THANKFUL FRIDAY

This week, I was contacted by an old friend who wanted to honor Chris in a very specific way. We haven’t spoken or seen each other in years, only keeping up with each other’s lives through social media. We spent some time catching up on his now grown children and my life as a step parent. Then he told me about his plan and asked me if I would be okay with him using Chris's name as an author in something he was writing for academic publication. I gave my permission without hesitation but with the stipulation that I can read it before he submits.

First of all, it was really nice talking with this friend. It has been far too long since our last encounter. He is so gentle and kind and understanding, just a great person to communicate with, but he also tells me nice things. Like how I am the one who is kind and understanding. He told me that Chris and I were still his standard and example of how relationships should be and work as a true partnership. That’s very sweet and equally painful to hear for a number of reasons, but it was good to hear this person’s voice and appraisal.

Chris and I were not an island. I have always known that Chris does not solely belong to me. I am sure the same would be true of Chris if roles were reversed. The two of us have always believed in the collective of humanity. We created a family for ourselves with people who believed in the power of support and community. To have such a family and community requires love and respect, but mostly love. Love is the foundation and we all know what happens to houses built on poor foundations. Our house was made to endure the tests of time and loss. It was built to hold an unimaginable weight of love.

Not just for me.

This week was difficult and my first instinct for today’s post was to write about all the hard stuff and how busy our summer has been so far. I have yet to transition into a do nothing phase of summer. I’m tired and my feet hurt. The brain fog is thick and yesterday I discovered a long black hair sticking out of my chin. Lord knows how long that’s been there, pointing at people. That phone call with an old friend was a balm. I am grateful to have been partnered with someone who inspires others, even years after he is gone, to think of him so fondly. I look forward to reading this academic paper and seeing Chris’s name honored in this way.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

The weekend before last, Michael and I spent almost the whole day on our bicycles. We cycled up to Brookside to our favorite nail salon for pedis. Then we walked the bikes across the street (so we wouldn’t mess up our new toe paint) to a sushi place that we always forget about until summer time because they have nice patio and reasonably priced lunch bento boxes. After lunch, we rode over to an art festival that was happening in Prairie Village where I convinced myself I wanted a new driveway more than I wanted a new piece of art for the walls. We got ice cream and bought some weird canned fish meats from the cheese shop. Then we rode the bicycles to the grocery store to pick up some salad fixings for our dinner, before finally making our way back to the house.

There was a moment during our bicycle ride when we were leisurely riding down a neighborhood street lined with tall trees. The weather was perfect. We were not baking in the hot sun and I wasn’t struggling up a hill. I said loud enough for Michael to hear me “I really like riding my bike!” Which is the truth. At first I felt a little bit of shame because it is an electric bike, but I’m way over that. It’s about intention and I was never one of those hardcore bicyclists. I don’t care about the exercise. Well…I kind of care about the exercise. I don’t care about that sort of Pelaton style of bicycle exercise. I just like riding a bicycle for the joy of riding a bicycle. My electric bike makes it easier for me to do that. I’m still moving my legs. I’m still feeling the burn. I’m just not giving up halfway up a hill and wanting to die and then hating myself for not being fit enough to get up the hill.

I want to be the kind of person that rides their bicycle regularly to work. There are a few things working against me in this venture. One is uncontrollable and that’s the weather. It’s been risky to ride the scooter lately with all the storms and popup showers. I am not fast enough on the bicycles to ride between raindrops like I can on Valerie. Morning temps have been chilly. There is no joy in having to bundle up to ride my bicycle only to end up sweating inside a coat because I’ve built up some heat through peddling. The other thing keeping me from eagerly riding my bicycle is totally controllable and that is my brain. My brain starts to worry about time and if I have enough of it. This creates anxiety and when it is time to open the garage and get a two wheeled vehicle out, I hesitate.

On Monday, I fought through that anxiety and rode my bicycle and I learned that time was not the only thing contributing to my anxiety.

Going to work on the bicycle is great. It is an easy carefree ride. There is little to no traffic at that time of the morning and I take the recommended bike route which means I should have a bicycle lane. Unfortunately the section of the Paseo I use does not have a designated lane, but the right lane is wide enough for both a car and bike. Unless someone is parked on the street. Which happens all the time. Still, at seven fifteen in the morning, this is not a problem for me because I’m the only one on the street. Coming home is a different story. There’s a lot more people on the rode at 5:00PM and they are all very anxious to be home from a long day of work. Many do not care that you are a bicycle on a designated bicycle route. It doesn’t feel safe and this stresses me out.

The first thing that Michael asked me when I got home on Monday was “how was your bicycle ride?” So I told him about the good parts. Then I told him about riding home on Paseo and how it stresses me out. His advice was for me to just take the Trolley Trail home. Remember that whole brain-time anxiety thing? That’s why I don’t normally use the trail. The Trolley Trail is out of my way. I have to go about one mile west to connect to the trail. Then when I exit the trail, I have to go almost two miles east to get home, whereas the Paseo is a straight shot. I live a block west of that street. Here’s the thing, and I just looked at the map, it truly is not all that far out of my way, but for some reason my brain has decided differently. So when Michael suggests I just ride the trail home, I get whiney and roll my eyes over how much longer it is going to take me to get home.

Wednesday, I rode my bike to work and at the end of my work day, I got on my bike. Instead of turning left to get on Paseo, I took a left and cut through the UMKC campus to the Trolley Trail. Then I proceeded to have the most delightful ride home from work. I stopped to wait for stoplight at an intersection with a family of three also on bicycles. The child was young, maybe six or seven, and the mom was explaining the stoplight and the crosswalk rules for when the light changes. When the light for the opposing traffic turned to yellow, I heard the mom say “Okay, the lights are about to change. Get your body ready. Get your bike ready.” I took off ahead of them, but I thought about that mom’s lesson to the child. It’s a pretty good lesson, but might need one more thing.

Get your MIND ready. Get your body ready. Get your bike ready.

This should be the first thing I tell myself when I get out bed each morning, no matter what vehicle I end up driving that day, especially if it is my own brain keeping me from doing the thing(s) I want to do. So there’s a few points of gratitude here. I am grateful for Michael’s suggestion to use the trail for my bicycle rides home from work. If I had ignored his advice, I would not have had the opportunity to hear that mom giving her kid the lesson of being prepared to cross the street. I am grateful to have overheard that exchange of words. Finally, I am grateful for joyful bicycle riding experiences.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

I started working on a writing project in October of last year. It has become one of my UFPs (unfinished projects) sitting in my Google docs, but I tend to visit this one more often than any of the others. It is a writing project that will not be able to see the light of day for (hopefully) a few years and maybe this is why it has become so easy for me to sporadically add to the story. I’ve tried writing a story centered around Chris and being a widow and I probably have five different UFP versions of this story blinking at me whenever I open Google docs. I just get to a spot where there’s nothing to write. I don’t know how to end it or it just feels emotionally better to leave it as it is. Sort of like vague plans or booking the hotel reservation but not doing any research on what you should see and do in that area. This thing I’ve been working on off and on since October feels like something I’ll eventually finish, like I know how to end it when the time comes.

