THANKFUL FRIDAY

My mother and I went to the annual garden sale at the Tulsa Botanical Gardens way back in the Spring. I bought some hostas and this weedy looking plant that was advertised to be a butterfly plant. The hostas got planted in the front of the house where they have done well. They had tall lovely blooms and everything. The weedy plant went into my back flower bed where it was tortured by the chickens. In fact, everything but the sage was tortured by chickens. I planted salad greens. They never sprouted. I planted whole pepper plants. They were ripped right of the ground. The back flowerbed is mostly just dirt, but the sage and this weedy plant are doing just fine.

Now when I say “doing just fine” I mean the sage looks wonderful. The weedy plant has two large stalks coming off of a main woody rooted stem. Both stalks look like they have been trampled by bears and roots are visible, but it’s green and healthy. This week it started producing small yellow daisy like flowers. The stalks are covered with buds. When I realized that this plant was about to have blooms, I was stunned because I had pretty much given up on this flower bed. I was seriously at a point where I did not know what I was going to do with this space. It isn’t pretty. The plants I have in there look good, one nicer than the other, but it is still not a pretty space. There’s lots of open dirt areas with chicken shaped indents. I have a plan for that space that will happen next year that will hopefully be prettier and chicken proof, but for now I just let the chickens roll around in the dirt. Then here I have this plant that looks like it should not be alive, but not only is alive, it is blossoming.

What?!?

This brings me to my knee (literally). So my ACL is torn as in torn torn. I have three ligaments instead four holding my leg bones together. Next week, I have an appointment to get fitted for a new fancy knee brace and I meet with a physical therapist. The thing is, I feel fine. Pressing back to child’s pose is still uncomfortable, but walking around and all the other activities have been great. This week, I put myself back on to my previous exercise schedule. Two to three days of X-tend Barre and two days of strength training. I do all of this on top of walking the dog, getting on my yoga mat and getting in around 11,000 steps a day. The more people I talk to and the more medical journal articles I read, I become more and more convinced that surgery is not going to be necessary. At least not for many many years down the road, if at all.

My knee and that weedy plant I don’t know the name of have a lot in common. Actually, I have a lot of broken parts, yet here I am, still movin’ and groovin’. Now here comes the pep talk that you didn’t realize you needed. We are all going to be just fine. We may have broken parts, but we are resilient. We are still growing. The thing to ask yourself now is what’s going to blossom from this resilience.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

The October edition of Camp Wildling is happening in two weeks. I started panicking last week about being unprepared, but shoved the panic aside for my trip to OKC. I knew that I had a lot of things planned for the month of September and I knew that some activities were going to bleed over into October. I went into September with my mind set on focusing on one event at a time before worrying/planning for the next thing on the list. This week, I ordered a bunch of things from Amazon to put into camp mailbags and then patted myself on the back because now I feel mostly prepared for camp.

Years ago when I was in Yoga Teacher training, my teacher, Karen, told us that we cannot multitask. This sounds like baloney because if you are like me, you currently have five things open on your desktop and are under the impression that you are doing things in all of those windows. This is an illusion or a lie we tell ourselves so that we feel like we are being productive and getting things done. We are also under the impression that if we do not look like we are doing a million things at one time, then we’re not being productive. The reality is that we are rarely getting things done. Taking away the idea that we are capable of multitasking is a bit of a blow to our egos. We have been conditioned to believe that the ability to do a number of tasks all at the same time is what successful people do to be successful. I fall victim to it all the time. I think I am being productive by working on multiple tasks at once, but then I feel bad when most of those tasks are left unfinished at the end of a day. I feel this the hardest when I am trying to make some healthy life changes.

