DEHYDRATION

In the dark morning hours of Sunday, I dreamed that I was at a spa for a spa day. That’s not a far fetch dream. Michael got me a gift card for a spa day for Christmas and I’m all booked for the twenty first. In this dream, I went into a room that was very hospital like and removed my clothes. Then I peed on the floor (because dreams are crazy). My massage therapist then told me to lie down on the massage table face up. She covered me with blankets and then raised the bars up on both sides of the table. The table turned out to be a hospital bed. Then she spent five minutes digging for a vein in my hand so that she could hook me up to a saline IV. The therapist patted my other hand and said “We’re just going to let you rest here for a few minutes and absorb some fluids.” Then she pulled a curtain around me and left me alone.

I woke up thinking that I really needed to drink more water.

I also really hope that this is not how my actual spa day is going to play out.

Oh, it must be that time of year when I have to be reminded to care for myself. I’m not talking about massages and bubble baths kind of care, but the basics. Drink water. Trim nails. Eat a green vegetable. Step away from the cheese. That last on is much harder than it sounds. Months ago I told Michael I wanted a cheese cake for my birthday. He replied “Oh, you want me to make you a cheesecake for your birthday?” and I said “No. I want a cake made out of wheels of cheese for my birthday.” Then Michael said “What?! Is that a thing?!” while googling it and discovering that yes it is a thing. The first layer is already sitting in the fridge because it was on sale at Whole Foods during Christmas. It didn’t hit me until I made our New Year’s Eve charcuterie board that I had asked for an exorbitant amount of cheese.

We will be freezing leftover birthday cheese cake.

I still stand one hundred percent behind my beliefs that making resolutions in January is a waste of time. No one is in a good headspace to start new projects or pick up the old projects. We’re all still recovering from our holiday gatherings and the clean up from those holiday gatherings. I started the New Year with yet another restructuring at work. It’s nothing bad, in fact it is a very good thing, but there’s a lot of new things and questions and weirdness. I’m losing my yoga space and I’m going to have to hunt down a new one. I thought this week, I’d work on consistency in my yoga practice, my walks and going back to torture class. I’m saying no to elevators and I’ve re-introduced a timed twenty minute eating time.

I’ve also had a liter and a half of water today.

I’m not setting any big goals for myself this year because some big goals have already been established for me. A manager of a downtown coffee place posted a request for local artists in a private Facebook group that Michael is part of. He sent her a link to my website and she contacted me last week about a May/June showing for my photography. I’ve been scared to say anything about it because the last time I was supposed to do something like this, the world shut down and I lost my commission. Also, it didn’t really feel legit since I didn’t do anything. She just went online and looked at my photography page. All I had to do was say ‘yes’. I confirmed the dates with the manager yesterday and I’ll go visit the space on Saturday, but I feel like I have all the photos I need to fill the walls. I just need to print and frame them.

I start to get a little bit hyperventally when I think about it, but then I remember all the preparation I’ve already done and how there is not that much left for me to do other than just print the pictures. Maybe if someone came to me and said “hey, we want to publish your book in October.”, I’d finish writing a book. Apparently this how I get things accomplished. I just need to set back and do nothing until someone tells me to do something.

Drink some water. Eat a green vegetable.

SOCIALLY CONSTRUCTED

Okay, I’m going to tell a story about a mishap with a Christmas present order, but I’m not going to name names because it all worked out and I generally like this company. Here’s what happened. Way back in early November, I got a notice that one of my favorite t-shirt places was having a big sale. So I thought “Oh! Christmas presents for the Cabbage!” They have a few of my older t-shirts from this place and they love them. I thought this would be easy and perfect. While I was browsing around, I came across a T-shirt that said “Gender Roles are a Social Construct” and yelped with glee and put it into my cart for the Cabbage. I ended up buying six T-shirts that day, three for the Cabbage and three for Michael. They arrived at the house two weeks later and I just left them in the bag. I figured I could wait to open the bag when I got ready to wrap gifts.

Cut to the night before Christmas.