That being said, my writing style is very undisciplined. It seems that I can commit to coming up with content for this space at least twice a week, but any thing with multiple pages and chapters is a really big commitment. I am an ebb and flow kind of artist. When I’m really inspired to be out and about with my camera and working on photography projects, I have little inspiration for writing. The writing flows in when I’m in a photography lull. I thought maybe the practice of combining the two things would lead to more finished projects, but that hasn’t happened. Right now, I am writing. That’s where I am in this ebb and flow. I wrote about a particular time and some events and as I wrote it all down, I found myself crying at my desk. I was surprised because I thought I had worked through my feelings about those events. I thought I had already done the work to release that pain and that there would be nothing to bring up in the writing of this story. But apparently I still had some feelings tucked away that needed to be addressed.

There was a brief section of time when I was seeing a therapist. I didn’t do too much to seek out this therapist, no interview process. I just went with someone my insurance would accept and walked in not really knowing what to expect. Once a week I’d sit in a cushy chair in an office with my therapist and I would just talk. I needed very little prompting and received no more prompting than “how are we feeling today?”, but this was all I needed to spill the bean can of complaints I had filled up since my last visit. At the end of each session, my therapist would say something along the lines of ‘thank you for sharing’ and that would be it until the next week. After about year of this I felt like I had talked all of my complaints out of my system and didn’t feel like I had anything else to contribute to my therapist. And that was it. I never received homework or any kind of “what if you tried…” My therapist was just a listener. I stopped going to therapy and never made an effort to find a new therapist.

The truth is, my writing practice has been the most helpful tool for sorting and dealing with my emotions.

I am by no means discounting therapy. My one time therapist expedition is not a remotely fair measure of the benefits of therapy. I benefited from time with my therapist. I had overachieved in the no complaining department, not speaking up when things annoyed or bothered me. Even on the blog, I avoided complaints. So for a year, I spilled them all out in a safe space to someone who was basically a stranger. I learned to find ways to communicate about the things that annoyed me without whining. I’ve just had a better experience moving through the really hard deeper emotions by writing about them. This makes me very grateful for my writing practice even when there are times I’m not doing much of it. My creative endeavors are part of my therapy and while I have invested money and time into one creative endeavor like new a new camera and a new lens, I realized that I haven’t invested in my writing. So this week I purchased a gratitude gift for myself, a book on writing titled 1,000 Words: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Round.

I don’t know if this means I will be writing a thousand words every day. Maybe this is one way to replace my Fortune Cookie Journal. Who knows? But also, maybe instead of asking the question “will I ever write a book?” I can start asking the question “will my book get published?”

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Gratitude is tricky this week. I got absorbed with the horrors happening in Rafah and I’ve spent extra time contacting representatives and the President and basically anyone who is supposed to be representing my voice in the government to demand a ceasefire and to send aid not weapons. Then this morning, I got trapped in a conversation on Chinese/Taiwanese politics and had to send out a distress text to get out of it. The world is a tight ball of tension. It is really difficult sometimes to step out of the tension and take notice of the good things I am grateful for.

But I know that if I try real hard, I can come up with something.

I have on a brand new pair of overalls. They are navy blue and covered with daisies and I love them. They have been sitting in my drawer all week because I wanted to wear them today. Today is our Team Building event and instead of doing some activity that half of our group will complain about doing, we are volunteering at Harvester’s, a regional food bank that provides equitable access to nutritious food in the Missouri/Kansas area. I have been so excited about this since the idea was hatched a month ago. I don’t know what I’ll be doing, sorting canned goods or filling boxes, whatever, I’m excited and thrilled to be doing it. I’ve been thinking about it all week and it is the thing that is filling me with joy right now. Which tells me that I should be doing more of this.

So, while I’m at Harvester’s I’m going to talk to whoever I need to talk to about how I can volunteer on a regular basis.

I am grateful for my new overalls and all the pockets on my new overalls. There’s one whole pocket for my water bottle! I’m really grateful for this opportunity to help my community. Sure, this sounds cheesy and Pollyanna-ish. I hear it. I get it. I don’t care. I feed on acts of kindness and good works. I’m doing all of this for purely selfish reasons and that reason is that it makes me feel good. Not in a I’m-better-then-you kind of way or this-makes-me-a-good-person kind of way. It just feels good to do good.

Do good.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Michael and I had the discussion on Monday evening about the possibility of Tuesday being a scooter day. His weather app had declared Monday to not be a scooter day when in fact it would have been a fine day for scooter riding. So he looked at the weather app Monday evening and declared that it would most definitely not be a scooter day on Tuesday. His app showed lightening bolts and clouds. He said “No. You will not be riding your scooter tomorrow.” and I sighed and said ‘okay’. But the next morning, I got up and walked Josephine. It was so nice outside. The sky did not have any hints of menace. When I got home from our walk, I checked my weather app and it looked clear except for a sharp peak of activity around 3:00PM that lasted an hour or so. I looked down at Josephine and said “I’m riding my scooter.”

The weather here has been unpredictable and messy. I feel like this time last year, I was riding my bicycle to work every other day and my scooter on the other days. Cold morning temps and rain showers have made two wheeled rides impossible. The most frustrating part is believing the weather report of rain and driving the car to work only to have a clear beautiful day. I was fed up and reminded myself of my rule of two wheels that I used to follow religiously.

The Rule of Two Wheels: If the temps are 40 or above and the sky is clear, I ride two wheels. If there is a possibility of rain, the two wheel vehicle is the scooter. No rain means bicycle. I only have to get to work dry.

So I rode my scooter on a day where there was one sharp peak of activity. What I didn’t plan for was that the sharp peak of activity was possible tornado weather and when I got to work, I got a little nervous. I sent a text to Michael to warn him that I had made a choice and that it might not have been the smartest choice, but I was prepared mentally for the consequences. Not physically. When I’d opened up my scooter seat that morning to put my lunch in the storage compartment, my rain coat that I sometimes keep in there wasn’t there. I shrugged, put my helmet on and scooted on to work without it. The storm rolled in at 3:00. Michael was trying to decide if he should bring my car up and ride my scooter home or go shelter in the basement and by the time he had made a decision the storm had moved past us. When I left work just after 6:00, the sky was completely clear. The temperatures were perfect with only a slight occasional breeze.

Perfect scooter riding conditions.

When I got home, Micheal had the garage door open for me. I walked into the house and he just shook his head and said something about how I managed yet again to ride between raindrops. Maybe this is one of my superpowers. But I must say, that taking the risk and surviving the risk was exhilarating. Sure, I’m grateful for making it to work and back home safe and dry. That’s an easy gratitude grasp. I don’t usually see myself as a risk taker. I’m sure there are many who would disagree with that statement, but I feel like most of my previous risky behaviors have happened out naivety. I don’t recognize a situation as a risk until I’m in the middle of it and then I might pause and say to myself “this might be dangerous.” But by the time I recognize it, it’s too late. I’m in it. I’m doing the thing. It’s sort of like the thought concept of how you could walk on water if you didn’t know you couldn’t walk on water. Technically I am of an age where people would say that I should know better. Gratefully, I have made it to this age without losing that naivity and that I still think I can do the thing even if it might be risky or a little dangerous.

Today was not a scooter day. It rained on us during our morning walk, cutting the walk short. But there were three good days of zipping down city streets, beeping hellos to friends as I passed by, and the joy that comes with riding a scooter. The risks are worth it.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

I put Michael and I on a cleansing diet when I got back from Woods Hole. So for the past two weeks there has been no alcohol, gluten, sugar, and no animal products in our meals. Mostly. I haven’t been a food police. I left in caffeine because I only drink one cup of coffee in the mornings and Michael has a thing of tea. Michael usually makes chicken salad to eat on crisp bread for his lunches and he’s kept that routine. I ate a bagel on Wednesday because it was work birthday treats and the bagels came from Meshuggah’s which is the closest to a New York bagel that you will find in the midwest. I don’t hate myself. I ate the bagel, but my food intake with the bagel exception, has stayed within the guidelines.