Focusing on one event at a time for the month of September was easy. There were weekdays between events which gave me time to gather my thoughts and energy for the next event. I also set boundaries. I told myself not to focus on the events yet to come so that I could fully enjoy the now of the current event. What if I organized my day-to-day life with these kinds of boundaries, refusing to move on to the next task until I had completed the current task? That may not be realistic, but I can organize my day in a way that commits chunks of time to one task and one task only. I only need to set a timer and say to myself “Cindy, for the next hour you are only doing this.” Then, I need to adhere to this plan. No screwing around on Facebook or perusing news stories or random online window shopping. This is my goal for October: set boundaries that allow me to focus on one task at a time.

I’m grateful for the mindful intentions I set for September and I am working towards more moments of mindfulness in October even though October doesn’t seem as packed as September was with all of the things. In theory, that should make this month’s goal an easy one. Except I know that it will actually be more of a challenge because it is one thing to apply this once a week, but quite another to apply it to the day to day. I feel up to this challenge though, in an unexpected way. And that is something to be grateful for.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Way back, in what feels like another life (it kind of was another life), I taught a lot of yoga. Teaching yoga made me feel joyful and confident. The day-to-day job and living conditions did not make me feel joyful or confident. So I piled on classes to offset. When we moved to Kansas City, I put a hold on teaching yoga to give myself time to settle into a new job and a new home. During this time of settling in, my personal yoga practice grew into something very strong and beautiful and it is this practice that has kept me from leaping off tall buildings.

I am now back to teaching two yoga classes a week. The new schedule started last week and yesterday was the first time in over two weeks where I rolled out my mat for my own practice and trying to remind myself that reason for this is not because of my new teaching schedule. Teaching yoga changes your personal practice. Your personal practice turns into poses to balance out your body from teaching and lots of savasana. In the before now times, I always struggled to find time in my day for my own practice. Between work and teaching gigs and the time spent getting from one place to another, I just didn’t have the time for myself. The boundary line between teaching yoga and having my own practice got blurry. I am injured and I’ve been taking my time getting back into things like walking and yoga, but I don’t want my classes and my injury to become my goto excuse for not getting on my mat. Yesterday’s practice was gentle and challenging and ended with a fifteen minute savasana. It was everything I needed and a reminder to maintain some boundaries. It is no surprise for any one of you to hear that I struggle with maintaining boundaries. Many of us find it difficult to maintain healthy boundaries. The boundaries I set for myself maintain a very important work/life balance, one that doesn’t take much for me to mess up.

This is the snowball time year. We are only three months away from a new year. This is the time of year when our boundaries keep us sane. My situation is no where close to what it was all those years ago. I’m happy with my job and content with my living space. There is no reason for that teaching yoga/doing yoga boundary to get blurry. I am grateful for my hiatus from teaching yoga. That time allowed me to deepen and establish a strong personal practice, but that time away also made me appreciate how much I enjoy the art of teaching. I am grateful for this balance of feeling really good about the classes I teach and really good about the alone time I spend on my mat.

And I feel really good about this current balancing act.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

I was talking with a graduate student about some imaging they wanted me to do for them in the next few weeks. She asked about a current project I am working for another person in her lab and I said “that person has the microscope booked for every Friday in September.” Then I said “Which I guess means I only have two more batches of slides left to run for them.” Then the two of us got really dizzy and had to sit down. What in the world has happened to September?!?! Robin sent me a message asking me for a little bit of detail around my visit at the end of the month and I don’t really have any details. I’ve sort of been working on a whole one-weekend-at-a-time time frame. It seems to be the only way I’m keeping any thing straight. Then Kelly posted something about it being one month until October Camp and I reached for my paper bag to breathe into.

I feel unprepared.

My knee feels a lot better, but the doctor has ordered an MRI and then threw out words like “torn meniscus” and “laparoscopic surgery”. I think those are the worst case scenarios. Most likely it is just a strain that will require some physical therapy. I am able to teach yoga with only minor adjustments and I can get my scooter out of the garage without falling over. Those are the only things I need to be able to do right now. This is my mantra for the week because the guilt over not getting up to exercise or walk the dog set in some time on Wednesday along with a generous portion of anxiety. This might be too much to share, but my period is late and it is starting to look like it is not going to happen this month. I could have miscalculated. That’s easy to do now that I don’t have pills to remind me. I do not believe for a second that pregnancy is the reason, but I’m not so sure I am ready for my age to be the reason. Which is most likely the case. So, this week I sustained an old person shouldn’t be jumping on a trampoline injury and my ovaries are starting to shut down.