I opened the bag of T-shirts and started to put Michael’s in one pile and the Cabbage’s in another. They were all there except one. The T-shirt I was most excited about, the Gender Roles T-shirt, was missing and in it’s place was a very bizarro and explicit T-shirt. It has the words ‘cum on me’ on the T-shirt, along with a name that I’m not using. I was stunned and I immediately went to Michael. I contacted customer service while he searched their website. I told customer service that I didn’t even think to check my order early because I have ordered many times from them and never had an issue. Then I had to wait until after the holiday to get a response. This left me plenty of time to stew and fret over the whole thing. We even searched the website and I don’t even think they sell this T-shirt. When customer service returned my message, they were immediately apologetic. They promptly sent out the correct shirt without question and told me to “destroy” the terrible T-shirt.

The fact that they used the words “destroy” really makes me believe that there was some malicious intent at play here.

Two of the t-shirts had planets holding hands on them, Michael’s T-shirts were all bicycle or scooter related. The Gender Roles T-shirt was the only one that someone might see has controversial or political. The more I think about it, the more I firmly believe that someone working in the warehouse the day my order was filled targeted my order because of that T-shirt. It’s possible the person thought they were real funny and maybe it could have been a funny prank if the shirt had said anything clever or funny. The phrasing on this shirt is intentionally malicious, as if this person felt like they were teaching me a lesson. It is a total cliche of toxic masculinity. Which is a concept that is also a social construct.

social construct: an idea that has been created and accepted by the people in a society - Webster’s Dictionary

Every thing is a social construct.

Michael thinks it was all just a simple mistake. He believes that robots fill the orders. He is not as jaded as I am or has had as many encounters with the type of men who like to degrade and mistreat women. And maybe he’s right. Maybe I am seeing more into this than what is truly there because of my encounters with those types of men. If this was intentional, it didn’t work. The Cabbage received their Gender Roles are a Social Construct T-shirt on Friday and was thrilled. They love it and wore it the next day. We went to a gathering of camp friends where everyone there told them how cool they looked and what a great shirt they were wearing.

And that’s how I’m training them to be their own Yoshimi, so that one day they can also fight evil natured robots.

IT'S ANOTHER NEW YEAR

As a little kid, I was always under the impression that something magical would happen when the clock struck midnight on New Year’s Eve, like we would be able to visually see the difference between the old and new year. I would do my best to stay awake. I’ve always been an early to bed, early to rise kind of gal. I don’t even think my parents had to enforce a bedtime, but if they did, New Year’s Eve was the one night they didn’t. Yet, I always ended up falling asleep on my Strawberry Shortcake quilt on the floor in front of the fire. Much like a dog. Dad would nudge me awake just in time for me to watch, with sleep blurred eyes, the chaos of Times Square as the count down to the new year ended on the television. Three, two, one…Happy New Year! and then I would toddle off to bed, dragging my quilt behind me. Eventually I’d reach an age for parties and celebrating the old year moving into the new would be just an excuse for excess food and drinks.

Those years when Chris and I celebrated the New Year at The Annual Flaming Lips New Year’s Eve Freakout where probably the best ones I’ve celebrated.

Despite the state of the celebration, I’ve usually carried with me some sort of hope of better for the New Year. This is something I’ve held onto since I was small. It falls into the whole belief that something magical will happen at midnight. The December I was maybe six or seven, Katrina lost her second child in childbirth. A sadness settled in on my family that holiday season that we probably still carry with us, like layers in the earth’s crust. If you dig down deep, you’ll find a thin layer of blackness representing that year. Christmas was celebrated that year in a very melancholy fashion. I can remember being scolded for plunking out Jingle Bells on the family piano. Christmas Joy was not permissible that year and when New Year’s Eve arrived, I built my nest in front of the fire with a bowl of snacks and a Muppets mug of root beer, determined to stay awake. My little six or seven year old heart new with all its might that moving into the new year would mean happiness for my family.

No and yes. My six or seven year old little heart had yet to understand the concept of time or how my core sample would end up containing many layers of blackness wedged between layers of good earth. My core sample is a kaleidoscope.

