THANKFUL FRIDAY

I’ve been working on something that I don’t want to talk about because I am always working on something I don’t want to talk about. One of the things I wrote in this something I’m working on was the how and why I started a weekly gratitude post. I was still reeling from the loss of J, but even more so, I was grieving the loss of how my family was before J’s death. I had transitioned into a job that I did not enjoy doing, making science not as fun as it used to be. Then Chris and I moved in with his mom, which took away my sense of privacy and personal space. I was unhappy and I was vocal about my unhappiness in a way that I am ashamed of today. The gratitude list was a way for me to change my attitude and save my relationship with Chris because, as he pointed out, this current life may not be ideal, but we still had each other.

Oof.

Everyday, I would write something that I was grateful for in that moment and at the end of every week, I would post this list on the blog. I would keep it in list format. There were some Friday’s when the list would be short, just four or five things, but often, the list would be long. The list was simple, containing things like a bowl of fresh black-eyed-peas or the ten minutes of quiet before students showed up for yoga class. The beginnings of Thankful Friday was far from what it has become today. For one thing, the blog was still Elephant Soap. I’ve (hopefully) matured since the days of Elephant Soap. I am for sure a different girl since the days of Elephant Soap. And I don’t know, but I would like to think my little gratitude project helped to shape me into the person I am today. More than anything, I want to believe that early simple list of gratitude made me a better partner to Chris at that time.

Sometimes, when I am having a week that is particularly difficult, I have a tendency to start writing about all of my complaints. It’s whining really, about things like the weather being too cold to walk the dog or fighting off the urge to hibernate. I will probably write a good paragraph of complaining before I stop myself and delete all of it because I will remember the days of the simple list. I have to pause and take a breath before asking myself “what is my intention for writing this post?” I’m not saying that my complaints do not have some validity or that I’m trying to paint over them and give someone the idea that I’m always happy, well adjusted and good. Because those of you who really know me know that is not true. The title of this post is Thankful Friday and has been since 2008. The intention is gratitude and whining is not part of being grateful.

This week, I am grateful for:

• mushroom tacos

• Christmas lights

• Pilates time with my friend Heather

• Twenty minute savasana

• bandaids

• Michael doing the cooking

• dog snuggles

• keeping things simple

• remembering my intention

Sometimes, we need simplicity.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Hanukkah snuck up on me this year. I wasn’t prepared for it to start so early and there was even a very tiny discussion about skipping it. The menorah never makes it into a designated place at the end of the season. Instead, I manage to place it somewhere near the Christmas decorations in the basement. One year, I lost it all together and had to buy a new one. It was a year when we travelled around Oklahoma and because it was still Hanukkah, we took the menorah with us to light each evening. I have a feeling that menorah got lost somewhere between Oklahoma City and Tulsa.

On Saturday, I bought a new pack of candles and then went to the basement in search of our menorah. After digging through two boxes of Christmas stuff, I triumphantly emerged with our menorah and set it in its usual spot on the bookcase. I guess somewhere between the discussion of not participating in Hanukkah and getting things ready for Thanksgiving, I made the decision to put in the effort for Hanukkah. On the first night, as Michael lit the candles, I recited the prayers and just like I do every year, I got choked up on the last prayer.

Blessed are You, Lord our G‑d, King of the universe, who has granted us life, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this occasion.

It is easy to forget throughout the year the importance of taking the tiniest of moments to acknowledge and be grateful for just surviving the day. Despite all the odds, you are still alive and breathing. Each night as we light the menorah candles and recite the prayers, I feel more and more grounded in the moment. As I mindfully say each word of the prayer, I feel a weight lift from my body and I savor the moment of peace that settles into the place of that lifted weight.

This year has not been an easy one, emotionally or physically. This has been true for many of us, but we are here. We are living and we are surviving. No matter how one chooses to do so, all of that is worth celebrating.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

I’m sitting on my couch (the new one!), watching the pre-parade line up on TV, trying to type up a gratitude post on Thanksgiving Day. Doesn’t seem like a difficult task and really…it isn’t. Today’s post is a very simple one. Today I am grateful for being able to safely gather with friends and family. I am thankful for new friends made this year. I am thankful for a bountiful table surrounded by love and laughter.

