RANDOM HAUNTS

I walked past a conference room and from the corner of my eye, I saw a younger version of Chris standing at the podium. Leaning on the podium is more like it, with his chin resting in his hand so that his index finger rested on his upper lip in the same way Chris would rest his chin in his own hand. His hair cut was the same short cut. Same glasses. Same shaped head. I am a little amazed at the details I remember considering I was flying by and barely looked into the room. Though there was enough resemblance for me to look twice.

There’s an older gentleman that I run into often at a convenience store between work and home. He always teases me about riding my scooter so fast and ends each interaction with “You be safe out there, girl.” He has my dad’s mannerisms. The way he carries himself. The way he talks to me. The shape of his nose. He doesn’t look enough like Dad for me to have a moment where I forget reality, but I always walk away with a picture of Dad in my head, him grinning while holding up a brown paper bag of peanuts. Who could have ever imaged how much peanuts would define Dad in that latter part of his life?

We are entering my haunting season with a bang.

Ho’oponopono Prayer: I love you. I’m sorry, Please forgive me. Thank you.

I chanted this prayer out loud to myself while my Self Care Circle group sat in their own spaces chanting this prayer, all of us visible through zoom windows. All of us had our mics on mute. I could only hear Roze’s voice as she guided us and my own voice. Josephine was curled up in my lap, looking up at me and for a brief few rounds, I was speaking those words to her even though those words are meant for me. Instead of saying those words to myself, I said them to Dad. I said them to Chris. I even said them to J for not talking him out of enlisting or even trying to talk him out it. Finally, I gave in and said those words to myself.

I love you.

I’m sorry… for placing the blame on myself…for moving us away from our friends and family…for not being there in the end…for the moments I allowed my grief to make me hateful and bitter…for not protecting my own heart…for my inability to control the uncontrollable… for the moments when I can’t breath because I’ve taken care of everyone else’s oxygen mask first…for not quite being the woman you want…for being my worst enemy…for all the things…for the thoughts I do not speak out loud.

Please forgive me.

Thank you.

I carry this prayer with me as I move into the season of hauntings, whispering all of it to myself at each ghostly encounter, each moment of self disappointment. Because the dead cannot, will not, absolve me. I will never hear Chris tell me that it was not my fault. I will never hear Dad tell me that I was right where he wanted me to be on his last day. I will never hear J tell me that he wouldn’t have listened to me anyway. It’s all up to me. Like so much of everything. The laundry isn’t going to wash itself; the bathroom isn’t self cleaning. I have to do those things. I have to provide my own absolution.

I love you

I’m sorry

Please forgive me

Thank you

No more. No less.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Today is Veteran’s Day and last week I was surprised to discover that I have the day off. I don’t believe this has happened before. Veteran’s Day feels like an overlooked holiday, which sounds about right for this country in general. Most veterans I know don’t walk around in uniform or carry signs depicting their service to this country. I think there’s even a large number of our population who hears the word “veteran” and conjures up an image of an older white man. Military service is distant and remote to many.

The last time I was visiting Mom, she gave me a storage bin filled with my Dad’s old Air Force uniforms. My high school letter jacket was in there too. I took two of the military coats along with the letter jacket to the cleaners. The rest of the bin contains the jumpsuits he wore while replacing breaks on fighter jets. When I was a kid, one of those jumpsuits could always be relied upon as a quick costume. Roll up the pant legs. Roll up the sleeves. Put on a pair of boots and aviator glasses and viola. You were now a fighter jet pilot. Every time I pulled on one of those jumpsuits, zipping it up, I never once thought about my dad as a soldier. He wasn’t. He was a mechanic.

This is my naivety on display.

Our veterans are not just gun totting soldiers. They are medical workers, chefs, mechanics, teachers, aid workers, veterinarians. They don’t have to have seen a battle or have been in the thick of artillery fire. They still served this country.

Veterans Day pays tribute to all American veterans—living or dead—but especially gives thanks to living veterans who served their country honorably during war or peacetime.

I have plans to meet a friend for breakfast before getting as many chores done as I can so that the rest of my weekend is truly free for whatever I want. This is a privilege and one that is afforded to me because of a veteran.

Thank you to all veterans who served this shit show of a country during war and or peacetime.

NANOBLAHBLAH

I am not participating in National Book Writing Month or National Blog Writing Month. I really haven’t participated in either of those activities in a few years. I’ve also failed to complete a year of a photo a week project since the lockdown. All I had to do was take one photo a week for a whole year. The constraints of a theme, suffocated the project. I will say that I am very impressed with myself for completing a thirty one day photo challenge presented by LaSahwn Wiltz of Everyday Eyecandy. She posts a list of daily prompts for the month of October and every year, I save the list and say “Cindy, you are going to do this.” I last maybe five days.

This year, I did ALL of the days!

Recently, Michael broached the subject of scheduling an art showing for my photos. He reminded me of the one I had had on the books for 2020 when the world stopped and then asked what ‘we’ were going to do about scheduling another. I feel like every time Michael uses the word ‘we’ he really means me. I need to schedule another showing. I was on glass two and half of wine and not in the mood for this discussion. I told him that we could discuss this in 2023 and returned my attention to the game of Two Dots I was currently playing. That’s exactly how I want to finish out this year: tabling all discussion of personal growth and progress until 2023.

I spent an hour today on a website I used to buy a lot of t-shirts from, browsing for Christmas gifts. Then I spent an hour scrolling through photos from the year to see if I had anything decent of the three of us that I could turn into a Christmas Cars. I do not. The point is, I have found really good ways to keep myself occupied that have nothing to do with personal growth or goals set at the beginning of the year. Yes, I realize that we still have (mostly) two months left in this year, but if your life is anything like mine (and I bet it is) your calendar is filling up with social engagements, holiday planning and general fuckaround time. I currently feel like I’m on a runaway train, flying down a hill and I don’t see the point in doing anything other than just holding on.