I went to bed just after midnight with the idea that I would get up in the morning and get on my yoga mat. I would start the New Year off right and jump into action of immediate change. I had cleaned the house the day before, taken down all of Christmas the day before that, and this left my schedule for New Year’s Day free and open to possibilities. I would use that time to get myself organized mentally for the self work I have planned for 2023. Part of that plan includes renewing my own yoga practice, but I rolled over in my bed and blinked at the sunlight streaming into my window, surprised that I’d slept late enough to have sunlight streaming in my window. I crawled out of bed, fed the animals and showered. I could have rolled out my mat then, but instead I made coffee and cleaned up the few dishes leftover from our night. Then I sat at my desk and cleared out my email inbox while sipping coffee. The day is early; I can still get on my mat at some point.

You see, I still have that hope for better that comes with a New Year. I’ve just lost the belief that the better and change happens immediately. The only thing magical about the transition from the old year to the new year is that we survived another rotation around the sun. Everything else takes time and patience. My goals are marathon goals and I spent all of last year learning new skills for managing my time while being kind to myself. I spent all of last year training for those marathon goals and this is the year to start running at a reasonable pace. So I’m easing in. Slowly. On my own time.

Happy New Year.

BLISSFUL IGNORANCE

Michael’s been talking about the weather for a week and I’ve been listening but not listening if you know what I mean. Then I had a friend cancel a lunch date and Terry moved the sock party from Thursday to Wednesday. Someone else said something about a storm and then I got a little shaky and woozy because I don’t think I planned our meals around snowy weather, which is what I get for only listening. I have a real bad habit of just ignoring the happenings of the world around me and just going about my business as if any of those said happenings are not going to impact my ability to go about my business.

To be fair, there was at least thirty four years of my life when I could get away with this mentality. If it snows or ices in Oklahoma, things just down and the whole do I or don’t I go to work question is answered for you. Meteorologists start screaming about the sky falling two weeks before hand and do a pretty decent job of putting the fear in you so that you have all the things you need to make French toast. The Meteorologists here are less YOU’RE GOING TO DIE IF YOU EVEN LOOK OUT THE WINDOW and more practical. They say things like make sure you have a decent supply if ice-melt and give yourself plenty of time to get from point A to point B and if you don’t really need to get from point A to point B, stay home. Now I have to decide if I need to get from point A to Point B. Since I tend to lean towards danger, I usually choose the worst possible scenario. Even though Michael says things like “I am not cleaning off your car or shoveling the drive way. You can stay home like a sensible human.” Though, he never says the sensible human part because he knows I’d punch him in the throat for saying it. Also, it makes him feel bad when I clean off my car by myself and shovel the driveway, but then I feel bad for making him do it.

It is a vicious circle.

Monday morning, the weather talk was getting to me and I texted Michael that I was freaking out about food, weather and my credit card (another blissfully ignorant thing I’ve got going). He told me that I would go to work on Tuesday. He said I would go to work on Wednesday, but probably come home early and Thursday we would most likely be Netflixing and chilling. Then I remembered we bought fancy cheeses at Whole Foods and I bought bread. We could make fancy grilled cheeses and I felt better because this felt like a real plan. He said some other reassuring things about my credit card and now, I think maybe I won’t lean towards the dangerous option for Thursday.

Winter is for real happening here this week. Be sure to gather your French toast ingredients sooner rather than later.

DREAM A LITTLE DREAM

Deborah sent out a group text to me and Amy describing a dream she’d had about Chris. It was a beautiful dream, a visit from a great supporter at a time in her life when she probably needed to hear the things he had to say to her. As I read her text though, I couldn’t help but feel a little jealous. It’s been a while since I have dreamed of Chris. In some ways, that’s good. My dreams of Chris are often not good ones. I am sure it’s because of my own projections of inadequacy and how I failed him in the end. Feelings only I have. I would still take this angry disappointed version of him visiting my dreams. There’s a part of me that relishes the abuse.

