weight of all of that data. As we suspected, vaccinations are turning all of this around and we can relax a little. I will still be wearing a mask at the grocery store and in crowded areas. If I am not feeling well, I will be wearing a mask in public. This should have been our general norm even before COVID.

I have received some real good hugs in the last few days. I’m talking about the kind of hugs that make you sigh with relief, the kind of hug that melts the tension in your body. Seeing the smiling faces of my coworkers and dear friends, being able to hug those dear friends, all of this makes me feel more hopeful than I have in a long time.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

I was perusing my recent copy of Yoga Journal and it is pretty much two pages of poses and thirty pages of mental health articles. Meditations, doshas, mantras, pranayama. All things for relieving anxiety and depression. As I’m reading through them, I started to question my own mental health. During the weekend, I overheard Chad ask Michael how we all did during the pandemic. Michael said “Cindy did great!” Which tells me that I am deserving of an Academy Award for best actress during a pandemic. I know why he partly believes that I have been just fine and dandy is because I have lost weight, but weight loss is not a good indicator that someone is mentally doing well.

I lost ten pounds when Chris died.

All of my conflict, despair, anger, anxiety…all of that stuff happens internally. I might get a slight tone in my voice or snip back a response to a question I think is a dumb question, but for the most part people do not know that on the inside I am a knotted ball of mess. All of the things I did last year were activities performed as a way of dotting i’s and crossing t’s. I thought that if I just kept moving, everything is would be okay. On top of that, I took on all of the things that required interactions with people outside our household, while doing my best to be supportive of those within my household who were convinced they were going to get COVID and die. I did a lot (still do a lot) to make the lives of those around me easier. I do this even though it is often one sided and I have always done this, but the pandemic added an extra layer of work for me to do and I am tired. How has it become the woman’s job to ensure the comfort of others at the expense of their own comfort?

It is not my responsibility make other’s lives easier.

I feel a shift, something bubbling up inside me that wants a different way of life then the one I am living, a life that isn’t focused on other’s needs and a little more focused on my own needs. Part of this change will require me to reclaim some independence and just do things. I need to stop depending on people who have never really proven themselves to be dependable. I need to dust off my meditation pillow and dig out my journal and colored pencils. I need to remember my own value and I need to start unraveling that ball of mess. Today, I am grateful for recognizing my own needs.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Camping season has begun. The weekend before last, I had Michael help me open up the camper in our driveway. While he mowed the yard, I proceeded to clean out the camper and pack in clean blankets. I got rid of some things we never really used and cleaned all surfaces. When I was finished inside, Michael came around and lubricated the bed rails and the stabilizers. We pushed the beds back in with no issues and closed the camper back up. I looked at Michael and said “let’s go right now!” He agreed that he was also ready to get the camper out.

We have an epic trip planned for June, but we will officially kick off our camping season with a trip to meet Chad and Jess this weekend. We have all been watching the weather like crazy and all reports predict rain, but we don’t care. We’ve been planning this trip for at least a month now. Jess called me the other day to talk about food and meal plans. Both of us were so excited. I said “I can’t wait to squeeze you!” Jess replied “Oh my god, I can’t wait to hug someone other than Chad.” and we both laughed and laughed. I knew right then that rain or shine, this weekend is going to be filled with hugs and laughter. AND I CANNOT WAIT! Life has been real hard for these two in the last few years. There have been at least two phone calls in the last year where I sat in a conference room crying with Chad on the other end of the line. To top it all off, last week they had to say goodbye to their dog, Moses. I am in desperate need of looking into both of their faces and making sure that they are still okay and being a shoulder to cry on if need be.

I would be in desperate need of looking into both of their faces under normal circumstances.

Today, I am thankful that camping season is here and that our first trip out will be with my framily.

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.