I probably would have benefitted from participating in NaNoWriMo this year considering I had set a pretty huge book writing goal for myself at the beginning of the year. I can honestly say that I worked on that book regularly, like daily, for about six months. Then I stopped working on it because I got stuck in the same dang place I always seem to get stuck when trying to write this particular story. My inner critic usually pipes in right around now and tells me how much of a failing loser I am. My inner critic is so freaking mean. She/it is just plain awful, or at least she/it used to be just plain awful. Lately, that inner critic has been really quiet and only voiced an opinion recently by whispering “maybe this isn’t the story you’re supposed to be writing.” For a minute, I thought it was a trick, like being invited to the cool girl’s party so they could throw a bucket of cows blood on me. Or something like that…I never really saw that movie. Then my inner critic repeated her/it’s self with a gentle tone of voice and I thought , maybe this isn’t a joke.

My inner critic just gave me useful advice that didn’t even feel critical and was nice about it.

The thing about goals is that they are always present. In fact, I’m not even planning on making new ones for 2023. I’m just going to tweak the ones I have. More than half of my goals are the kind that are completed only if I’m dead. Those tend to be the goals I set to extend my life, like exercise and eating lots of kale. Those other goals are just the sprinkles on my life sundae. I don’t need them. The sundae is still delicious with our without sprinkles.

I’m a sundae in progress.

THESE CHANGING TIMES

Saturday morning, Michael and I stood in a fairly impressive line for early voting. It was a slow moving line, so we had plenty of time to run through another review of the ballot and discuss the pros and cons of yes and nos for some of the state questions. I always feel like I’m going in to take a test I am not fully prepared to take even though I studied before hand. When we’d finished our ballot review, I told Michael about the story Karen Walrond posted in her Instagram feed about how her daughter had to use frequent flyer miles to fly home from college so she could vote. You can see the story here: https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/17941902179271771/

It’s a feelings inducing story that will make you cry and then want to punch someone. It is a story of voter suppression. A very important story of voter suppression.

Here’s why.

So often the idea of voter suppression conjures up the image of not just the minority, but specifically those living in poverty levels. Voter suppression is happening to a majority of us because choosing a Tuesday during normal working hours as the only time to vote is, in itself, voter suppression. Without early voting, the poles are only open on Tuesday 6:00 AM- 7:00 PM. Now, I have a regular 9-5 job with a pretty flexible schedule, but let’s put that 6:00 - 7:00 time frame into my daily schedule. I get up at 5:30 AM to walk the dog. Josephine and I get home five minutes before Michael needs to be up and in the shower. That’s around 6:35 and then I get in the shower when he’s done sometime around 6:45 (?). I’m usually leaving my house for work at 7:20something. If I go to the polls at this time, I risk being late for work depending on the line. Not a big deal for me because of where I work, but a serious fireable deal for others. I leave work in the evenings around 5:00 PM. Google maps tells me it should take me fifteen minutes to get to my polling place. So, techinically, if there’s not a line, I could be voting by 5:15 PM. As long as I’m checked in by 7:00 PM, no matter the line, I will still be able to cast my ballot.

This sounds doable.

A number of people in my neighborhood rely on public transportation to get to and from work. If I was riding the bus from work to the polls it would take me thirty minutes to get there. Again, that only takes in account my job schedule. Many people in poverty levels are working two jobs. They have to navigate their voting time around bus and work schedules and I have yet to mention children and family obligations like picking those kids up from daycare or school or getting them to sports ball practice. Most health care workers I know, work twelve hour shifts, making that 6:00 AM - 7:00 PM time frame impossible. This is why receiving a requested absentee ballot is vital for voting rights. This is why no-question early voting options are vital for voting rights.

You know, we don’t have to keep doing things because that’s just the way it’s always been done. Especially if is not working for today’s society. One of the things we should all be demanding is voting rights that make voting easily accessible to all citizens.

Vote!

THANKFUL FRIDAY

I hate public speaking of any kind. As soon as standing on a stage, singing or playing an instrument, stopped paying for college, I walked off the stage with a sigh of relief. I am surprised that I do not have these same feeling when I’m standing in front of a class of yoga students, but I stepped into my yoga teacher self with ease and comfort. I loved it, but I also really loved the break I gave myself from teaching after moving to Kansas City. I have been reluctant to step back into my yoga teacher self. That break gave me space to cultivate my own personal practice that was so much sweeter than the one I had before when I was teaching all the time. I did not want teaching to interfere with that and I’ve done well at keeping my set boundaries.

I’ve been teaching yoga classes at work for some time now. What started out as a last minute fill-in for another yoga teacher, turned into a regular schedule. The yoga classes I teach have morphed and changed based on requests and needs. I now teach a chair yoga class once a week. When I was first approached to change my Wednesday samatva yoga class to a chair yoga class, I said ‘yes’ immediately but was a little disappointed. I wasn’t really into the idea of teaching a chair class, but I asked for the class to remain a forty five minute class as opposed to cutting the length down to thirty minutes.

I love my chair yoga class. I didn’t think I would love teaching it as much as I do, but it is my favorite thing to teach now. My friend Melissa, who has a spinal cord injury and is wheelchair bound, comes to my class and she is a willing (Guinnea pig) participant. This class has become the most soothing class for me to teach, as well as the most challenging. I have always struggled with a forty five minute time frame for a yoga class because it never feels like I have enough time to do the poses I want to do and give my students a decent final relaxation. I do not have that problem in chair yoga. When my chair yoga students peel themselves up from a ten or fifteen minute savasana, I can feel their peace and calmness radiating from them.

This brings me joy.

I recently sat down with the director of our fitness facility, Amie, to talk about my classes and ideas for January. First, I can’t believe we are already planning for the next year. What the hell happened to this year?!? Anyway, here we are barreling right on into 2023 like a truck with no brakes. Class attendance for my Thursday evening class is pretty low to absolutely empty and I told Amie that it should probably be cut from the team. She agreed that the timing for that class just wasn’t working and then she proposed an idea of teaching a six week beginning yoga course starting on Monday evening in January. My feeling about this idea registered on my face before it really hit me in my heart because Amie said something about how my whole face lit up with excitement.

Y’all?!?! I LOVE teaching a beginning yoga series!