That night after Deborah’s text, I dreamed of Chris. We were making out in his dorm room. It was so real, like I wasn’t sleeping, but time traveling back to our early days. I could feel his lips touching mine, his tongue grazing over my teeth. The heat of our breath mingled together and it was delicious. There was no speaking, only touching and I woke up disappointed in not seeing his face next to me on the pillow. I thought about how two days before he died he asked me if that when I got home from work, we could have sex. I said yes. I said yes to everything he asked for then. I didn’t end up going to work that day and we did not have sex. Chris’s decline was quick. He was in no physical shape for it and I, recognizing that we only had hours left, was in no emotional state for it. Instead, I curled myself up next to him and cried while I waited for the hospice nurse to show up.

Coward

It was a craving for human touch that sent me into the world of online dating. All of those ridiculous dates and I could never bring myself to touch any of those men. None of them bold enough to make an approach. Except Michael, but he already had ideas that I was only online for the sex. Maybe that made him braver than all the others. I’ve never been good at initiating and I’m not ambitious. Chris and I probably would still be in friend zone if he hadn’t made the first move. It is quite the quandary to crave physical affection without being able to easily give physical affection. I’m polite….”no, you first.” The reality is that even now, I feel awkward and gangly and geeky and have no idea what to do with myself in a situation of want. Except freeze like I’ve been caught in headlights. Swerve or crash. It’s up to the one behind the wheel.

Intimacy is so much easier in written words. Safer. A better way to communicate. I feel like I lack the ability to verbally communicate in a way that the people around me understand what it is that I am really saying.

I’m better off writing letters.

THE RUSH

Saturday evening, I was finishing addressing Christmas cards while we watched Bullet Train, when Michael said “why haven’t we received any Christmas cards?!?” I paused to look at him and then responded with “Slow your roll. It’s only the third day of December.” Though, I do have to fess up and admit to feeling a little anxious about how time is flying by and it does sort of feel like Christmas is tomorrow. With the exception of some stocking stuffers, I am done with all of my Christmas present shopping responsibilities. There’s really nothing left for me to do but sit back and celebrate.

Except that’s not how my brain works.

Instead of just soaking in the joys of the holiday season, I’m already planning ahead for 2023. In fact, I feel as if I have already projected myself into the future. Kelly approached me last week to discuss co-teaching a yoga workshop in January. She asked me if I was qualified to teach continuing education hours and I had to go the Yoga Alliance website to figure it out. Turns out I have been doing this yoga thing long enough that I can now teach continuing education hours. I am a little bit floored by this and I am suddenly very aware of how my whole yoga teacher side gig may morph into some thing bigger in the next year or so. Since moving to Kansas City, I’ve had a fairly laisseze faire attitude towards teaching. I have been hesitant to accept teaching opportunities and strict with my imposed rule of teaching no more than two classes a week. I am committed to maintaining some teaching boundaries, but at the same time I might be ready to stretch out my boundaries.

Currently, the wheels in my head are turning around how I am going to fit the anatomy of the shoulder and hips, all the yoga strap modifications to support those joints and an hour of asana with a yoga strap into a three hour workshop. Then those wheels set in motion other wheels in my head on my future creative endeavors. I want to pursue some creative stuff, but I also don’t want to burn candles at both ends. How much do I really need to fill up each day and still leave room for rest. Because rest is the thing I really should be focusing on in this present moment. I am still sick. I have woken up three mornings in a row with a sore throat/ear situation and it is not from sleeping with my mouth open. I have the chew mark lines on the inside of my cheeks to prove it. It’s fine as long as I can peel myself out of bed. Once I’ve showered, used my Neti pot, and downed a shot of DayQuil, I’m good to go. I can get through the day with lots of lemon, honey and mint tea. Until sometime around 3:30. That’s usually when you’ll find me curled up under my desk at work.

But it’s fine.

Really.