And it hasn’t been all that hard to do.

The reality is that for the most part, we tend to eat a vegan/vegetarian diet through the weeknights anyway. My lunch is leftover dinner. There’s a night that includes shrimp or fish. Taco nights include soyrizo and cheese. Those things have been easily replaced or left out. I think the idea of a ‘cleansing’ diet makes people focus on the things on the list they cannot have instead of seeing all that they can have. That’s what makes it so daunting, but when you already mostly eat that way it’s not a big deal. I think back to the very first time I put myself on a cleansing diet and how truly awful the experience was. Chris and I were still in Oklahoma, living with his mom. Oklahoma was not a place for vegetarians, let alone vegans and I got really bogged down by the things I couldn’t eat. I read so many labels. Grocery shopping was a full day adventure. I knew so little about food and nutrition then. I am actually surprised by the amount of stuff I didn’t know about the food I was putting into my body. Doing the cleansing diet changed the way I eat and think about nourishment.

I come back to this diet every once in a while as a reset. Michael has been all on board and rather a good sport about it, even suffering through a tofu vegetable stir-fry. He has incentives though for doing this diet with me. The last day of the cleanse is the day he has to have bloodwork done for a checkup and he will be going in with three weeks of clean eating. My take away from this round of a cleansing diet is how we deal with the weekends. When I made up the first week’s meal plan, I got to Saturday and Sunday and Michael said “what about lunches?” More often than not, we eat lunches out on the weekends and we buy rich, fancy ingredients to cook for dinners. There’s also a fair amount of booze. This cleansing diet has placed a spotlight on how our weekends can be so unmindful both nutritionally and financially. While I might be spending a teensy bit more on groceries, we are saving more than that in eating out fees. This is good practice for when we get back from our moose hunting trip because we plan to go on a financial diet and tighten up our spending/budget.

I want a new drive way. They are not cheap.

In the past, I would probably (and have probably) used my Thankful Friday post to be grateful that a cleansing diet is almost over. This time around is different. I don’t feel like I’ve made a great sacrifice or that limiting my meals to a strict vegan/gluten free foods has been a hardship. At the end of week two, I don’t think I can say I’ve lost any weight. There are no drastic physical changes. I’m less puffy maybe. I feel physically the way I should feel, which is good. I know from previous experiences that my body feels better on this kind of diet anyway. My gratitude this week comes from the insights I have gleaned on how we spend our money and the crap we eat on weekends. I am also grateful for how I have treated myself during the past two weeks. I’ve been able to set an intention for clean eating without guilting myself or binding myself. I’ve given myself some grace (see above about a bagel). I’ve treated myself with kindness and this is a big thing because I’m my own worst enemy.

But I will say that our diet ends on the day we have reservations for Le Fou Frog (a famously popular KC French restaurant) and I am very much looking forward to the escargot in herbed butter. Especially the butter.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Sometime around the beginning of April, I posted a picture of a goose who had decided to set up a nest on the rooftop outside my office. She laid five eggs and then settled in for a month, not moving but to rotate around every once and a while. We saw the goose’s partner only briefly in the beginning. The female goose sat all alone on the rooftop through dropping temperatures and downpours. At one time we even had a camera set up for a live feed of the goose. Then Jeff went to adjust it and accidentally broke the camera. Not just my office, but a number of people became fully vested in the survival of these geese. We worried and fretted over the dangers like our resident hawk and what happens when the eggs hatch.

I was scheduled to be at MBL when the eggs were expected to hatch. So I would check in every once and while to see if any of the eggs had hatched. No babies was always the response. One coworker even went in on Saturday to check. Finally, sometime on Sunday, the eggs hatched and when I got to work Monday morning there were five baby geese poking their little heads out from under their mother’s protective wing. Dad finally reappeared and the family was complete. Then we all started to fret over how these little geese were going to get down from the rooftop. Maintenance installed a ramp, which the geese avoided like it was hot lava. We would stand at the window and watch as they would all get close enough to the ramp to think they might give it ago. Then they’d dart off in the opposite direction. Finally, when the window washers made it to that area, we were able to convince them to toss the babies to the ground. Which they did. Like tossing a beanbag for a game of cornhole. They all landed safely and the family waddled off. We haven’t seen them since.

It does not go unnoticed that these eggs hatched so close to Mother’s Day. For this past month, this mother goose was a daily reminder of the struggles and hardships of motherhood and so many women do this every day alone. They get the kid up and ready for the day. If they’re fortunate, they get this kid fed breakfast before dropping them off at daycare/school. They’re the ones that show up when the school nurse calls. They’re the ones baking cupcakes at midnight for a last minute bake sale. They are the ones most often showing up. My dad did his best to help out with raising me. He volunteered for all the extracurricular activities. He was often in charge my evening meals and Sunday mornings he made mom and I breakfast and served it to us in bed. My dad brought me a tray of breakfast every Sunday morning like I was a gosh dang princess. I think he did pretty well for being raised with patriarchal ideas on gender roles.

Mom also volunteered. She made sure I was up and fed and ready for school each day. She made sure there was a responsible adult around at the end of a school day whether it be a neighbor or instructions to get off the school bus at one of the many church ladies that took turns looking after me. Mom spent countless hours lying on the sewing room floor while I struggled with sewing projects. She listened to me when I said I wanted to play the cello and made that happen by buying me a cello and finding me a teacher. She tolerated my goofiness whenever we were shoe shopping. She was the one who discovered USAO first and told me that this might be the school for me. We visited that school together and the moment we turned into the circle on campus, we both knew she was right. My mom made sure I stayed focused and was prepared for a successful future.

So for today, because it’s Mother’s Day weekend, this Thankful Friday moment of gratitude goes out to all those mothers who diligently sit on those eggs and protect those babies under their wings.

And my mom.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

If I go over to the gym at a specific time, I can use the yoga classroom for my own practice because there are no classes going on at the time. If I miss that timing window, I end up rolling out my mat between the windows and the exercise bikes. The exercise bikes are not the most popular and usually no one is on a bike while I’m moving through suryanamaskara. It’s not a big deal to me to have a possible audience because I have my headphones on and the volume up loud enough to drown out other gym noise. I’ve gotten adept at putting a mental bubble around me and my mat, but getting to use the yoga classroom gives me easy access to the yoga enhancers (props) and a bit of privacy.

That being said, I do not treat the space as my own personal space. I leave the doors open or at least partially open and I leave the sign outside turned to ‘open’. I want others to feel free to use the space even though I’m in there doing my own thing. It just feels selfish of me to claim this whole space for just myself. My schedule has been so wackadoodle that I’m struggling to carve out time for my own yoga practice. So when I do get the opportunity I make my practice really challenging. I’ve added hand weights to my suryanamaskara and mix in some dynamic movement, but I also leave time for a good long savasana (final relaxation). The end part of my practice is truly the most important part because I don’t get a savasana when I’m teaching classes. That’s twice a week where I’m doing and teaching without reaping the full benefits of yoga. My classes are not my practice.