Let’s just say that I am feeling really sorry for myself right about now. In my heart, I am sixteen years old, but my body is doing everything it can think of to remind me that I am forty five. Forty five isn’t even really that old! I mean, Michael asked me recently what it felt like to not even be halfway through life right now because he truly believes that I will live well past one hundred. I ride a scooter! I have roller skates! I tell immature 13-year old boy jokes. I wear tulle skirts with tennis shoes. I love to jump on trampolines! And this week was a reminder that I shouldn’t (not can’t) do some of those things. Mainly jump on trampolines. Sitting around with my knee elevated all week long just gave me ample time to stew over it all and it has forced me to dig deep for gratitude. My knee feels a whole lot better, better enough to think that dog walks can proceed next week. I’m not, nor have I ever used these ovaries any way. September is zooming by because of all of the fun activities that planned for it.

October will not be that much different. Now is the time to really embrace moments of rest so that I may better enjoy the moments of fun ahead.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

In April of 2018, Tammy Duckworth, a senator from Illinois, became the first use senator to cast a vote on the Senate floor with her newborn. Sen. Duckworth’s baby was just a week old and she wanted to be able to keep her baby close while still doing her job as a senator and previous rules of the Senate only allowed Senators and a few aids on the floor during votes. The Senate changed those rules to include children under the age of one. Sen. Duckworth thanked her colleagues for “recognizing that sometimes new parents also have responsibilities at work.” This was a huge step forward in recognizing the struggles of working parents, but that’s not the topic I want to discuss. The thing that I want to talk about is the reaction all of those Senators had towards that newborn when Sen. Duckworth rolled her into Chambers. Every single Senator in that room melted. They all wanted a chance to peak at the swaddled baby. Everyone was smiling. Joy filled up that space.

Now, I will always be an advocate for abortion rights. My body, my choice and it’s none of your business. I will also strongly stand by my decision to not have children. By no means does either of those two beliefs mean that I don’t like children. Quite the opposite. In particular, there is nothing more soothing than gently rocking side to side while holding a baby against your chest. Babies just have this beautiful ability to calm and bring joy. While I do believe that the world would change for the better if we all just took twenty minutes to lay down in final relaxation, I also believe that twenty minutes of gently rocking a baby would have the same effect. It seems that I am compiling a list of things that would make people calmer and happier: final relaxation, babies, puppies, kittens, roller skates and scooters. Maybe baby goats.

Tomorrow marks the 20th Anniversary of the 9/11 Attacks. For some of us, it’s really hard to image that it has been twenty years since such a horrific event occurred. Those events have morphed and changed this country in truly awful ways, but there were some good changes to remember. There were about a hundred babies born in the weeks that followed 9/11 whose fathers had died in the attacks. Jenna Jacobs, interviewed by People Magazine in 2016 in regards to her son who was born six days after the death of his father said “These children are what comes after 9/11. They are the joy, the salve, the ointment. They’re the love.”

One of the men that was in J’s unit recently had a baby and they named the new baby after J. In fact they call him Jaybird, which is a nickname we used for J. This week, my brother, Randy and sister-in-law, Katrina got to spend the evening with this little family. Katrina got to hold and snuggle this baby and they all had such a wonderful evening together. I could tell by the brief texts that I had with Katrina afterward that both she and Randy left that visit with fuller hearts. What a beautiful gift this man has given to my family by naming his newborn after J. I hope that meeting Jaybird was a healing salve for Katrina.

If you get a chance to cuddle a baby (or a puppy) today, do it. You won’t regret it.