I have yet to get around to erasing November from our dry-erase calendar and filling in all the things for December. I plan on sitting down this evening and doing this activity. I kind of have a feeling that just the action of acknowledging that the month of December is happening will anchor me more into the here and now. December is not a leap month. It is a month that deserves to be savored as we celebrate all the good things the year has brought us and reflecting on the not so good things. It is a month for soaking in as much light and warmth as we can in order to sustain us through the next few months of darkness and cold. It is a month for me to throw a stick into those turning wheels in my brain. My focus for this week is to do the bare minimum.

I might be able to manage that.

HOLIDAY. CELEBRATE.

This has been the most relaxed Thanksgiving Holiday since we were forced to isolate during the worst COVID year of 2020. Wednesday evening, after I’d finished making the pies to take over to Terry’s, Michael made Korean Fried chicken for our dinner. Then we decided to never fry anything every again. The end. Thursday morning, I attended, and ended up assisting, a Deep Stretch Yoga class taught by Kelly and hosted by Co-op Fitness. We were not expected at Terry’s until four that afternoon and the only thing I had to do was put my tofurkey in the oven.

We spent our Thanksgiving evening at Terry’s where I absorbed as much laughter and love as I could and drank way too much gin. I dragged myself out of bed the next morning, ate a piece of apple pie for breakfast and then went grocery shopping. I went to Aldi and there was no one there. Grocery shopping has never been easier. It was wonderful. Then we went to IKEA and it was the SAME. Deserted! Which never happens on any afternoon. We had to walk backwards through that store twice (don’t ask) and there was no feeling of swimming against traffic. Our next stop was Costco and that place was just as dead as IKEA and for once, I didn’t nearly go insane trying to maneuver our cart up down the isles. Our errand run went so well on Friday, that I came home and set up most of our Christmas. All I had left to do on Saturday was hang stockings, set up my outside Christmas elephant, and finish up the laundry. As luck would have it, my Christmas cards arrived and I got all of them addressed (mostly…I had to place another order).

Sunday was left completely free. There was nothing that needed to be done and I chose to spend my time watching Wednesday on Netflix while working on my lesson plan for a six week beginning yoga series. Then, I spent an hour and half on my yoga mat and ruined a pot of beans (it was the bean and I’m not ready to talk about it). It was such a great holiday that I decided to extend it for a day because the cold that the Cabbage passed to Michael, finally made it to me. Last night it felt like Michael and I were competing for who had the loudest cough. He’s winning.

Today’s Facebook memory was from ten years ago.

I just blew a snot bubble out my nose. I think I should put this as a skill in my online dating profile.

So, really nothing has changed. Or at least not much.

This is the last week of the second to the last month of this year and I have mixed feelings. I have no desire to think about any of the things I did not accomplish this year. At the same time, I don’t really feel like bragging about the things I did accomplish this year. I don’t want to go on about how the month of December feels busy and rushed. There’s not that much more on my calendar for the month of December then there was for any other month this year. Every year is like a giant pot of soup of my own making and I’m really good at making soup (ignoring the whole beans incident; not all beans cook like beans). My soups are guaranteed to have onions, garlic, mixed vegetables and vegetable broth. The rest of the ingredients vary depending on availability and mood. It always turns out to be delicious and satisfying. The same can be said about each year. My perspective in regards to calendar obligations has shifted.

And that’s probably my biggest accomplishment.

IN SEARCH OF SOME MOXIE

Years ago, on one of Chris and I’s many adventures to Pop’s, we stumbled across Moxie Cherry Cola. Pop’s is a famous Route 66 attraction in Oklahoma. Their claim to fame is their selection of obscure and bizarre sodas. If I remember correctly, this trip took place before Pixar released Up and I gravitated to that particular soda because of the name. I remember holding it up for Chris and saying “I’ve got Moxie!” He chuckled and then we both bought a bottle of their Cherry Cola.

I am not, nor have every been, much of a soda drinker. For the first thirteen years of my life, soda was mostly off limits in our household and by the time I was old enough to choose for myself, I lacked an acquired taste for it. Occasionally I crave a Coke but then I’ll take two or three slurps of it and will not want any more of it. Chris and Todd were wandering Walmart right when Coke released those little cans of soda. Todd looked at them and scoffed “Who’s going to drink this tiny amount of Coke?!?!” Chris immediately replied “Cindy. Those cans were made for Cindy.” I can’t even finish one of those. About the only soda I will finish these days is a Mexican Coke and it will take me a long time to finish that bottle.