But I am also taking a moment to feel grief. The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade was always a tradition of my childhood. Watching that parade now instantly transports me back to my childhood home. I’m sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace and Dad is sitting in his beloved recliner with the day’s newspaper spread out on his lap. He’s not even reading it. Instead, the two of us are running commentary on the parade. Occasionally, Mom would yell at one of us from the kitchen to get up and do some chore. The job of the person who was spared from the chore was to yell out the float, balloon or band that was currently on the screen. You dropped whatever it was that you were doing if someone yelled out “You gotta see this one! Hurry, hurry, hurry!”. I can’t watch that parade today without missing that fireplace and the warmth of the fire Dad kept going.

I can’t watch that parade today without missing my Dad.

The holiday season is bittersweet. I am thankful for the bitter parts and the sweet parts.

I’m also really thankful for the new couch.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

No too long ago, we met an old coworker friend and her boyfriend for dinner. It was the first time for us to meet her person and she said “Cindy’s the person that says she’s going to do something and then does the thing.” This was how she introduced me, which was sweet and made me chuckle. I don’t know if this is true, but I will say that Michael has played an intricate part in me doing the things. He may not be 100% on board with some of my ideas at first, but by the time I’m ready to jump out of the plane, Michael is there to check that my parachute is secure and in good working order. He sees the dangerous side of things that I am oblivious to and can point them out for me to navigate around. If I choose to navigate around them. I am sure that there are many times when being with me, for him, is like being in the presence of a baby taking its first steps and the those first steps are happening on the ledge of a firepit.

I have a hard time communicating with Michael and using words in a way that he understands what it is I am trying to convey. We are not on the same emotional or intellectual planes and often times I put too much thought and effort into being on his plane. It can be exhausting and I know that a lot of this is on me and my expectations of how I think a relationship should be based on my past. I am difficult. The struggle is compounded by the living arrangement. Living in a small space together doesn’t help. The last two school years have been really hard on Michael. This school year seems to be worse than the last one probably because he’s dealing with HS freshmen that never really got that middle school transition period due to the pandemic. His battle with work right now adds to the challenge of being in a relationship.

During the first year of our relationship, Michael talked about how he probably wouldn’t live past fifty. He didn’t sound sad about it. It was just matter of fact, his life would not be extensive. Slowly though, as the years have gone by, he has spoken less and less on his limited lifespan. To the point where I don’t think he’s mentioned it in a couple of years. Instead he talks about a lake house and his plans to renovate that lake house during his summers. He talks about a boat and an idea for a skee-do Uber business. He talks about when he retires and the things he’s going to do. There is a small part of me that likes to believe that I had some sort of influence in his change in language.

Today is Michael’s birthday and I should be better and not save up my words for this one day. I am very proud of how hard he works at being a good math teacher and mentor. Many of Michael’s students see him as an ally and he has received a few notes of gratitude from his students for this. As hard as this semester has been, he has still managed to maintain some empathy towards these kids. I truly believe that Michael is giving his best possible effort in a difficult situation. I know that many of the schemes and shenanigans that I come up with take Michael outside of his comfort zone. That’s why he’s not always 100% on board. I ask a lot of him and I don’t tell him enough how much I appreciate his efforts. I am also very grateful for his change in language regarding his future. As much as I don’t really like to admit this, I need him around.

Because who else is going to do my parachute safety checks.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

For the longest time, I’m talking like for way too long of time, I thought it was “Fall forward and Spring back.” I was a pretend grownup before anyone corrected me on this, that it is actually “Fall back, Spring forward”. Falling forward made perfect sense to me. When people lock their knees while standing, they tend fall flat on their faces, meaning they fall forward. Springs can go whatever direction. Why not backwards? I also come from a line of clumsy people who did and do not fall down stairs as often as they tend to fall up stairs. We trip on the way up a flight of steps, thus falling forward in the process. So you can see that falling forward and springing back in time makes perfect sense.

I have a love/hate relationship with the concept of Daylight Savings. I understand that the whole idea behind it was to align hours of awake time to hours of actual daylight. The thing is, I’m up at 5:15 every morning and after a thirty minute online exercise class, I’m walking the dog a little before 6:00 AM. For a while now, the daylight hours have been nonexistent at these times. In fact it is not until I am back from the walk, showered and headed to work before the sun starts making an appearance. Yes, walking the dog in the dark kind of sucked. Opening the chicken coop while it was still dark was sad because the chickens just stayed in bed, but I’d get home and there would be light. I’d make dinner and there would still be light. I’d do another task and it would still be light. The thing is, I would be motivated to do things when I got home.

This week my motivation has been just to make it home. The end.