THANKFUL FRIDAY AND A BIT OF BUSINESS

First of all, my COVID test came back negative and we are all breathing a big giant sigh of relief. I will say that I did not make good use of my time off. I did some cleaning and I mowed the yard, but mostly I sat on my bed, locked in my bedroom watching hours of Gossip Girl. I didn’t watch this series when it first aired and I have to say that it is positively terrible. But I’m addicted. I’m only near the end of season two of this six season series, but they have already used every cliched story line in the book. Most of them are all in the lines of teenage boy has an affair with an older woman, one of those older women was their teacher. It’s stupid and the perfect thoughtless television to be watching while quarantined. Particularly when you lack motivation for anything thought provoking. I also avoided all news and only took minor glances at social media.

Though, I am not thankful for feeling like crap for half of that time or stressing about the possibility of having COVID and passing it on to those around me, I am grateful for the time off to do nothing. The truth is, I haven’t been feeling like participating in day to day things for a couple of weeks. I was feeling run down and brain fried well before coming down with some sinus funk. I started falling back into some old patterns like meal tracking and calorie counting, things I do when I’m feeling bad about myself. I had gotten out of the habit of routinely using my Neti pot and with an allergy season sprinkled with poor air quality, it is no surprise to me that my sinus cavity finally revolted. This is my loop. I never allow myself down time and it takes an actual illness for me to give myself permission to slow down. I’d like to tell you that I’m learning and maybe I have learned. Maybe I’m just stubbornly obstinate.

Stubbornly Obstinate is my new band name.

Now for some business. I might have mentioned that I would bring Yoga in a Tiny Space back to Zoom in September. That plan is going to be put on hold for an indefinite amount of time because I have a new teaching gig. I want to see how this new schedule plays out before I decide if I want to add to that plate. I also have something scheduled for every weekend in September. Taking my Zoom yoga class off the schedule makes room for some personal time. Personal time that I would like to fill with more trash TV.

I mean inward self reflection.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

I’ve started looking at cameras. And lenses. I’ve started tucking some really expensive camera equipment into my Amazon wish list. This might surprise some people because I’ve been such an advocate for phone photography. What’s the best camera? The camera that you have on you and that camera is on the phone that most people have with them all the time. So of course I’m still going to push people to learn all they can about the camera on their phone. I am also going to continue to take pictures with my phone camera, but I’ve been wanting something more.

I can hear Michael right now saying “but you hardly ever use the DSLR that you own now.”

He’s not wrong. I use the Nikon only for the zoom lens and the rare occasion I want to hold something more substantial in my hands while photographing things. The zoom lens on my Nikon, when set up on a tripod has given me the best images of the moon. That is the only difference between that camera and my phone camera. Both are 12 megapixel cameras, meaning they both have twelve million tiny squares for acquiring information. The higher the megapixel, the higher the resolution, but also the more light a camera can collect. This also means better resolution for larger prints and the ability to crop an image while retaining resolution quality. Whenever I’m teaching someone to use one of the microscopes, I always talk about balance. I talk about how more pixels is not necessarily better and the caveats to collecting more light. In these situations more pixels and more light means taking longer to acquire an image and causing damage to the sample in the process. Some of this can also be applied to photography. Twelve megapixels is perfectly acceptable for a 16x20 print and even more acceptable for posting online.

So why do I have a sudden craving for a camera with higher megapixels? What’s the point?

I was talking to my friend Sarah about this dilemma of wanting a new expensive camera and she said “Photography is a big part of your life, so…maybe you should get it.” Then Talaura told me that “sometimes wanting something is justification for having it.” Right now I feel like I’m wedged somewhere between beginner and novice. I will probably never consider myself a professional at anything, but I do feel ready to move over the line into more challenging photography. I don’t know how I’m going to make this happen, but I am truly grateful to have some women in my life who see me and support me in my artistic endeavors.

GRATITUDE

I did not forget to write a Thankful Friday post. I just ran out of time last week. Michael has returned to work and the Cabbage schedule is back to an every other weekend schedule. This also means that I am back to a weekly evening chore schedule and every evening last week, after dinner, I would do some sort of activity. One evening activity was bike riding to ice cream, but the other evenings were devoted to cleaning out the chicken coop or cleaning the bathroom. One chore an evening to keep me from spending all of Sunday doing all of the things.