That Moxie Cherry Cola was the best cherry cola I had ever tasted and if given the opportunity, I would always have a supply of them in my fridge.

This is the thing I look for every time we wander into a specialty soda shop or candy store. I walk past all the cherry mashes and slow pokes and make a beeline for the soda isles. Then I scan them for Moxie. That first Moxie might have been my last because I have not found a cherry cola Moxie since. Soon after we saw Up, Chris made me bottle cap pin like the one Ellie gives Carl when they first meet. He used a Moxie bottle cap and it’s been pinned to whatever daily bag I’m using ever since. He was always Ellie.

On our way home from Rockaway Beach, Michael drove out of the way to take us all to Redmon’s Candy Factory and the World’s Largest Gift Shop, a warehouse filled with keychains, magnets and t-shirts. Michael and The Cabbage made it into the candy shop before me because I was outside taking pictures. By the time I made it in, they were already onto the second isle. I walked right to the sodas. Michael saw me and said “They don’t have it. I already looked.” Now he’s in on my quest for Moxie Cherry Cola. Sometimes I wonder if there’s been a role reversal. I’m no longer Carl, but maybe an Ellie.

No…I’m still a Carl. The difference is that I’ve become the version of Carl at the end of the movie. Chris will always be an Ellie.

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.

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.

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.

THANKFUL

It’s been a really long time since I skipped a Thankful Friday post. I also have not taken a week of vacation to stay home since…well, since a really long time. I don’t want to write about the last time I stayed home for a week. Let me tell you about this week, well last week, but you get it. First, I went on a wonderful retreat with a lovely group of women. We dug for crystals and made magic under the light of a full moon. I knew that I would want a day of recuperation from this retreat and I first intended to only take off Monday. Then my friend Melissa said “We need to go see The National at Grinders!” and I said “We do need to go see The National at Grinders!” That concert was on Tuesday and I knew that I’d be cranky and tired if I went to work the next day. I looked at my vacation time and it suddenly made perfect sense to just take the whole week off from work.

So, what did I do with a whole week to myself?

Well, one day I did absolutely nothing but go grocery shopping and lay on the couch watching TV. Then there was one day when I had breakfast with my friend Jenn and cleaned a lot of the house. Like behind the toilet cleaned the house. The next day, I scrubbed the kitchen and even cleaned the dog door flap so that you can now see through it. I took everything out of my dining room hutch and took the hutch apart. Then I bought paint and new hardware. I spent one day painting the hutch. I made pizza dough. I put the hutch back together and took the Cabbage to the dentist. The new handles for the drawers required new holes drilled because I could not find anything to fit the pre-existing holes. Michael took care of this on Saturday, as well as installing a new closing mechanism for the doors. Everything was put back into place and the hutch looks like a new piece of furniture. Also, it no longer squeaks and rattles when you walk by it.

Two of my camp/self care circle buddies rode with me to the retreat and one of our topics of discussion was on how the Self Care Circle thing was working for us. This is what I told them. The goals I set for myself at the beginning of the year have gone mostly nowhere. I haven’t actively worked on at least two of those goals in months. One goal was to get to know my new camera and I’m counting the moments I pick this camera up as time spent working on that goal. Everything else has sat gathering dust bunnies, but here is how the circle has helped me. I have a visual record of all the things I do everyday with my color coded calendar and I have gotten better at not being my own personal bully. The very idea of taking time off work just to stay home would have been a hard pass not a chance concept for a past version of me. Even now, I have a growing list in my head of things I did not do last week and this would normally leave me feeling guilty and regretful. I have learned to have grace for myself and instead of being left with a not enough feeling, I feel very impressed with the things I accomplished last week. Sure, I could tell you all about the things I did not do, like get on my yoga mat or write. I barely even took any photos. I sure didn’t walk the dog (I did wash her). The things I didn’t do, doesn’t matter.