I think it’s because of my first yoga experience and how my practice was born from just muscling my way through class after class. Yoga teacher training was a V8 for my personal practice because I learned how to do those poses without muscling my way through it. Then I learned how to teach this to other people. This knowledge of how to teach people the safe way to get in out of yoga poses makes me want to buy the world a Coke, but instead of soda make it a yoga mat. My six week beginning yoga class is for every person who ever said to me “I can’t do yoga because I’m not flexible.” It is for every person who as ever walked into a class and felt overwhelmed because they had no idea what was going or what even the teacher was saying. I could go on and on, which makes me realize just how excited I am to teach yoga again.

That’s a feeling I haven’t felt in a long time.

THE LAST TRAIN TO CLARKSVILLE

Union Station does it for me. Every time I walk into that space, I feel like I am stepping into something sacred. The way the sun streams in through the floor to ceiling windows causes me to gasp and even when it is a mess like it is right now because they’re getting the holiday decorations up, I can’t help myself from getting lost in the light and shadows reflected on the marble tile floor. The last time we were there, we had some time to kill as we waited for a shop to open. The morning had turned from normal errands to feeling touristy. I looked at Michael and said “Let’s go see if there’s a train we can get on and just go somewhere.” Now, as I just typed that, I know exactly who I sound like. It’s almost like he’s whispering in my ear.

Dad.

Dad was my adventure partner. He was the one giving permission to ride any and all airplanes at the fly-ins. It was his truck that we’d jump into to go chase down the hot air balloon or follow the firefighters out to a grass fire. Dad was the one that would suggest we go to the airport and see how many airports we could go see in one day. We never got around to that one and now I have serious regrets for not ever responding to this crazy shenanigan with anything other than “YES!'“ All of those car dealership drives he did? He didn’t do those just for the money. He did those drives because he loved the adventure of hitting the road and just going somewhere.

Micheal and I walked to the Amtrak area to look at the schedule and if there had been any trains leaving in the next ten minutes, I think I could have convinced Michael to get on it with me. Really, though we could have been killing time at the airport or the bus station and I would have said “hey, let’s try to catch the next flight or bus!” It’s just that those places aren’t as nice to hang out in as our Union Station. Our airport is a giant mess at the moment with three different terminals and construction for a new airport that will connect all the terminals in progress. The whole romantic setting of our Union Station should draw more train traffic than it really does. As it is now, there are only two or three train departures a day from the Kansas City station and we had already missed the morning ones. If we had been there earlier, we could have had dinner in Chicago. Instead we just looked into taking the train to Chicago for Spring Break next year.

The train is a mode of travel I have yet to experience for more than an hour or so. The last time I was on a train was in December of 2019 and I rode it from DC to Baltimore so I could spend the evening with Bradley and Ethan. That was the last trip I took before the world shut down and thank goodness it included that epic party in the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. In my mind, riding the train is just like all the old black and white movies I used to watch. It is a romantic notion and I have dreams of riding the train just to sit for hours staring out the window or focusing on some writing project. My friend Jeff has ridden the train a number of times from here to St. Louis to visit his parents and he said that he always ends up sitting next to the drunk guy. He said there’s always drunk people on the train. My friend Jason disagrees with Jeff. He said he’s always had a pleasant time riding the train. I think they’re both right.

That day, Michael and I didn’t get on a train. We settled for planning our next adventure and just being tourists in this city with riding the streetcar and wandering around Pryde’s in Westport, talking ourselves out of ridiculous kitchen gadgets. As we walked around Westport trying to decide on lunch, our friend Aaron yelled at us from across the street, where he was bartending at Kellys and we ended up having a beer while chatting with Aaron while we figured out where to eat lunch. We had another beer at Mickey’s Hideaway where we settled for lunch. The walls are papered with an old high school yearbook and Michael pointed to a picture behind me. It was picture of James Westphal, a local celebrity thanks to Paul Rudd’s character in Anchorman. They were college roommates and Michael knows James from his bartending days.

We eventually made our way back to where we had parked the car, getting almost as many steps in as we would roaming around on vacation. And, yeah…we didn’t get on an Amtrak train to head out on an adventure, but we didn’t really need to in order to have a day of being a tourist.

MY LEAST FAVORITE THING TO SHOP FOR

Saturday was one of those odd days where Michael got up at the same time as me and we both ended up doing the grocery shopping. The original plan was for me to get him up when I got home from grocery shopping so we could go to early voting at Union Station. The new plan included a car wash and tag teaming grocery shopping (tag teaming grocery shopping means, I get most of the things on the list while Michael roams around the store grabbing things not on the list). Groceries purchased and put away, we finally headed to Union Station, parking at Crown Center because parking is free on Saturdays and we can walk the sky walk over to the station.

We wandered around Union Station looking for the polling place which turned out to be closed, and while we were walking, I told Michael about the bra I had on because the one I wear all week is in the washer. He stops and says “Wait. You wear the same bra everyday? This is unacceptable. Where do you buy bras?” and he immediately pulls out his phone to start looking up places to buy underwear, finding a boutique near by. I voiced my concerns about bra shopping but I couldn’t tell if he was not listening or just flat out ignoring me, because we got on the streetcar anyway and rode it a few blocks up the street. The closer we got to the store, the more anxious I became about even looking into the store window let alone stepping inside. This is not a department store or Target (where my last bit of lingerie was purchased). This is a BOUTIQUE, the kind of place you make an appointment to go to. Walk ins are welcome, but it’s better to make an appointment. I did not have an appointment. I did not have any business walking into this store. Michael sort of shoved me through the door and said “I’ll be back in a bit. Have fun!” It was not unlike any time I’ve ever dropped Josephine off at the groomer’s or that time Talaura shoved a cookie into my hands while pushing me off the bus at the airport in NY so there would not be goodbye tears.