The back-to-school schedule also means a return to getting up early on Saturdays to do the grocery shopping. This part of the routine begins with a breakfast sandwich, coffee and some writing, while sitting in a quiet corner of one of my favorite bakeries. For the past two years or so, all of my Saturday morning writing has been done in my Fortune Cookie journal. I have to admit that I have not opened that journal in many months, but this was not the journal I took along with me on this particular Saturday morning. Instead, I took a journal that I started writing in during our last camping trip. I started a story there that I just keep adding bits to when ever I get a chance to sit down and write. I know this sounds antiquated. I am potentially writing something that could be a book and instead of sitting at my desk and typing it out, I’m writing it down with pen and ink and paper. There’s two reasons for writing a story this way: no distractions and no commitment. Paper journals do not have access to online distractions like Facebook or Google searches about Ben and J.Lo. It also means that I am under no obligation to do something with this writing. Maybe I’ll do something with it some day, but for now, it’s something just for me.

Today, I’m cooking a large pot of brothy beans. I’ll sauté some cabbage and Italian soysage to serve on top of the beans along with some good crusty bread. Our friend, Heather, is coming over for Sunday dinner and because I did most of my chores before Sunday, I can spend the day leisurely cooking beans and putting together a simple meal filled with heart. I might also spend some more time with my journal. I don’t know, but even though back-to-school scheduling tends to mean more work for me, I am grateful for a return to something a bit more structured. The structured part of my time keeps me anchored, which keeps me from spinning out during my unstructured time. The gratitude comes in finding a balance between structured and unstructured time.

So, my Thankful Friday post may be a little late. I just like to think that I needed to marinate a little bit longer on my thoughts of gratitude. That’s part of that unstructured time.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

I had an 8 AM dentist appointment this week and it was probably one of the highlights of my week. My dental hygienist only sees me twice a year, but every time she leans back my chair to get to work, she asks me about something I told her I was going to do at my previous visit. This week was “how did grown-up camp go?” She remembered from my last visit in February that I was going to go to Camp Wildling. She’s fantastic. She always tells me that I’m doing a great job at flossing. At the end, the dentist comes over and he also asks me follow up questions from my last visit. On this visit, he told me that my teeth are a ten out of ten. I left the dentist’s office with clean teeth and a hop in my step. All of that nightly flossing and taking care of my teeth stuff seems to be paying off.

Then I opened my email to see a new email from Macy’s furniture department and I yelled out “We’re getting our new couch!”

We are not getting our new couch. Once I actually read the email, I found out that we have a new estimated delivery date of 11/30/2021. Yes, that says November thirtieth. I think what really rubbed me the wrong way was in the email, they said “Thank you for your recent furniture order.” as if we bought the couch last week and not six months ago. No one likes the current seating situation in the living room. The animals walk over to where I’m sitting in the chair I bought to go with my desk and they just stare up. The cat was so desperate to lay on some part of my body the other day that he flopped down on my feet. Josephine just sighs heavily before stretching out on the floor next to me. The Cabbage was on vacation with their mom last week and the first thing they asked when we picked them up was if the new couch had arrived. They didn’t even really sit that much on the old couch and they are tired of this seating situation.

We have a futon in the basement that (on top of the futon mattress) Michael has placed an actual mattress. That’s where he sleeps when the Cabbage is with us. I bought a simple fold up bed frame to put the mattress on so that we can haul the futon up to the living room. My friend Sarah asked me if I wanted to borrow her son’s bean bag chairs. I am not, but I told her that I might as well because we’ll already be sitting on a futon like it’s 1996. All I need now is a stinky bong for the coffee table and a lava lamp. I know that 90s fashion is making a comeback. Anthropologie just sent me an advertisement for sweater vests, but recreating my college day living room decor is too much.