Last night in Self Care Meeting, we talked about minimalism and cleaning out spaces. I’m really good at purging my closets and books. What I am not good at is purging things from my calendar. This is where I need more space. Last week was kind of about that. It was me taking care of all those home chore tasks and projects so that I can free up time for the things I want to be doing. Now all I need to do is figure out what it is that I truly want to be doing.

WHAT WE DO ON THE WEEKENDS

Here was the original plan for Saturday. I would get up and do the weekly food gathering. Then I would go buy new gym shoes, some candy for the Cabbage’s birthday stocking, and some new makeup. After this, I would meet Michael back at the house so we could regroup for lunch. While I was doing all of the above, Michael was supposed to take the camper to the dealership for repairs and stop by Bass Pro for raccoon repellent before meeting me back at the house to regroup for lunch. After lunch, we’d hit up a hardware store and a fancy grocery store before coming home to clean the basement.

Morning went exactly as planned. It was the afternoon that got derailed. The derailing of this plan started when Michael was left unsupervised in Bass Pro. All he needed to buy was Fox Pee. That’s it, but not only did he come home with the Fox Pee, he also returned with a very cruel and inhumane trap and a pellet gun. After some serious discussion that included me suggesting he place his own ‘paw’ into the trap to demonstrate how the trap “doesn’t harm the animal”, he agreed that we should return the trap, but keep the pellet gun. I let him keep his pellet gun. He’s going to shoot at some paper targets and then the gun will go into some safe hiding place and never see the light of day again. Five years later, he’ll be cleaning out some box and find it. He’ll exclaim “When did we get a pellet gun?!?!” It will be just like Christmas for him.

So our afternoon was spent driving out to the suburbs to the closest Bass Pro. Then there was a stop at a sporting goods close-out store, Home Depot and the Price Chopper that sells piñatas and has bulk bins of jalapeños. By the time we made it home, I lacked the energy to do anything in the basement. Which I think was Michael’s plan all along. I believe this is his plan for every Saturday, to drag me around all over the city for unnecessary reasons so that I don’t have time to clean and take care of things around the house. These are things that I end up having to do on a Sunday, usually while he’s sleeping or take vacation time just to stay home and clean. That’s what I’m doing next week. Except, I can take the basement and garage off my list because I did get around to cleaning those spaces on Sunday.

While Michael was sleeping.

Turns out I can accomplish a whole lot of chores while Michael is sleeping.

BURGLERY

There was a loud crash that came from the kitchen, waking me up around 3:30 Wednesday morning. At first I thought that Albus might be chasing a mouse or something around the dining room, but then the noises started to sound like someone rooting around in our kitchen drawers. I laid there imagining some person rummaging through our things. I peeled myself out of bed and put on a robe. Then I looked around my dark room for some sort of weapon. I grabbed a yoga bolster, opened my bedroom door, and quietly stepped out into the hallway, prepared for a pillow fight. I poked my head around the corner and made eye contact with a raccoon. The raccoon then scurried from the dinning room and into the kitchen.

I jumped back, my heart beating in my chest and whispered “I can’t do this alone.” So, I did the thing I loathe doing and went and woke Michael up. I said “Hey, I’m really sorry to do this, but there are raccoons in our kitchen and I can’t do this alone.” I don’t know what part of my sentence made Michael suddenly very alert, but he sat up and looked at me with wide open eyes and loudly whispered “There are raccoons in the kitchen?!” I nodded, still clutching my yoga bolster and said “there are raccoons in the kitchen.” By the time we made it back to the kitchen, the raccoons, two of them, had scurried out into the garage where they tried to hide in plain site. We sealed off all of the pet doors and then he proceeded to convince the raccoons to exit the garage while I started cleaning up the mess they left behind inside.

It could have been worse.