Daylight Savings time has never been much of a problem for me, but this year it seems that my body is reacting a little differently. I now wake up at 4:00 AM. I still go to bed at the same time, but I’m losing an hour of sleep. My house is filthy by my standards and every evening I thought I would do one thing to lessen the filth. I have six houseplant pots and only one of them contains a healthy green living plant. All the other planters hold dirt and death and that’s a bit depressing. Every night this week, I’ve told myself to get up and start dumping out the dead. Every night this week, by the time dinner has been made and consumed, I’ve ended up doing nothing. I’m tired. I decided to take the whole day off today so that I could do those things that I’ve been too tired to do while waiting for the new couch to arrive. One of the things on the to do list is to take a nap.

But despite being tired, I have to admit that it has been really lovely watching the sunrise every morning this week while walking Josephine. Our walks start out less dark and end with a spectacular display of light and color. When I walk out to open the chicken coop, I can hear the chickens stirring and then I see them cautiously hop out to greet the new day. I know that with winter comes less and less daylight and I am reminded to soak up as much light as I can now while I can. That means dragging this body out of bed for morning dog walks.

I’m grateful for the light.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

This week, I went to see a movie in a movie theater. It was the first time I’d been to a theater since December of 2019 and it was a lovely experience. Bittersweet and lovely. There was a time in my life where going to the movies was a weekly event. The theater in the small town where I grew up would play the same movie for two weeks and every Tuesday was dollar movie night. I went every Tuesday even if I had already seen the movie because that’s just what you did. This was one of the weekly social events like roller rink Thursdays and church on Wednesdays.

My first and only date with Chris took place at the drive-in movie theater in Chickasha. From that moment on, my movie going experience shifted from social event to interdisciplinary study. It was for entertainment and part of that entertainment was the study and discussion of the film being viewed. We dissected movies. Took apart scenes. Picked at the dialogue. There were multiple viewings of some movies and some movies that were so terrible that we wanted to walk out on. We never walked out because even the worst movies had discussion value for later. Going to the movie theater was an important part of that experience. We arrived early in order to pick the most advantageous seat. The previews were noted and whispered about. We stayed until the very end to watch all of the ending credits. All of this was not a special event, but a normal part our weekly lives.

My life is different now.

I thought I could wait for the new Wes Anderson film, The French Dispatch, to make its way to a streaming service, but the more I thought about it, I realized that I needed to see this movie right now. So I dragged my friend Heather to theater with me. Really, I didn’t have to drag her. She was a willing participant and even provided the giant purse for our Trader Joe’s snacks. As we settled into our seats and Heather stealthily handed over snacks, I found myself getting wiggly with excitement. The ‘Let’s Go To the Movies’ song from Annie started playing in my head and I had to restrain myself from clutching Heather’s sleeve and exclaiming “WE’RE IN A MOVIE THEATER!” The trailers for the upcoming movies came on and one of them made me cry because I knew with my whole heart that if my life wasn’t different that movie would be the next one we’d be seeing in the theater and we’d see it many times. Then the movie started and I was inside the world of Wes Anderson and wondering what it would take to be part of one his worlds just for a minute.

Sure, going to the movies in the middle of the week kept me up past my bedtime, but it was one hundred percent worth it. For two and half hours, nothing else existed. There was no pandemic. There no thinking about couches or scooters. There was no pause button. My only task was to sit in the dark and absorb the words with visual aids. I had forgotten all about the joy and bliss of sitting in a theater. I had forgotten all about the thrill and excitement of seeing previews for things to come. Even now, I marvel at how quickly all of those feeling rushed back into my soul. I’m grateful to have the kind of friend who is into this kind of movie enough to go with me to the theater. I am grateful for those two and half hours of joy and bliss.

I am also grateful to have had a moment of something familiar from my life before.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

I’m not going to sit back and sugar coat a gratitude post for you today. This week has been mentally taxing and physically challenging. My body did not react well to that antibiotic I was taking for the whole gross cyst thing and I ended up covered in a rash and at the walk in clinic on Monday. At the walk in clinic, yet another sixteen year old boy calling himself a doctor looked at my rash and prescribed an extra strong antihistamine. I went to bed at 8:30 Monday night thanks to the new drug. A new set of harder exercises were added to my physical therapy routine and at my follow up exam with the bone and joint doctor, the doctor just told me to watch out for buckling in my knee. I’m ready to move forward and go scooter shopping, but every day this week someone at work has come up to me to express how sorry they were to hear about V. Also, I think we might be couch shopping again because a new email about our couch arrived with a new estimated delivery date of February of next year. By Thursday afternoon, I was feeling really cranky, which I’ll take right now because it’s better than feeling nothing at all.