The boutique, Birdie’s, is tiny and filled with beautiful bits of ethically sourced lingerie displayed in old glass and wood cases and at first I didn’t know where to start, but the woman behind the counter stepped up. She asked me a few questions about what I needed in a day-to-day bra and then she measured me. She pinned closed the curtain, sealing me into the tiny dressing room and then came back with a handful of lacy bras and said she’d be back with some slightly padded ones next. My shoulder sagged a little at the stack of lacy bras. Once, while I was in graduate school, a guy in my department looked right at my chest and said “Oh! It must be cold in here.” I have worn a padded bra ever since. I never reach for just lace when shopping for a bra. I want to reach for the lace. I’d love to wear something pretty every day, but that one comment ruined me. I tried on every single bra the woman handed me (there were a lot) and every one of them fit me and was comfortable. I finally had to narrow it down to three based on color and only one of them has padding. It is also mostly lace. I bought three lacy, very pretty bras that fit, are comfortable, and make me feel like getting in a time machine so I can go back to that day in grad-school and give that jerk the response he deserved and probably still deserves.

Michael came into the shop while the woman was ringing up my purchases, which included a new, very sexy sticker for the scooter. I looked at him and said “There’s a lot of things in here that I like and this is a very appropriate place for you to buy gift cards for me when you don’t know what to get me.” I walked into Birdie’s feeling insecure and cranky about having to do my least favorite kind of shopping. I walked out of that store feeling empowered, knowing that I would go back in there in the near future able to confidently point at any style or lingerie set and say “I’d like that in this size please.” Heck, I don’t even have to go in there and point. All I have to do is tell her my size and an array of beautiful things will just be brought to me to try on.

I think Birdie’s just turned bra shopping into my new favorite thing.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

More often than not, when I sit down to write my Friday gratitude post, it turns into a list of complaints. I just start writing about all the difficult and annoying things that happened during the week. The aches. The pains. The exhaustion. The list of things I didn’t accomplish. All of this flows out onto the page with such ease and I will have whole paragraphs of complaints written before I even realize that I’m complaining. Then, I’ll sit back and really read what I wrote and I will select all and hit ‘delete’. It’s not that I don’t feel like I have a right to complain. We all have complaints. Complaints are valid. It’s just that there is something therapeutic about writing it all down and then destroying it.

In a way, this whole process of writing is like cleaning out a closet. I’m getting rid of all the things that I don’t need and leaving behind the good stuff. But I am also making space for extra goodness. A few weeks ago, we received our Gene Keys for Self Care Circle. I have no idea how my gene keys were determined. It has something to do where and when I was born and the website descriptions make me roll my eyes real hard, but the results that came back to me are not untrue. In fact, there is so much not untrue things in my results that I have struggled to read them all completely, but I am going to share with you a few things that really stood out for me.

In the section on what keeps me healthy, it says that one of the most important factors in my well being and longevity is my ability to laugh. When I read this, I thought about last year’s October camp and how much laughing I did. At the end of camp, we went around the circle sharing what we got out of that camp. One woman said that she didn’t come to camp thinking she would end up laughing so much and I looked over to see Amani poking a finger at me, outing me as one of the causes of all the laughter. And it was all true. Last October, I rediscovered my laugh and my ability to see the humor in the ridiculous. This is important because the next thing my gene key says is that “life for you is about finding lightness and humor, especially in difficult or challenging circumstances”.

Shut.

Up.

Sometimes it takes me writing paragraphs of complaints and then deleting them in order for me to make space for finding the lightness and the humor under any circumstances. Especially in difficult and challenging ones.

WHEN LIGHTNING STRIKES

I was having a conversation with a coworker friend and he was telling me about playing Trivial Pursuit recently and discovering that lightning can heat the air around it as it strikes to 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s five times hotter than the surface of the sun. First I wondered how close you can get to the sun before you evaporate into nothing. Like, how close did Icarus get before his wings caught fire? Then I wondered about all the stories I’d heard of people surviving lightning strikes, some of them multiple times.

The Weather Channel website keeps a list of lightning strike survivors along with a link to Lightning Strike and Electric Shock Survivors, International (LSESSI), a support group for survivors. The list on the Weather Channel is a spreadsheet of names, location of strike and medical impacts. I scrolled through the list, reading the various medical impacts of lightning strikes. Burns and fractures seem to be a common medical impact. Someone on the list had to relearn how to read and write. Heart problems, ringing ears, memory loss. A couple of people experienced no side effects at all, which I feel is a bit remarkable. A few people claim to have “psychic abilities”, which did not surprise me. Let’s face it. If you survive being hit with something five times hotter than the sun, you are going to be left believing that there is something freaky special about you in some way.

The CDC has a whole wonderful section devoted to facts around lightning strikes. The odds of being struck by lightning in a given year is less than one in a million, which is crazy since there are about forty million lightning strikes a year in the U.S. Males are four times more likely to be struck by lightning than women. This does not surprise me. Every time the tornado sirens went off, Chris would be outside with cup of coffee while I would be finding a way for all of us to fit into the ‘safest’ closet. The ‘safest’ closet was always the smallest one. Statistical data for lightning strikes finds that most often people are stuck doing outside leisure activities like fishing, golfing, boating, and beach lounging, activities most available to white men of a specific age with a certain income.

So yeah, it makes sense that they are four times more likely to be struck by lightning. What doesn’t make sense is how we’re still allowing this kind of man (or any man) to make decisions on women’s reproduction rights, LGBQT rights, or racial equity. It’s pretty safe to say that waiting around for lightning to remove these guys is a waste of time.

Vote. Vote. Vote.

Because we are not lucky enough for a lightning strike.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

In my Self Care Circle group, we’ve talked a lot about ways to incorporate movement and cultivate joy in our every day lives. Roze gave us all the gift of the one song dance party where for one whole song, you dance with abandon, like no one’s watching. I’ve never been shy about moving my body to a beat, but I did find it important enough to remind myself to get up and dance. So I put it on my calendar and every day at 2:00pm, I get an alert that it is time for a dance party at my desk. I scheduled it for this time because I start to get sluggish and sleepy in the mid afternoon. It might not make sense to force myself off my butt to dance when I’m slumping, but dancing is an energizing exercise. So at 2:00pm, I can be found shaking off my mid afternoon slumps by wiggling my hips and flailing about like a wacky wavy inflatable tube guy.