This week, I was in that space doing my thing and I had just settled into final relaxation. I heard some other people in the gym, but quickly tuned them out. There was a singing bowl playlist playing through my headphones loud enough to feel the vibrations without damaging my ears. It was a good final relaxation. I wasn’t fidgety or crying (that happens). I sunk right in and landed in the space between awake and asleep. I was there for a good fifteen minutes and when the timer signaled the end, I peeled myself up to a seated position. When I opened my eyes, I noticed that someone had closed both doors to the yoga classroom. They had even turned the sign around to read “in use”.

My job and my service as a yoga teacher is to protect my students during their savasanas. I am the time keeper and on high alert watching over my student to ensure they are comfortable and feel safe. I take this job very seriously because I feel that savasana is (especially in our current lifestyle/environments) the most important thing a person can do for themselves. Not only does it allow the body to recover and adjust to the physical changes that happen during the moving parts of yoga, but it gives a body time and permission to just rest. I have taught at studios where I have had women tell me that they pay me so they can rest. It is their only guilt free moment and they need the permission to ‘indulge’. I think having to pay someone to give you permission to rest says a lot about what is happening in our society.

I did some investigating and it didn’t take much to find out who closed me up in the yoga room this week. I haven’t had the opportunity to thank them in person yet because they’re on vacation, but I want them to know how very grateful I am for their simple little act. By closing the doors and turning the sign around, this person gave me permission to fully relax in the space. Their actions were very much like having someone watch over and protect me during my own savasana, something I rarely get.

And this is a prime example of how small acts of thoughtful kindness has big impacts.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Westside Local posted a picture of my art hanging on their walls, which I in turn shared to my social media places. The prints have been up all through March and I have to make plans to remove them at the end of April. Honestly, with all that is going on, I sort of set this showing out of my mind. I had intended to go into Westside Local for lunch with coworkers, but suddenly it’s April 19th and I don’t understand what happened to time.

Where’d it all go?

I realize there is still time to get there for a lunch or something. April is not over, but coordinating my calendar around everyone else’s calendars is like trying to solve a complicated quantum physics problem. Yesterday, I spent a large part of my morning texting back and forth with Jenn about lunch dates. I finally ended up just sharing my calendar with her. We managed to schedule a lunch day and provided proof to each other that it was a real date because we both put it in our calendars. Everyone is busy with life right now because we are all basically hibernating mammals. Sure, we weren’t sleeping during of the winter months but we were only into minimal effort activities. Now that the sun’s out and the birds are chirping, we’re crawling out from under our layers and setting down our bowls of soup. The salad days are upon us! I mean sort of. I have to cover plants tonight because temps are dropping into the low 30s, but it’s a brief two day cold front and then we’re right back into balmy thunderstorm weather.

Any way. Things are happening and we’re all doing the thing.

I’m super grateful to Westside Local for giving me the opportunity to hang my pictures on their walls. This has been the most chill experience. I didn’t feel rushed to get things prepared. There was zero hassles in hanging photos, which I had to do on my own. I didn’t have to endure another artist reception where I uncomfortably had to talk to people about my art. I haven’t sold anything from this showing, but funny enough I sold a print that is not in this showing, a photo from a recent trip. I do not care that I have not sold anything. Money is not my motivation, though it is a validation. It just feels special to have some of my favorite pictures displayed on walls where complete strangers will see them. Really, that’s all I want to say about it because it still feels super awkward to talk about my art.

With that, I’m off to Des Moines with Josephine as my copilot. We’re going to spend the weekend with Heather where there will be shenanigans, bubbly drinks and beagles. If you are in the Kansas City area and find yourself looking for a nice place for a meal, I suggest you give Westside Local a try. The food is delicious, atmosphere is charming, and the art on the wall isn’t bad.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Sunday was for lawn work. I bought some plants for my tiny backyard garden that ends up being a mix of herbs and tomatoes every year. I purchased some decorative plants for the front, including a hosta plant called Queen Josephine (because, of course). As Michael and I roamed through the large plant center, our cart started to fill up and I was juggling cost, durability and beauty while reaching for this or that. I kept asking Michael “Can I get this?” and he would say “yes”, but I don’t think he realized that I was asking because I wanted him to keep me in a budget. At one point I said that he could not just let me buy and buy. Then he said “But it makes you happy.” And that is why we can’t stick to budgets. Sure, buying plants makes me a little bit happy. It also stresses me out because I am neglectful and just not into the continued maintenance of plants. I want easy, tend-for-themselves kind of plants.

Tulips came up in the front area this year, but only one bloomed so I pulled all of them out of the ground. I’ll plant new bulbs in the Fall. I trimmed back the hedge that had slightly gone wild and would try to grab you as you walked up the front path and I pulled out all the weeds. This is when I discovered the perennials I had planted last year and the year before. I was like “Hey you! I remember planting you there!” The hostas I had purchased at a plant sale in OK three years ago were also coming up and they had multiplied. I split them and redistributed them around in hopes that the whole front area will be nothing but hostas. I never would have wanted a hosta in my yard if I still lived in OK. Every time I saw them planted in someone’s landscape, I’d wince. They were sad plants. They were sad plants because they prefer a muggier climate. The hostas I have seen around my neighborhood have been large leafy green things with beautiful blooms. The first time I noticed them, I was stunned. I’m not a gardener and hostas are the easiest plants for me to work with. I told Michael that next year I am not allowed to buy new plants for the front yard, only something nice for the pretty blue pot I keep on the stoop. I can honestly say that as I prepared the front bed for the new plants and discovered the plants I had planted from previous years, I felt some joy.

I wondered for a moment if this is the reason my mother tends to her flower beds.

While I have said that I am not the gardening type, there is something about planting things permanent in the ground. One of my mother’s biggest laments when she sold and moved out of our family house in Collinsville was about all the plants she was leaving behind. She had multiple beds filled with irises and various trees and shrubs, all plants that she had tended to for more than thirty years. The soil and how the sun hits the house she lives in now is totally different then it is at the old house. A smaller yard also meant that she couldn’t just dig up everything and take it with her. She had to leave them behind for the new owner to do whatever with them. I haven’t been by the old house since we helped moved my mother out, so I have no idea if those irises are still blooming or if the magnolia tree we gave mom for mother’s day one year has survived. And while the house Mom is in now is different (her front door faces directly east), she has planted new plants in the ground and spends her time caring for them and fussing over them. Gardening seems like an activity my mom does truly for herself and because she loves it.

There is satisfaction in planting things in the dirt and watching them grow, but the real joy comes from seeing those things come back year after year.

I’m meeting my mom and sister this evening in Manhattan, KS so we can go to the tulip festival happening in Wamego which is close to Manhattan. I’ve not been to any of these places before. Wamego is a tiny town known for an eclectic Wizard of Oz museum and apparently, tulips. I’ve been told that the museum is more like someone’s personal hoarding collection of all things Wizard of Oz. There a little Toto statues all around the town and a Dutch Windmill. I am excited to see the tulips and seeing my mom and sister. The weather is predicted to be sunny and warm. I’m looking forward to spending my day in the sunshine, basking in the bright colors of the tulips, something I am not sure I would have appreciated as much if I hadn’t spent years watching my mother work in her own gardens.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

At the beginning of this week, I posted tales about the state of my body that many found relatable. Women friends have reached out, nodding heads in agreement and sharing their own personal experience. This was exactly my intention behind that entry. I am infuriated by the taboo of conversing above whispers in regards to our female bodies and well over the idea that I should feel shame about the normal things that happen to my female body. And because of the lack of interest from the medical industry, we (women) must come together and share, share, share in hopes of navigating our way through this highly uncertain phenomena of perimenopause/menopause.