I know what you’re thinking. Where is the gratitude in this story?

Three days a week, I walk Josephine up to Tower Park (also known as Snack Park because that’s where she finds all the good snacks) where we walk the whole loop of the park. There are regulars who walk there that know the two of us by name and we greet each other every morning. There are also regulars who sleep in this park. In the last few months, I have noticed the number of homeless sleeping in this park has increased. One man has even attempted to build a cardboard house in the baseball stands. I’ve taken to carrying granola bars with me to leave discretely next to a sleeping person. One morning a few weeks ago, Josephine and I arrived at the park just as a city park’s ranger was clearing people out. One by one, they filled up their carts or bags with their belongings while Josephine and I walked the park. At the end of this, Josephine and I had a place to go. The park people did not, though I believe that they should be allowed to sleep in that park because they have very little options. Their homelessness is not about being unable to find a job. It is about mental instability and addictions. It is about once having a stable life and then losing a job and or having huge medical bills and then finding themselves suddenly homeless without any know how to pull themselves out of homelessness.

So my couch problem is a problem of privilege and in the wake of what I just told you about the homeless in the park, a bit of a disgusting problem to complain about. I am grateful for my current uncomfortable seating situation.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

I had a couple of medical appointments on Tuesday. I knew that one of those appointments would require blood work and since I didn’t want to worry about getting to appointments and work, I decided to just take the day off. Then I decided to book an appointment with the massage therapist before my chiropractor appointment. Michael and I had just returned from an extended weekend of camping in South Dakota. Tuesday would be my day of recovery. After the the first doctor visit and giving up two large vials of blood, I headed over to Heirloom to treat myself. I sat on the patio with my notebook, a cup of coffee and a large piece of toast slathered with homemade chocolate hazelnut spread, alternating bites with writing some words.

The hour I spent in that space was a slice of perfection.

The next morning, I had just started my outside walking loop at work when my doctor from that first appointment called me. She told me that she had received the results of my bloodwork and that all of the numbers looked really good. The numbers I was concerned about the most where my cholesterol numbers. It is baffling to me, and everyone who knows how I eat and exercise, that I struggle to keep my cholesterol numbers in a healthy range. Every year, I go in for these tests with a sense of dread and honestly, a bit of shame. I feel ashamed for having high cholesterol. Yeah… I get it. That’s dumb right? Except I grew up during a strategically commercialized diet consciousness of ‘low fat’ and ‘eggs are bad for you’. Everything was about lowering cholesterol and fat. FAT. FAT IS BAD. High cholesterol means I’m fat and unhealthy and I need to fix myself.

This is where my brain goes every time I think about my cholesterol numbers.

This year, my doctor told me that all of my cholesterol numbers where in the healthy range. She said “Everything looks just wonderful. Keep on doing what you’re doing.” Those words were a validation. In the previous years, I had two things going against me when it came to my cholesterol numbers: genetics and birth control. I can’t do anything about my genetics. I recently had to update my family history for my doctor’s visit and genetically speaking, I am screwed. The important thing is that I have enough information of genetic health to know what preventative actions I need to take, but there is only so much prevention I can do. The birth control thing has nothing to do with genetics and was an easy fix. Just stop taking it. I really truly believe that dumping my birth control is the thing that pushed my numbers into a healthy range, but also I needed to hear from my doctor that I am doing all the right things. I needed this win.

This has been a really good week and one filled with easy gratitude.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

This is the time of year when all the weather reporters around here start talking about the heat dome sitting on top of the city. It’s pretty hot and muggy. This is not a problem for me. I kind of love it, but Michael does not. At all. I picked out new ceiling fans last week and Michael spent two days getting them installed. First of all, the new fans work on all the speed settings. They are the right size for the space and they don’t make any noise. Most importantly, the new fans actually move cool air around. Michael can often be found standing under one of these ceiling fans, eyes closed, and face turned up towards the ceiling. He has stopped measure the temperature in degrees but in the number of shirts he’s worn that day. Four shirt days are pretty hot, but four shirt and two pairs of shorts days are unbearably hot.