There’s a scene in Beetlejuice where he makes a group of people at a dinner part start dancing. I’m sure you are familiar with the scene, but the dinner party guests all start involuntarily moving their bodies to the beat of the Banana Boat song and looking all confused. I become one of those dinner party guests, except with less confusion, whenever a song with a good beat starts playing. I can’t help myself and do not ever wish to help myself. At concerts, I will look around me while I’m flailing about and see most of the audience just standing motionless. I want to grab ahold of the nearest person and yell “MOVE YOUR BODY! HOW CAN YOU STAND STILL TO THIS BEAT! I MEAN, CAN’T YOU FEEEEEL THIS MUSIC?!?!” That’s the thing. I don’t just hear music as much as I feel it physically inside my body.

Every morning when I get out of the shower, I poke my head into the living room and say “Alexa, play some music.” Because there are three of us on this music account with various listening preferences, I usually have to poke my head out into the living room again and say “Alexa, play a different station.” This week, I told her to play songs by the Scissor Sisters. I have danced every morning this week while brushing my teeth, putting on makeup, drying my hair and getting dressed. Then Josephine and I dance while I’m getting her goodbye treats and I pretty much dance right up until I ask Alexa to stop so I can leave the house.

This simple act of adding music that makes me dance to my mornings is what has made this generally normal, just a week kind of week, more than just a normal week (side note: on two separate occasions this week, I had at least one article of clothing on backwards). I often sneak vegetables into our meals because getting Michael to eat something other than corn is challenging. Well, adding dance music to my mornings is like sneaking in vegetables, except in this case joy is replacing kale. I have been sneaking joy into my life each morning with dance music.

I highly recommend it.

Also, I highly recommend kale.

WE ALL HAVE TO GROW UP SOMETIME

Traci contacted me last week to ask if I’d take Quinn’s senior pictures. My immediate response was a mixed bag of being unqualified to take these pictures and internal weeping because how is it possible that this kid is graduating high school?!? I swallowed those feelings and struck a deal with Traci. I would take the pictures for free, edit them and then give them a folder of images to choose and have prints made. She countered the deal with an okay, but we’re going to this fancy ten course dinner place afterwards. We are good at negotiations.

They met me in Tulsa where I had traveled to visit with Mom and we roamed around the Gathering Place while I snapped pictures of Quinn. I took well over three hundred pictures and his eyes were closed in probably two hundred and fifty of them. There was a lot to catch up on since we hadn’t spent time together in almost a year. We swapped life stories while Quinn mugged for the camera. Occasionally, Traci and I would give each other a side eye before making fun of his duck face pose. Yes…duck face is not just for the females and a more experienced portrait photographer would have been able to give this lanky man child better things to do with his face and hands. Even if I was an experienced portrait photographer, I would have been distracted by how it was possible that this human was mostly all grown up.

I have so many stories of this person as a small human. Chris and I were right on the other side of the door to his delivery room and were some of the first people to meet him on his first day on this planet. I have such a clear memory of Traci’s Chris holding this bundled newborn up for us all to witness. Quinn’s head was perfectly rounded and made for those little knitted baby caps. He looked back at us with one squinty eye, like Popeye. Chris was Quinn’s manny from the time he was a tiny baby until we moved to Kansas City. On the Saturday mornings when Chris was working, I’d run errands and then grab breakfast or lunch to take over to Traci’s house. Then Chris and I would watch Quinn poke food into his mouth for over an hour or we’d take him to the Bass Pro Shop to see ‘catfish’. We watched countless hours of Cars and Finding Nemo. We spent every Halloween at their place handing out candy to what felt like thousands of kids or walking the neighborhood trick-or-treating. Tantrums, laughs, snotty noses, I’ve experienced them all.

Traci had made reservations at FarmBar, a place that does a ten course tasting menu, the kind of place I wouldn’t ever think to take a teenager. But Quinn is pretty culinarily adventurous and willing tried each dish that was placed in front of us. There was no need to prod or beg him to just try a bite. The dinner was good, some dishes better than others, but the thing that made this dinner the best was Quinn’s commentary on all of the dishes. If Chris left any kind of imprint on this kid, it was his dry wit and sense of humor. The Kanpachi crudo of shiso ganita and charred onion was described as a “vegetable snow cone” which was not far from the truth. We were five or six courses in before Quinn declared that he hadn’t even used his napkin yet and while waiting on course six, he said “they’re probably back there whipping up one mushroom for the four of us.” And we laughed so dang much.

Quinn has a job and a girlfriend. He’s taking college courses and plans on going to nursing school, like his parents. He’s debating between Japan and Mexico for his senior trip. I told him to pick Japan. He still has that squinty brown eye, though his other eye is hazel. He is taller than all of us. He has Chris’s sense of humor and skill for delivering the perfectly timed, sarcastically dry line.

I bet that skill gets him farther than he can even imagine.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Fall blue skies are like no other season’s. Sharp, vibrant, fierce. On particularly clear days, the sky can look unreal, like flat backdrops to a stage production. They are so brilliantly blue and crisp that it cause the eyes to squint to look at it. These skies are deceptive. There is no way of knowing by looking out the window what the temperature will be like when you step outside. It could be perfectly wonderful out there or chilly with a cold wind that you can only feel on your ears. Fall skies are strikingly beautiful in an almost painful way. It is as contradictory as my feelings. I love the beauty of it and I hate the cold that comes with it.

The mornings this week have been so dark. Wednesday was the worst for it. It started out with rain and thick, heavy clouds. Josephine and I had to skip our walk, which she didn’t seem to mind since she crawled under the comforter when the alarm sounded. But even when it was time to get up and into the shower, the sky was still dark. I drove to work in the dark. I walked the building for my morning coffee in the dark. It was just …dark. Then I looked out the windows and in the distance, I could see a clear division line between gray clouds and blue sky. It was if we were playing a game where we had covered ourselves and the whole city with a blanket and now someone was slowly pulling the blanket away, not just revealing ourselves to the above, but opening our eyes to a blinding blue sky.