Which was where I’ve been leaning ever since camp.

A series of minor illnesses has accumulated into a massive feeling of general unwellness that has left me contemplating cleansing diets and acupuncture, drinking more juice, eating more mushrooms. Falling for a fad, which is when I know I’ve reached desperation mode. At the end of each day, I promise myself to do better, be better because I know I’m not doing my best, but just repeat the cycle the next day. I’ve filled a pool full of my own expectations and standards in which I am barely keeping my head above right now. I’m drowning in a pool of my own making and from what I have been hearing from those around me, I’m not the only one. I think many of us have been holding onto some great expectations that this time this year would be different from this time last year and it is, but it isn’t.

So, how do you find gratitude when all what you really want to do is hide inside a blanket fort?

No…really, how do you do that?

There is gratitude in the ability to confess that you are struggling. For me, admitting that I’m struggling makes me feel like I’m whining or feeling sorry for myself. It is a sign of weakness and not allowed for someone who has tattooed “Je suis forte” onto their wrist, but that tattoo is not a statement. It is a reminder to myself on days of weakness that I am strong. With that reminder comes the knowledge that I am only as strong as my support system and if my support team doesn’t know I’m struggling, they can’t support me. Yesterday, I was holding two slide books in which I had balanced ten slide holders and had picked up the heavy metal structure all of those things go into. Then I went to open the door to carry those things to my desk so I could start loading slides and I had no hands available to turn the door handle. A coworker was walking up behind me at this moment and then seeing the mess I’d put myself into, asked “Do you need help?” And I hesitated. For a moment I was really going to say “No thank you, I’ve got this.” Hands completely full and precariously balancing all of the things, I still thought for a moment that I would find a way to open the door with my foot. Instead, I came to my senses and asked him to please open the door for me. My first instinct for everything is “I’ve got this.” Slap on a smile. Fake it ‘till you make it, but you know what? Sometimes your hands are full and you just need someone to open a door for you. And you have to be willing to not just accept the help but to admit that you can’t do everything.

This might be a stretch for gratitude, but these are the days that demand reaching. It’s worth the stretch.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

I was talking to a coworker friend the other day who had stayed home from work in order to take her dog to the vet for a bladder infection. She said "I just can’t take one more thing.” and I nodded with empathy. I get it. Things have been exceptionally difficult lately. It seems like Fall rolled in with an agenda to kill me. First it was my knee. Then the theft of lovely V. While at camp, I developed a large painful and gross cyst in an inappropriate place. Our camp nurse, Jenn, was concerned that it might be a spider bite. So she drove me to the ER in Rolla, MO. where two sixteen year old boys called “doctors” poked around on the cyst before sending me away with antibiotics. Now my left thumb hurts and I don’t even know what I did to it. Maybe I slept on it wrong? Last night, Michael noticed a rash forming on my back and now I’m worried I might have shingles because that’s where my brain goes.

This season has been a little dangerous and not in a fun dangerous kind of way.

Except, Fall doesn’t know that I’m made of stronger stuff. I’m killing it with my physical therapy exercises, working my way into having buns of steel because apparently strong glutes help with stable knees. Michael and I are planning a day trip to the Vespa dealership in St. Louis for some scooter shopping. I don’t care for the Vespa dealership in town. When I rode my scooter over with Michael to trade in his old one for a new one, one of the guys asked “So, is he going to let you ride on the back of his scooter?” To which I replied “Are you going to give me your commission on this sale, because he’s here because of me.” Then I ripped his face off (in my head). I’d rather not go back there. The cyst is gone and I’m practically back to normal. I took some ibuprofen this morning and my thumb no longer hurts. I’m not thinking about the rash for now and I’m not about to gloat or say something like “Bring it, Fall!”. Instead, I’m putting myself on high alert for what might be next. I mean, I’m not tentatively crouching around corners or anything. I am just acutely aware that I need to be paying extra attention to my surroundings and my actions. The thing is, we’re all struggling a bit right now and we could all benefit from some mindful cautious moving.

On our last evening at camp, we danced around a bonfire down by the river. The sky was clear and Michael pulled up his star finder app and discovered that all of the planets were aligned with each other. He went around showing everyone who would listen, which was basically everyone at this camp. Maybe this was the beginning of putting things back together. Maybe this was the start for mindfulness. I don’t know, but I am grateful for the reminder to carefully place one foot in front of the other. I am grateful for the reminder to be mindful that others are also struggling and to lead with an empathetic heart.

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.