We never want to take the camper anywhere during this time of year. Then, we get to the end of the camping season and I have regrets about not using the camper enough. This year I anticipated this weather and camping ennui and found us a campground up north. Turns out that we can travel about six hours north and reach more comfortable temperatures. Last night Michael was looking at the high and low temperatures for the area we will be in and he got very excited. He booked us some kayaks for one day and said “This is going to be so nice. The weather is going to be BEAUTIFUL! You picked a good spot!” I’m currently patting myself on the back for my forethought.

I am surrounded by people who have moved to KCMO from far more glamorous places, but also people who have lived here all of their lives. It seems that they all have mixed feelings about living in the middle of the country. Kansas City Missouri was definitely not my first choice for a place to settle down. It wasn’t even on the list and yeah, it isn’t perfect. I could make a list of things I don’t like about this city, but the list of things I do like about it far exceeds the don’t likes. One those things on the ‘like’ list is the convenience of leaving the city and not having to travel far to get to some interesting places. I don’t have to travel a great distance to get away from the heat. So, by the time you are reading this, that is exactly what Michael and I will be doing. Traveling north to slightly cooler temperatures.

This week I am thankful for air conditioning, new ceiling fans, and the promise of cooler temps to come.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

The other night, I had a dream that made me believe in reincarnation and past lives. It was set in the 1800s, in a small but busy Western town owned by a shrewd businessman/rancher. This shrewd man had a gaggle of sons that he had spread out around town bullying people into order. No one sneezed in this town without the man’s permission. One of the sons, who’s legitimacy was always in question, wasn’t quite as bad his brothers but managed to get himself into a number of scrapes. On time in particular, he found himself being called out to a quick draw. All the people gathered along the street, half hidden by various barrels and carts. I was in that crowd and I looked over to see a boy raise a pistol to shoot the not so legitimate son. He had been hired by the gunslinger who had called for the draw. I jumped from my hiding place and tackled the boy. We wrestled, rolling in the dust, and I was finally able to grab the pistol free just in time to hear a gunshot. The shot had been fired from the son’s pistol, killing the gunslinger. I shoved the boy aside and said “I hope the penny he gave you was worth it.” I started to pull myself up from the ground when the son walked over and helped me up, dusting dirt from my skirt. He placed the palm of his hand on the side of my face and we looked into each others eyes. He asked me if I was alright and I nodded my head.

Then I woke up.

Their story rolled around in my brain for the rest of the day. I decided the son’s name was Chett and there was something between the two of us even though I was not the me I am today. The story I imagined for the two of them/us transcended generations and was filled with love, heartache and disappointment, but also redemption. My story travels from a dusty town in the west to a chateau of a winery in rural France. It is filled with big world/small world connections. It is an epic tale and one that feels very very real, even though I know it is a fiction of my own making. This is not the first time a dream has led to a novel in my head, nor is it the first time a dream has made me think about who I was in the past. Though, I’m not about to go all Shirley MacLaine over here. Except sometimes I really do think Pepaw is inside Josephine somewhere. I am sure these dreams have more to do with tapping into the vivid imagination section of my brain. I love it when they show up in my sleep because that tells me that my vivid imagination is still in there somewhere. It may be buried under a lot of useless crap, but it’s there. I wake up from these reincarnation dreams inspired to do something. To write. To sketch out a scene. To create.

I’ll be honest. Those last three things have been really hard for me to do in the past few months. Work has been so busy. Weekends have been booked up with activities. The Fortune Cookie diary has a fine layer of dust on it. None of this is bad. Well…Thursday was bad. Thursday was a broken microscope and cat puke on my bed bad, but all in all I’m busy doing fun things. It just has left me with little brain space for creativity. So little space, that I thought I was all done. These kinds of dreams tell me that I am far from done. There are stories and pictures locked inside me. Enough to fill pages.

Enough.

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.