Friday morning as I drove to work, the radio starting playing Be Sweet by Japanese Breakfast. I turned up the volume and sang along with my whole heart. That song makes me think of those ridiculous plastic charm necklaces that we all collected as kids, side pony tails and ruffled skirts. I’m wearing my KSwiss tennies, baggy jeans with strategically ripped knees and an over size sweater and felt all the angsty tween feelings while belting out “I wanna believe in you. I wanna beelieeeeveeee.” The sky around me was that blinding blue sky of Fall. Not a cloud was visible as the sun broke over the tops of the trees, sun rays sparkling on glass and turning the fall leaves into a kaleidoscope.

Be sweet to me, baby
I wanna believe in you, I wanna believe (be sweet)
Be sweet to me, baby
I wanna believe in you, I wanna believe in something

These are the days for sweaters and wool blankets. These are the days for wrapping ourselves up in warmth while sipping on hot drinks. These are the days for reveling in the almost painful beauty of those kaleidoscopes of leaves. These are the days to be sweet to each other.

FAULT LINES

I went to bed at 9:00 pm, but woke from a dream where I had a Christmas wreath stuck on my head and raccoons where trying to get into the house. That was at 10:30. I fell back to sleep and into a strange world where I was captured by evil aliens who tossed me into a mud pit. I emerged from the pit transformed into a small pig like animal and I woke to the sound of my own voice saying “This is all my fault.” You know how people tend to put the blame on anything but themselves? I am the opposite.

Climate change.

Cancer

Wars

Brain diseases

I don’t recycle enough or well. I don’t take enough action or push for hard discussions that might really need to happen. I haven’t cured cancer or even how to see it in the one I love. I haven’t stopped any bombs or put up much of a fight. I am supposed to be able to hold it all together. I should be able to hold it all together. Wonder Woman is on my wall. Not just because Jen painted it. Not just because it is an amazing piece of art. No; its because she’s fierce and strong and when I look at this painting, it becomes my mirror. As if I have the power to stop, change or fix any of the above. Yes, I know this is unrealistic. I know that I am not the reason for all the suffering of and on this planet.

Yet, there’s always that nagging little voice saying “you could have done more.”

After making sure I had all of the things done that I usually do on Sundays, I drove to my local CVS and got my COVID booster. I purposefully scheduled it for Saturday afternoon because that would leave me with Sunday and Monday to deal with the side effects. I spent Sunday mostly not moving from my bed. Monday was better. At least I showered, but the day was spent mostly not moving from the couch. Even as I sat there soaking in all of season one of The Empress, I shook my head at myself for being so dang lazy. Surely there was a closet to be cleaned out or something to be organized. I mean, I had the house all to myself. It was a holiday that felt like a sick day because Michael did not have the day off. I had ample opportunities and still I did nothing. I didn’t even walk the dog or get on my yoga mat.

Now I’m spending my week soaking in a tub of guilt.

Someday I will write about why am this way. I will place blame on something for the blame I place on myself. You probably won’t be surprise where I point my finger. I’ll point and then add in that I could have chosen to ignore the conditioning, thus turning it back around to it all being my own fault. The nun I was in a past life was pious and devout. Her scars were deep from self flagellation, so deep they transcended lives. I can feel them back there, tight itchy ropes of flesh. I can trace the ones on my shoulder blades. I slather the scars I can reach with coco butter and Arnica gel until I forget or fall out of habit of caring for myself, like forgetting to clip my toenails until I rip holes in my socks.

Someday I won’t need to write about why am this way.

STUFF THE INTERNET THINKS I NEED RIGHT NOW

I feel like this should be a reoccurring post. Like maybe once a month or so, I’ll give you an update on the ads that flow into all of my social media feeds. Most recently, the Internet believes that I desperately need new bras. This is probably true. I do tend to wear one bra until it is falling apart and even then, I will continue to patch it back together with string, staples, and/or gorilla glue. In return, I am inundated with videos of women of various ages and sizes jumping up and down in a bra. Every time I open Facebook, my timeline becomes work inappropriate. So, the added benefit here is that I just don’t go to Facebook during the day.

Now I will straight up admit that some of the advertising coming my way is my own fault. Yes, I have googled “weight loss + menopause”. I am not menopausal, but I was curious and planning ahead. I am considered perimenopausal and thought that might have something to do with my weight and mood. Which it does, but there’s very little scientific journal articles regarding this topic. This leaves me wide open for all the snake oil ads for losing weight after a certain age. My favorite ones are videos of senior citizens doing jazzercise. I have managed to convince the interwebs that I am indeed sixty five years old. I get all the ads for leak proof under things, as well as all the anti-aging miracles and magic vitamins. Most recently, mushroom coffee has taken an aggressive lead over magic vitamins.

By far, my favorite ads are centered around campers and camp gear. These ads are one hundred percent my fault. Ever since we decided to get rid of our camper, I’ve been window shopping for the next thing. I have a list of wants in mind and I can waste a lot of time scrolling through camper layouts. I’m really leaning towards a van because I want something I could use on my own. I have a growing list of needs and wants. It must include a bathroom. It must be easy to pack and maneuver about. It must be reasonably priced. Of course, this is all subject for change since the list of needs and wants go beyond a new camper. A new driveway. A new kitchen. There’s always something.

Except mushroom coffee. I’d like to think I’m sane enough to never fall for that one.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Right as you walk in the front doors to our local Trader Joe’s is a display of pumpkins, two large crates full of decorative gourds and on the first day of October, this display is a traffic jam of aggressive women filling their carts with these pumpkins and gourds. After successfully maneuvering my shopping cart through the pumpkin gauntlet, I ran smack into a display of dwarf olive trees. There were eight of them and a woman was scooping all of them into her cart. I managed to snag one of the eight even though I had no business buying an olive tree. I kill house plants. I have had plants rescued from my house because I am not a plant witch. I grabbed that olive tree with a fierce determination to keep this thing alive and so help me, I’m going to do it. In three years, we will be eating olives that I grew.

Then I went home and hot glued one hundred googly eyes onto my Halloween wreath.