Chad sent me a TikTok story about Rosalind Franklin and how Watson and Crick stole her research, which ended up winning them the Nobel Prize in 1962. This story is not new to me. All female scientists know this story. My first education on Watson and Crick though told a different story. They didn’t mention stealing any work or ideas from Franklin, but they made sure to talk about how disagreeable Franklin was to work with and, one would say, a bitch. The reality is that Rosalind Franklin was standing up for her research and herself. Watson and Crick would never have figured out the helical structure of DNA without Rosalind Franklin’s work. So instead of allowing a woman to get the credit for this discovery, they villainized her. They projected their fragile male egos and jealousy into writing a false narrative of a contentious woman.

Psst…this isn’t the first time in history fragile male egos and their jealousy has been projected to vilify a woman.

Some of you are probably wondering what the story of Rosalind Franklin has to do with woes of perimenopause. Trust me. This is all linked together. For far too long women have been pigeon holed into a projection of what men have wanted us to be and in doing so this has lessened us. Our bodies, our thoughts, our appearances are all gender constructed for the man. Deviations in said construct are not to be tolerated and should be ignored, thus putting our basic needs in the backseat and our contributions outside of childbearing, something to be stolen or unnoticed. I did not intend to set off to write yet another rant on the never ending reach of the patriarchy, but I can’t ignore that the lack of research and information around women’s health is directly linked to the patriarchy. Women have been relegated to barely even whispering words such as vagina or bleeding because men find those words unappealing or offensive, while there are whole industries built around glorifying the male ejaculation. A cock and balls is probably the most popular choice for graffiti artists and it is usually placed near the mouth of the model on the poster.

Where is the graffiti artist drawing vulvas in the mouths of poster models?

This is not a sermon for the choir kind of post. I wrote all of this on Wednesday and usually writing down my rage helps to dampen it. Instead, all I managed to do was pour gasoline all over my rage. I spent the day feeling prickly and stabby. But after another fitful night of sleep, I thought about what many of the women in my community had said about what they are going through. The most common phrase written in my comments is “I thought I was going crazy.” Of course we think this; we’re all tired and doctors wont listen to us. The number of comments I read that started with “my doctor didn’t believe me” or “three doctors later..” was ridiculous. Not only are we dealing with changes in our bodies that start with messing up the very foundation needed for basic living (which is sleep. sleep and rest are the most important things for our bodies), we are doing so while still, STILL, fighting to be the women we want to be and not the women men (or society) may want us to be. I want you to know that I am grateful for your voices and your continued hard work in this daily battle. We all deserve naps.

Let’s all go take naps!

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Long ago, I stepped back from a life where I seemed to always be burning a candle at two ends. Sometimes I think of it as stepping into a life a leisure, which is a bit absurd if you think that a life of leisure is working a nine to five job, keeping up a house, making sure pets are well spoiled, teaching two yoga class a week, and walking ten thousands steps a day. But yes, apparently I consider my current life to be one of leisure. Maybe it has been a little too leisurely for me because I recently seem to be continuously adding stuff to my social calendar. There are two back to back weekends in April where I will be out of town on adventures. My norm is to only have one weekend adventure a month, if that, particularly in the winter months. Now it seems I am making up for all the days I lived the life of a mole.

I took Tuesday off from work so that I could hang photos at Westside Local. I don’t know why I thought this would take me hours, but fortunately I was home when FedEx dumped a large cumbersome box onto my front yard. The box contained a chair I had ordered that was scheduled to arrive on Thursday. Now you can just go ahead and imagine all Lucille Ball moments now because that pretty much sums up how I managed to get the large cumbersome box into the house. The chair is for the living area and it is the chair I wanted for that space to begin with but ended up compromising on a chair I did not love. That chair has served it’s purpose and now others can see why I did not love that chair because their butts have been sitting in it long enough to recognize the flaws of said chair. The new chair is a nice orange, is smaller and less bulky than the old chair. And I love it.

I also thought that by taking Tuesday off, I would have time to rest up before heading out to see Jenny Lewis in concert. This is a concert I have dreamed about for years and even though it was happening on a school night and the show didn’t start until 8 with the opener, I didn’t want to miss this opportunity. The concert was at the Truman which does not have seating unless you purchased the VIP balcony section. I was too cheap to do that when I bought our tickets months ago, thinking the balcony at the Truman would give terrible views. I know different now and was told that “we are grownups and can afford the slightly more expensive seat.” I had terrible views from the floor area, but this did not keep me from nonstop dancing for an hour and half. At one point Michael brought me a cup of water and suggested I drink it all. I thanked him for that when we left the venue and started our walk back to where we parked. He said with a little bit of awe in his voice “You didn’t stop moving the entire time.”

I can’t help it. Music just makes me move my body.

Wednesday evening, I met (Nurse) Jenn for dinner. She told me about her full dance card and the number of times she had been asked by others to reschedule our date. She had held firm, refusing to reschedule our time together. It’s the dumbest thing. I can literally walk to her house, but finding time on our schedules for each others requires the moon and stars to be in a very specific alignment pattern. I had also considered the possibility of rescheduling our date for a couple of reasons, but stayed committed. Jenn told me that even though all of these other things were going on, I am one of the few people in her life who “fills her cup.” And by this point, she really needed a refill. I can say the same is true for her. Jenn is really good at getting me to talk about things that I usually leave floating around inside my head. Our time together is equal parts listening and sharing. She thinks I’m amazing and is very vocal about it. I think she’s the cool girl I have always been trying to impress, but I also think she’s spectacular.

So here we are on Friday and I have to say that I’m exhausted. I’m looking forward to a weekend of more leisure than adventure. Our biggest adventure will be swapping vehicles around oil change appointments while getting the Cabbage to piano lessons. The fox, chicken, bag of feed and one row boat riddle is practice for living life. But while my body is tired, I am entering the weekend with a full heart. I am grateful for full dance cards and most especially grateful for spending time with someone who fills my heart.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Monday and Tuesday this week, I rode Valerie (the scooter) to work. Monday’s ride was spectacular. Tuesday’s ride was…not so great. I left the house under fairly mild conditions. The high for the day was 75 degrees, but I knew a cold front was moving in at some point. I bargained on being home before the front moved in. I was wrong. When I left work at 6:00 PM the temperature was 43 degrees. I had to stop at a local pub for an AIDS Walk Open Volunteer meeting. When I left the bar at 7:00 PM, the temperature was 38 degrees with strong gusts of wind. I was four blocks from the house when it started sleeting. It was not even remotely ideal scooter riding conditions, but I did it and I’m still alive.

I am notoriously territorial about my scooter. I don’t want anyone other than me riding Valerie. The same was true with V. I know Chris rode V once because that’s how he discovered my back tire was bad. He didn’t ask permission; he just did it. So there could have been other times. I don’t know. Once, I let my brother ride V home from work. He and Katrina were finishing up a long motorcycle ride to Canada and had stopped at my house. I went to work on V and let them have my car for the day, but at the end of the day, the city was hit with a downpour. My brother had all the rain repellant gear with him. So they came and got me in the car. I drove my car home and he drove the scooter so I wouldn’t get rained on. I am forever grateful he was there to do that.