This was how Michael found me when he got up. I was sitting at our table, hot glue gun in one hand and a bowl full of googly eyes in the other. He suggested I take a break by going to get lunch. I agreed and pointed out the olive tree and that needed a pot and potting soil. We also needed to decide Saturday’s dinner. I glued the last eye onto the wreath while Michael was in the shower and then the two of us drove off in search of food and planting material, which didn’t take as long at it usually takes us to do Saturday things. This meant that I was able to get all of the things done, the cleaning, the planting, the Halloween decorating, all of it accomplished before dinner. I did the things that I usually put off until Sunday and so on Sunday, I didn’t have to do anything.

So I went to a yoga class, a rare treat for me.

I’m telling you all of this now in a Thankful Friday posting because all of those things that I did last weekend have played a big role in helping me tackle this week. I woke up Wednesday morning and thought “It’s only Wednesday.” Michael sent a text to me that he had only poured hot water into his travel tea mug, no tea bags or sugar. I forgot my smoothie. The day was gray and cloudy. And all I could think was we still had two more days of this week to get through. This week has been long and uncomfortable.

Every time I have walked up to my front door, I have chuckled at the one hundred googly eyes looking back at me from my wreath. It is my reminder to allow for silliness and the healing power of laughter. Walking past the dining room window and seeing my olive tree still looking happy has brought me joy. That olive tree, a symbol of peace, is also a reminder of resilience. Making it to an actual yoga class set a precedent for my own practice this week, which has gotten a little wonky lately because of teaching and schedules. Josephine and I even made it out for our morning walks every morning this week. Sticking to these routines have been a source of grounding and have kept me present.

I am thankful that this week is nearly at an end and that I have this weekend to refill my buckets with good things.

MIA

Michael and I were watching The Greatest Beer Run on Saturday evening and early in the movie, the main character gets word that his best friend has been reported MIA. Michael said “That has got to be the worst. I mean what you and your family have done if J was MIA?” He didn’t know. He didn’t realize what that question would and could do to me. But he asked it and the words were out and I sort of just collapsed in on myself. I mean, he realized his mistake immediately and started back peddling and apologizing. There are so many things that he just couldn’t know about any of it. He doesn’t know that I still, after all these years, have dreams where J is alive and I can assure you that this is a collective dream shared with my family. Sometimes in those dreams, J never left and sometimes he just shows up after being gone for a number of years.

None of them are reality.

If I could have expressed myself in words in that moment, I would have said that a MIA report would have turned hope into an albatross that wouldn’t just dangle around our necks, but dangle and twist to choke us. There would be no moving forward or backwards. My family would be stuck, trapped inside a ball of questions lined with unimaginable layers of hope. We would never be able to come to terms with all the meanings in the words missing in action and this would shatter and fragment us even more than we already are. There would be those of us who would give up hoping and would just wish for a finding of remains. There are those of us who would never stop believing that J was alive somewhere out there in the desert. And we would tear each other to pieces over our different beliefs and hopes.

A notice of missing in action would be worse than death.

That was the answer I eventually squeaked out around my tears.

I have received some horrific news that I cannot currently discuss (or will probably ever discuss here). Just know that the weeks ahead are going to be difficult for many and confusing and weird. It is particularly a week for being mindful of our words and the questions we ask. It is a week for softness and empathy. It is a week for comforting each other.

Speak softly with kind words.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Every time we camped in Colorado, I would set out our hummingbird feeder. There were times when I would be stepping out the camper door with the feeder in my hands and I would be swarmed by hummingbirds. They had no fear of me as they perched on the feeder I was holding. I would spend hours watching them buzz in and out of our campsite. If there are magical creatures, the hummingbird must be on that list. They truly are a marvel of evolutionary design and I don’t think I will ever grow weary of watching them, but they are migratory. They chase the warmth of the sun, a need I can respect and desire for myself and have been known to travel over 3,000 miles in their migrations. Every night, hummingbirds slow their metabolism down as a way of saving energy and enter a state known as torpor, a hibernation state of deep sleep. They often use spider webbing and lichens to build nests. They sleep in beds made of spider silk. And that sounds like a magical fairytale all by itself.

I took my hummingbird feeder down this week. It has been days since I have seen a hummingbird. For a while there, I had three of them fighting over my feeder. They were my favorite things to watch. One would perch on the cable line and keep watch. When another bird would fly near the feeder, the one hanging out on the line would zip down and off they’d go. Like fighter jets zipping around in the air. In the quiet moments, when they were not arguing over who gets to eat, you would have the privilege of watching one of the hummingbirds hover by the feeder, taking tentative slurps from the sugar water. Sometimes they would get comfortable enough to perch at the feeder. In the evening, the sun reaches a level where it shines directly from the West into our yard. It can be blinding, but this is my favorite time of day to watch the hummingbirds. Their wings are almost translucent as they filter the light.

My hummingbirds are not as bold or brave as the hummingbirds I have met in Colorado. They are tentative as they approach the feeder and any sudden moves sends them darting off. In order for me to watch them, I have to sit very still. I have to be still to watch their wings beating at a rate of eighty eight per second. It seems almost comical to me that this fast tiny bird creates stillness within me and I will miss them through the winter months. But, oh the gift of joy that I receive when they return in the Spring. I am building my own nest of spider silk to tuck these memories into so that I may hold them close as the days grow darker and colder.

Today I am grateful for spider silk nests.

EVEN ON GOOD DAYS

It was a good day. The whole weekend was shaping up nicely. It took a three page write up in Bon Appetit with them listing this place as one of the top ten best new restaurants, but I finally convinced Michael to try Baba’s Pantry. Now we can’t eat anything else for the rest of our lives. I picked up Friday night’s dinner from there and the next day we went back for hummus and cheeses and spicy pickled things. In continuing with the them of lists, we headed out on our scooters for Kitty’s Cafe, who made the list of top 50 restaurants for the New York Times. It was okay. I guess the pork tenderloin is the main reason they made that list. My option was a fish sandwich which was tasty, but it was just a fish sandwich.

After lunch, Michael led us to Mikey’s Military Surplus. The route took us through a part of town that I didn’t even know existed. At one point, Michael stopped so I could pull up next to him. He said “Honk if you want to stop to take pictures.” and then I had some serious regrets for not having my bigger camera. The road we were on ran right along side the railroad tracks that follow the Missouri river. On one side, we had tall grasses, train tracks and the occasional train. The other side of the street was lined with shotgun houses varying in shades of blues, pinks and greens. Then we came to a four way stop and on one corner was a little house with a sign that read “Welcome to East Argentine”. I beeped my horn so Michael would know that I wanted to stop. It was like we had just entered a different country.

We made it to Mikey’s, which is split. Half of it is regular work clothes with brands like Dickies and Carharrt. I found a nice pair of fleece fingerless mittens with grippy pads on the palms. The other side of the shop is devoted to military surplus. I could feel the nudge in the back of my brain as I stepped into that area. It smelled like every single military surplus store I had been into with Chris. My fingers grazed over a rack of coveralls and I thought about pulling one down and putting it on. There was a crate full of com-phone receivers that probably should have been in my basement. I did not spend a lot of time in this area and became inpatient to leave.

We stopped at a large Mercado on our way home with nothing inside labeled in english, bought a large wedge of white crumbly cheese and popsicles. Then we sat outside at a picnic table in the shade, eating our popsicles and watching families come and go. My popsicle was more shredded coconut than ice cream. The tropical taste mixed with the warmth of the day and unfamiliar surroundings, again made think for a moment that I had magically transported myself to South America. As Michael and I rode our scooters back down the road that had brought us to that area, that nudging in the back of my brain became a hard shove.

When Chris and I moved here, we knew very little about this city. So we spent our weekends just driving around with no destination in mind. We’d turn off maps and GPS and go out and get lost. It’s how we discovered so many great little Portland like places. These adventures allowed us to see that even though we hadn’t moved to the city that held our hearts, we had moved to a really cool place that was very much like the city that held our hearts. Michael’s lived here his whole life and I was able to introduce him to places he’s never heard of and all of that was because of mine and Chris’s adventures in getting lost. So while I was riding down this strange little street with railroads on one side and shotgun houses on the other side, I was struck that this, all of it, was something that Chris and I never found. At the very least, how was it that we never stumbled across Mikey’s Surplus? That shit was right up Chris’s alley.

I picked up speed as anger rose up inside me and I stewed in it for most of the ride home. Then I thought about the beauty of the day, the perfection of all the finds and the weather. I marveled at how after all this time I could still let it get to me. The things we didn’t do. Not enough time. The reconciliation of my life now without him. That’s the most difficult part, giving myself permission to have this life without him.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Don’t let yourself only love one thing. Because if you only love one thing and that thing goes away? Well…then you’re left with nothing. And that sucks. - Bunny Folger, Only Murders in The Building

When I heard this line while watching Only Murders in The Building, I made Michael rewind the scene so that I could accurately jot the line down in a notebook. The words seemed important to me for some reason. While the character speaking the line was referring to her life’s work as the board director for her apartment building, I feel that this line goes deeper than just one’s life work. It can be easy to turn all your love and devotion onto one idea.

I wonder how my life would be now if I had only allowed myself one thing, one interest, one person. I probably wouldn’t notice how I had limited myself until the one thing was gone. I drank the kool-aid of interdisciplinary curriculum during my undergraduate years and made it a point to surround myself with more than science, building my own circus family in the process. Except, in a way I did love one thing. A person. It is no secret that I still love that person even though he’s gone and has been for awhile now. I think the thing Bunny failed to realize on her last day of living was that you can love just one thing. You can devote your life to it, fully immerse yourself into it and soaking in it so that your fingers are perpetually wrinkled. You can do all of that just as long as you recognize that everything is temporary. If you can love that temporary thing that much, then you can love something else when it is gone. All that is required is that you keep your open to the idea of something else, something more.

If anything, loving one thing teaches you that you have the ability to love.

WAFFLES

The landscape between home and the Cabbage’s school is blanketed with trees. When I drove out there last week to take them to the dentist, the sky was overcast and there was a light rain hitting my windshield. The temperature was somewhere between cool and warm. I looked out at the usual sea of green and started to notice hints of yellows and golds. I was not pleased. Later, I was talking about this to coworkers when of them suggested that some of our yellows and golds could be due to drought. That was only mildly reassuring because I looked at the calendar and September is not far from being at its end. Tomorrow is officially the first day of Fall. A cold front is moving in this evening to kick things off.

As always, I am not ready.

September is hard. I want Summer to last forever. I want heat and sun and popsicles and endless scooter riding days. This week, when I have walked into the office in the mornings, I have noticed a shift in the light. It is the beginning of rainbow season, the time of year that the angle of the sun produces rainbows on our walls as it bounces off the edge of our glass cubicles. I remember now that I love rainbow season and I’m always taking pictures of my desk toys with rainbows, me with rainbows coming out of my ears. The changing leaves really are spectacular here. The reds and oranges in particular. They have a way of catching the light so that they appear as flames. Eleven years here and I’m still stunned and amazed, pointing out their spectacular beauty during every car ride, pulling over to take more pictures. And I like decorating for Halloween. Googly eyes on pumpkins are hilarious.

Transitions between seasons is a kind of death. There is a mourning period for what must be lost or sacrificed in order to move on to the next season. As Spring moves into Summer, I mourn the loss of the tulips and the new bursts of color while I welcome the heat, the lightening bugs and the buzzy sounds of that season. I find myself mourning the loss of those things now as we move into Fall and as Fall moves into Winter, I will mourn the loss of color. Winter is a full season of mourning for me. This is why I grasp so firmly to last days of Summer and resist the move into chillier weather.

I know what is coming.

I rode my scooter to work today, probably the last time this year without the need of a jacket. Michael told me that it was going to rain today, but I took a chance and rode the scooter anyway. Weather predictions say that the rain is not expected until this evening. I am willing to take this risk because I don’t know how many scooter days are even left for this year. So I’m soaking up as much joy and heat while I still can.