Michael jokes about my territorial attitude towards the scooter and needles me about letting him ride my scooter constantly. Look, I am often the passenger when he’s driving a four wheeled vehicle. I am often behind him when we are on scooter rides. I do not approve of his driving techniques and this is why I will not let him drive my scooter. There is also something to be said about having things of your own. I would never ask to ride Michael’s scooter. For one thing, I’m not confident I have the strength to handle it. His scooter is heavier and has a bigger engine. For another thing, I don’t feel the need to share everything.

I struggled with my identity for a long time after Chris died; not that I think my identity is solely tied into a thing. It is a simplification of all the things, thoughts and ideas that are truly my own. I had so thoroughly woven my identity with Chris, that I couldn’t really tell what part of my actions or thoughts were Chris’s actions and thoughts or my own. I never noticed this while we were Chris and Cindy mostly because the two of us were so often on the same page about things both emotionally and intellectually. But when he was gone, I wasn’t sure how to be just Cindy. Eventually I figured out that I’ve always been just Cindy, that my identity wasn’t absorbed or defined by my relationship with Chris, but rather enhanced by it.

Being a little territorial about some things like my scooter or my writing or my ideas is my way of maintaining my own identity. Women, especially, have been trained to feel guilt for wanting/needing something of their very own, that we are being selfish for wanting our own time and space. This is yet another patriarchal lie that I am burning to the ground. Several times this week, I have looked at my reflection in the mirror and been surprised by my own cuteness. I have looked and thought “Hey there, cutie.” I may have even said it out loud and when I have finished taking note of my cuteness, I have whispered “you are deserving.” I am deserving of my own space and time. I deserve to be a little bit selfish.

Hey there, cutie. You also deserve to be a little bit selfish.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

It is currently Wednesday and I’m thinking about Friday’s gratitude posting. When I look out the window from my standing point at my work desk, I have a perfect view of the fountain in the center of the circle drive. More than a dozen robins are taking turns between being at the fountain and the trees that surround the fountain. I have seen people walking outside without coats on and this weekend I’m checking the tires for all two wheeled vehicles. This was never a Fake Spring, but the real deal with an the occasional appearance of Fake Winter. The air feels like Spring and tastes like adventure.

I gave Michael the option of joining me on my Moose Hunt in June and he got pretty excited about hunting mythical creatures. Months ago, I made a plea for a return visit to New Orleans. I know we were just there, but I feel like I didn’t absorb enough aiyee. I didn’t eat enough crawfish or slurp down enough (hardly any) raw oysters. Ever since leaving from New Orleans, I’ve been craving that place more than I would expect. I might love the Pacific Northwest, but I left my soul in New Orleans years and years ago. It has owned a piece of me since I was three. I didn’t have to twist any of Michael’s arms to get him to agree to another visit. That trip is booked and planned and I hadn’t expected to be planning any other trips for the year.

But then the Moose Hunt.

And a weekend tulip festival with my mom and sister.

And some gal camp trips.

And…

And…

I don’t want to spend a lot of money or even travel a great distance, but I want to fill this year up with tiny adventures. I did not know this at first, even though, well before the New Year, I had made some sort of word collage of wants for 2024 and “seeing a moose” and “solo camp trips” made an appearance in this collage. I didn’t really believe that I would get any more proactive than writing those wants down somewhere. I didn’t believe I would ever say the wants out loud. Yet I have said them out loud and in doing so it feels like I have cast spells. This spell casting has me feeling lighter and hopeful. There have been times when the thought of planning and actually going places has felt exhausting. Finding the place to stay. Packing the car. Making the drive to the place. Just the idea of all of it has felt heavy and leaves me in need of a nap. But something is different now.

This feels exciting.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

I spent most of Saturday in our basement framing prints that I will hang on the walls at Westside Local in March. When I ran out of frames, I took a break for lunch and discovered that the rest of the frames that I had ordered were sitting on my front porch. So after lunch, I went back down to finish framing. Once that was done, I looked around at the cluttered mess of the basement and set to work breaking down boxes and reorganizing shelves. I filled a box with kitchen items that hasn’t been touched in more than year and filled a bag with garbage. Then I moved over to the camp gear and pulled items from the old camp kitchen that I could use in my car camp kitchen. I organized all of my car camping equipment into one spot so that it’s easy for me to grab and throw into my car.

It was a very productive day and I started to get excited about the possibility of throwing my camp gear into my car and spending a weekend in the woods. Recently I posed a question to a group of friends about how far I might need to drive in order to see a moose. Several agreed that straight north into the Minnesota/Canada border area was probably my best bet. That’s about an eight to ten mile drive. Totally doable. I could easily take a long weekend and go for a moose hunt. I got so excited about the idea that I started looking at maps and moose sighting forums. Moose sighting forums. They exist, probably because there are people like me that do not believe that moose are real. I’ve settled on a visit to a place just north of Duluth, MN. I’d really like to make that happen this summer.

Any way, I fell for the trap that is Fake Spring. I allowed myself to settle into the warmer temps and start to dream of outdoor adventures. Of course, the weather has flipped back to cold. There’s even an 87% for snow today. It’s snowing right now! Which seems just about right since I’m driving to meet up with Amy and Deborah for our annual gals weekend. When I look at the crystal ball that is the weather predictions, I see more flip flopping temps in the following week and it makes everything feel a bit manic. I am practicing patience and preparing for the day Fake Spring becomes Real Spring. And you know what? I feel like I didn’t eat enough soup this winter. So this gives me more soup days to enjoy.

Now to address the elephant in the room that centers around the events of this week.

I started writing this entry on Wednesday, before the Super Bowl Parade and the mass shooting that occurred at the end of the celebration. The Super Bowl Parade has and is a celebration that involves day drinking. The state of Missouri is also a Right To Carry state, with no permit requirements for handguns. It is a miracle we have not had this tragedy happen before. When looking back through archives, the last mass shooting in Kansas City occurred in 1933 during the Kansas City Massacre, which ironically was also at Union Station. Comprehensive gun control is on my list of wants and needs that I vomit out to my senators and representatives every week, which is starting to feel about as productive as a thought and a prayer. And that’s about all I will say here.

I will say that I am grateful for the texts from loved ones checking in to make sure we were and are safe.

I am grateful that my Kansas City friends who went or almost went, are also safe.

I am grateful to be spending the weekend away from the city.

I am grateful to be spending the weekend talking and laughing with Amy and Deborah.

I am thankful for the promise of outdoor adventures.

I am thankful for soup days.

I am thankful for you.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

In 1996, Chris and I drove to Kansas City, KS to see Sting in concert. It was the Mercury Falling tour and our first concert together. We had no idea who the opener was going to be and when Tracy Chapman stepped out onto the stage, Chris and I turned to each other and practically squealed with glee. Tracy Chapman was the icing on this cake of a concert. The two women sitting in front of us left the concert when Tracy Chapman left the stage. They paid Sting amount of moneys to see her and I don’t blame them. Seeing Tracy Chapman step out onto the stage to sing her song Fast Car with Luke Combs at Sunday’s Grammy’s made every one I know burst into tears for good reasons.

Chris’s birthday was on Tuesday.

Tuesday morning, while getting ready for work, I asked Alexa to play songs by David Bowie. There is not an obvious link between Chris and David Bowie. We loved Bowie’s music and it was often featured in our daily playlists. We never got to see him concert, which is a bummer, but we never really talked about the possibility of going to a Bowie concert (mostly because we figured we could never afford it). My link with Chris and David Bowie is a bit more subtle. Many of you know that David Bowie died of liver cancer in 2016. Some of you may not realize that Bowie died two days after celebrating his 69th birthday. Chris also died of liver cancer within days of his birthday and it’s taken me a long time to say that this is how Chris died. For years, when asked, I’d tell people that Chris died from a large tumor on his liver that was wrapped around his bile duct. It felt (sometimes feels) that “liver cancer” is too simple of a description and the word ‘cancer’ implies that it can be removed and treated. None of these were options for us. There was no excision of a tumor or chemo treatments. We were handed a sheet of paper containing a list of phone numbers for hospice care.

Chris died four days after celebrating his 41st birthday.

Concerts were our church. Movie scripts were his scripture. Girls on Film by Duran Duran started playing in the car on my way home yesterday and I sang along with Chris’s lyrics “Dogs on stilts”. I don’t think I can sing it any other way. Chris lacked the ability to carry a tune, but was more than skilled in linking a tune to a scene. In December of 2011, Chris and I saw our final concert together, Florence and the Machine. He was very sick and in a lot of pain, but we didn’t know then about the tumor or the cancer. He spent most of the concert sitting on the floor and we did not stay for the entire show. The morning Chris died, I drove to work in hopes of getting an hour or two of tasks accomplished. Hospice had settled into our home by then and Chris was comfortable. His mother and brother were there, so I thought this would be a good time to step away for bit. As I made the drive, Dog Days are Over by Florence and Machine came on the radio. I was at my desk for ten minutes before they called me to tell me that Chris had passed.

I wanna hear one song without thinking of you… -Me and My Dog by Boygenius

I have carried a trunk full of guilt and anger over Chris’s last morning for years. I should have been there. He’s such a jerk for choosing the moment I leave the house to draw his last breath. What kind of idiot am I for thinking I could ‘step out for a bit’? If I’d been there would he still be breathing? That is a particularly horrific thought. A day and a half before Chris died, he stopped being the sharp witted person we all knew and loved. He was unconscious and incoherent. The Chris we all knew and loved had already left the building. Chris didn’t choose that moment to leave out of spite or meanness. It was just his time and it was easier for the both of us for me to not be present. My presence made it harder for him leave and he really needed to leave. Knowing this is why I don’t carry that trunk around with me all the time now. I might move it from one place to another from time to time. It is always in the room with me, but I am no longer carrying it every waking moment.

The day the doctor handed us the phone number for hospice care, I was forced to recognize that there was nothing I could do in this situation. Being put into this absolute position broke my brain. It didn’t happen all at once. It took phone calls to various cancer centers and the inability to get Chris’s pain managed for it to sink in. There was nothing I could do to fix this. With time, I’ve started seeing this as less of a failure on my part and more of a surrender. When I tell my students to surrender to their final relaxation it is my cue to them to give in and allow for relaxation. There is a floaty feeling that happens when your body completely sinks into your mat and you have surrendered. It is not dissimilar to the feeling I have when I set down that trunk of guilt and anger.

I am often asked if it ever gets any easier, this whole grief thing, and I still after all this time don’t know how to answer. There is not a day that passes where I don’t think of him or miss him terribly. But I have surrendered myself to the reality that Chris no longer has a physical presence on this planet. That particular reality has become part of that trunk I sometimes move around. The answer to the question of ease has a yes and no answer. That trunk is heavy and takes up space, but it is filled with things I can’t completely dump. On the days I’m carting that around, my answer is no. On the days when I’m not carrying it, but I can see the trunk in the room, my answer is yes.

There is gratitude to be found in the surrender.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Tuesday morning, I peeled my tired ‘don’t wanna’ ass out of bed and then pulled on some clothes. I opened my closet and reached in for my walking shoes and Josephine nearly lost her mind. Josephine does not have a big enough body for containing joy. When she sees my walking shoes, she knows we’re going for a walk and her joy explodes from her body in a couple of ways. She will parkour herself all around my bedroom and grab the nearest toy to flip around in the air. Then she will throw her little body at me in a demand to tie my shoes faster. Once she is harnessed and leashed, she will grab a section of the leash and pull me towards the front door. This is her reaction every time, not just because it’s been a few months since our last walk.

Michael and I are and will continue to be busy with various things over the next few months. Michael has several after school meetings and play rehearsals. I get home late on Tuesdays because I teach an evening yoga class. This makes me feel bad for Josephine because she has no one to pet her all day or play a game of tug-o-war. It is a long day for all of us. The weather is tolerable this week, so I was determined to at least do this Tuesday morning walk. I woke up before my alarm (not unusual) and looked at the clock. My whole body groaned. I was a little bit sore form the previous day’s yoga experience. My eyes were crusty. It was cold in the house and staying in bed, even though I would not get any real sleep, felt soooooo much easier than getting out of bed.

But I didn’t stay in bed.

I rolled to one side and peeled myself up to a seated position. Then I firmly placed all four corners of the bottom of my feet into the floor. I said to myself “get up.” even though I still didn’t want to, but once I was dressed and walking, my body changed it’s mind about the ‘don’t wanna’. Our way to the park felt slower than normal, mostly because Josephine had to stop and investigate all of the things along the way. Side note: Josephine is part pig. She grunts and snorts with her nose to the ground for 95% of the walk. At one point, she sniffed a spot on the ground, took five steps before shaking her head in surprise and circling back for another sniff. We saw two raccoons slink their way across the street (blocks from our house) and heard one owl claiming the area has his. We were the only ones in the park or out in the neighborhood. There was only the faintest of light to the East as we walked the last block back to the house.

I know that not to far from now, there will be more than just a faint bit of light as we make our way home from our walks.

Why is it so hard to get started? What happens to my body during these months that makes it impossible to want to move?!? It’s like my blood thickens to maple syrup but it doesn’t make me warmer. I am never warm. My hands are so cold that if I were to touch you, you would think you had been touched by death. I starting writing this entry thinking that I would immediately post this because I figured that getting up to walk the dog would only happen on Tuesday, but Wednesday morning there I was bundled up and walking Josephine through the neighborhood. Then I did it again on Thursday and Friday. By Thursday, this was starting feel like a gratitude post and I delayed posting. I’ve also been a little bit lazy about my writing, spending my “free time” playing The Bee or doing the NYTimes crossword. I recognize that winter is far from over and that I should expect at least two more miserably cold with possible snow events before the end of March. I also know that today a large rodent made some predictions about the weather for the next few weeks. But today, right now, I am not focused on the future or the what ifs to come.

I am grateful for a week that contained buckets of sunshine every day and temperatures that allowed us to thaw before the next cold front comes along.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Last week, Micheal had some sort of a cold, but I kind of ignored it. He didn’t really act sick except for that one morning when he said “I don’t feel good.” But still, I blew it off which I have apologized for because now I’m the one with the cold. Not too long ago I saw some joke meme tweet thing of a conversation between the brain and the body. The body was saying “We need more fluids!” and the brain replied “I just gave you tons of fluids! What are you doing with all of the fluids?! Are you making mucous?” Then the body doesn’t respond because that is exactly what it’s doing with all of the fluids. I have never found anything more relatable than this. I wouldn’t be so mad about it all if I hadn’t just gotten over the cough and funk that I had before Christmas. This has been a week of cold medicine and neti pots and lots of Kleenex. Then, I threw in some red light therapy for good luck.

Last Saturday, I stepped on a scale for the first time in over six months and for the first time ever, I didn’t give a flip about the number that appeared. My uncaring of the number did not come from a depressed state. I just didn’t care. I was standing on the scale purely for reference since it was also my birthday. If I kept a lab notebook on myself, this would be important data to add, but I don’t. So, I filed the info in my mental lab notebook. My weight is a reflection of my current state of activity level, which always decreases as I go into hibernation mode. In the Spring time, I know I will emerge from semi-hibernation to dog walks and bicycle rides. The season will shift from rich lasagnas to tomato salad and the number on the scale will still just be a number. This is the thing that forty eight year old Cindy would like to pass onto seventeen year old Cindy: The scale numbers are a social construct.

Pear, apple, hourglass, etc are all social constructs for the shape of a woman’s body.

Each year, I gain a new perspective and a little bit more wisdom about this body that my soul inhabits. Each year, I gain a new perspective and a bit more wisdom about my soul and living each day with loving kindness. The only disappointing thing about my birthday this year was that I was too busy and isolated to take time to thank each person individually for their Happy Birthday wishes left on my Facebook timeline. I took the Facebook app off of my phone years ago and only have access to it when I’m on my computer or iPad in a wifi area. So I came home from a day of absorbing yoga knowledge to a timeline filled with love and joy. Which is the only reason for social media.

This body and soul is not large enough and can not contain the amount of gratitude that I have for each of you and for those who make the choice to use these platforms for good.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Thursday morning, I dropped Josephine off at the groomers at 7:45 AM and then promptly locked myself out of my car. I locked myself out of everything. My phone. My wallet. My lunch. All inside the car. I borrowed the phone at the groomer’s and called my insurance company for road side service. This took twenty minutes and my estimated time for service was 100-130 minutes. I waited three hours, walking back and forth, standing near my car, hopping up and down. Every time I tried waiting it out inside, Josephine would start whining. So I stood outside most of the time. I finally gave up and borrowed the phone again to call a locksmith. Then I waited twenty minutes and paid $270 to have the nicest young man with the thickest Italian accent open my car.

I am not kidding when I say that I hugged him.

Seriously, it was the most ridiculous morning and I don’t even know why, but I went ahead and went on to work even though half the day had passed and I was going to have to leave at 3:00 to get Josephine. I just didn’t know what else to do with myself. So without much thinking, I headed to the closest place where I could address my physical needs: bathroom, coffee, food, warmth. That place happened to be work. I am just grateful to be able to go somewhere. That is the very first time I have ever locked myself out of my vehicle. That seems surprising, but it’s true. I’ve locked myself out of the house, but there have been people inside it. All I had to do was knock. I once locked myself out of an email account because I could not for the life of me remember my password. But I had, until just now, never locked myself out of my vehicle. I did it with gusto too.

Later, when I had finally made it to work and warmed up, I texted a friend about what I had done. A giggle bubbled up as I read the things I had written. Then I couldn’t help myself. I just started laughing and laughing. Because it was so much more than just being locked out of my car. I hadn’t had coffee or breakfast. I had no way to pay for anything. I had no way to contact anyone unless I asked to borrow a phone, but who would I call because I don’t have numbers memorized. Even then, who would I call that could come get me and do anything to help this situation? I was in true pioneer wild west territory.

My mother went through a phase where she continuously locked herself out of her car. Her colleagues bought her a special key chain that held her keys on a retractable cord attached to a belt loop. It was a brief phase, but it is something I thought about while I waited for someone to come unlock my car. I hopped from one foot to the other and thought “Oh no…it’s happening.” Then I shrugged and thought “good for me.” There are worse traits I could inherit, but I think I’ve inherited the best of my mother, like her resilience and stubborn independence. I don’t think there is anything wrong with being a bit stubborn and independent. My mother celebrated a birthday on Monday and I am grateful that she could do so.

Today is the last day that this body will ever be forty seven years old. I asked Alexa this morning to play the top hits from 1976 and it started playing a song by the band Kansas. This was followed up with an ABBA song and I remembered that I am not only an inauguration baby, but I’m a baby of the Disco-Rock Wars. Which is probably why I love roller rinks and mosh pits. I left the house singing “There was something in the air that night. The stars shone bright, Fernando.” Even though it’s dangerously cold outside, I felt the sun on my face and decided that today is going to be so much better than yesterday.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

This is one of those weeks where it is challenging to not fill this post up with words of negativity and despair. Tuesday evening, Michael and I parked vehicles in our driveway with the idea that he would be leaving first in the morning. We thought for sure that they would not cancel another day of school. The main roads were clear or mostly clear, but around 8:30 that evening Michael received the call that there would not be school on Wednesday. So we pulled on our boots and coats and went out to swap out vehicles. It was not a well timed or well choreographed event and I ended up having to drive away because a car was coming and Michael wasn’t in the driveway yet. Once you are headed east on my street, there’s not a lot of options for turning around and I ended up slipping and sliding my way up hill on an uncleared neighborhood street. At one point, I thought for sure that I was going to be stuck. It was dark. I wasn’t wearing my glasses and I didn’t have my phone. Fifteen minutes later, I pulled my car into the driveway just as Michael was locking up the house so he could come find me.

This almost could be a metaphor for the week as a whole. There was a lot of slipping and sliding and moments of feeling stuck. The accouterments for snowy weather are heavy and cumbersome. More care has to be taken just by walking to your car. I could have very easily been stranded and stuck in a snow drift, but no one had to come rescue me. I made it home. In spite of the drudgery of this week, I have gotten out of bed every morning and I have done my seven minutes of exercise while waiting for water to boil. Then I have sat in what I call Puppy Meditation. This is where I sip hot lemon and ginger water while petting and snuggling with Josephine. I made time for my own yoga practice and had a few dance parties at my desk. I even made it to the DMV to renew my driver’s license. I arrived fifteen minutes before they opened, was second in line and first to the licensing counter. It took me ten minutes to complete all the tasks, a task I had been dreading since my notice for renewal arrived two months ago.

While this particular week has felt like the length of an entire month, there has been goodness in it to be grateful for. In fact, I will make the argument that weeks that tend to feel more grueling and last longer than some, actually contain more moments of gratitude. Those moments are more clear and vivid in my memory than all the rest of the muck from the week and Puppy Meditation is probably the thing I am most grateful for. I tend to feel guilty for not taking Josephine on walks in the winter mornings. Sitting with her in the mornings and gently rubbing her belly reminds me that she doesn’t care what we are doing in the mornings as long as we are doing it together. She might even prefer Puppy Meditations to the walks. Petting dogs lowers cortisol (bad stress hormone) and increases oxytocin (feel good bonding hormone). Puppy Meditations is not sitting doing nothing.

I am grateful to be transitioning back into a routine that benefits my physical and mental well being.

Today’s weather has so far turned out to be not quite as bad as predicted. We did not receive the layer of ice followed up with more snow, which it is doing right now. Schools are closed again today, but mostly because of the severe cold. My weather app says that it is currently fourteen degrees outside, but feels like negative three. This is a weekend for mugs of tea and bowls of hot soup, for wrapping up in blankets and piling your lap with pets.

This is a weekend for making a choice of stillness.