They ate the cat food that was still in the cat’s bowl and they pulled pizza out of the trash bin. They had dragged the open bag of cat food into the center of the kitchen but had yet to dump the contents out on the floor. The biggest mess was left in the dog bowl and water dish. Michael had a small planter sitting on the window ledge where he has been trying to grow a banzai tree for the last three years. The small little tree had finally reached a size where it not only had leaves, but it could be shaped. Michael had fixed a paperclip to the stem to encourage it to grow with a bend. The raccoons had knocked over the whole thing, dumping dirt and tree into the water dish and food bowl. I rescued the tree from the water dish and we set it aside so Michael can re-pot it.

As I was washing out the water dish, Micheal came back inside from clearing the raccoons out of the garage. He pouted as he delicately lifted his tree and said “I think one of the took a bite out it.” Then he looked at me and we just sort of stared at each other for a minute. He said “we had raccoons in our kitchen.” I nodded and replied “we had raccoons in our kitchen.” Then we went back to bed, except I laid there staring up at my ceiling and listening. At one point, I was sure they had come back and I got up and did a perimeter check. All of the pet doors were secure, nothing in the basement. I peeked out the front door and watched as one ran down the sidewalk. I narrowed my eyes at the creature and then I went back to bed.

Later, at a more reasonable hour, Michael was getting ready to leave for work. He paused outside of our bathroom where I stood applying face cream. He said “Thank you for asking for help earlier.” This is one of our biggest topics of disagreements. I do not ask for help. Even if it is clear to everyone around me that I need help, I will not ask for help. I will be dragging all of the groceries up the hill to the front door as Michael is on his way out to help me. He will ask “Need help?” and I always respond “No. I got it.” I can spend twenty minutes trying to open a jar, determined to not hand it over to larger hands. “Do you need help?” he’ll ask and me grunting with the brute force I am applying to the lid will mumble “No.” It drives Michael insane.

I believe we both have learned my limits. It’s raccoons. My limit is raccoons in my kitchen.

SPONTANEOUS

Here is what was on my weekend to-do list: laundry, grocery shopping, bin buying, camper clean out, general household cleaning, balloon ride.

I checked all of those things off my list except for the hot air balloon ride. That got cancelled because of wind, but I’m not too upset about that. When I got home from grocery shopping, Michael helped me unload the car and said “let’s be tourists today.” I was still a little bit pouty over the canceled balloon ride, but shrugged and replied “I’ve never been to the Toy and Miniature Museum.” So, we hopped on our scooters in search of lunch before heading to the museum. We found Earl’s Premier while we were looking for something else and it turned out to be a very very good accidental find. It is the kind of restaurant that feels like someplace we’d visit while on vacation. Oysters consumed, we made our way over to the Toy and Miniature Museum, marveling at tiny replicas of chairs and feeling nostalgic over toys. There was one display that contained a grouping of toys for certain years. I looked at this display and said “I had that toy from the 70s, most of those things from the 80s and that Beanie Baby from the 90s.” And since this made me feel old, I dragged Michael over to the Art Deco exhibit at the Nelson so we could look at things older than us.

When it was time for the balloon glow, we decided it would be better to ride the bus than it would be to deal with parking and I am really glad we did this. The event was filled to capacity. Luckily, Michael and I arrived early enough to not have to wait in line too long for food from a food truck, but we were meeting the Cabbage and that side of the family. They did not arrive early. I sat on our blankets as a place holder while Michael and the others scattered off to the food trucks. I waited for ever for someone to come back. I kept watching the fading light and then I’d look up at the spot where I really wanted to be to get good pictures. There were already some people camped out in that spot. Finally, I sent a text that basically read “I might not be here when you get back.” and I started climbing my up to a good vantage point.

I made it to that spot, but there were already three photographers set up there, two of them with tripods. I kind of stood back hesitantly like a wallflower. One of the women noticed me and said “Hey! You want to come over here? We can make space for you!” Then she slid some gear bags over so I could get in the space. I set my camera up on the stone wall and then proceeded to make myself as small as possible so I wouldn’t be in their way. This was unnecessary and a direct symptom of my own insecurities. Two of the women chatted with me about small talky subjects and camera preferences. Then when the show started, we all started clicking shutters and giggling. Trying to capture a balloon all lit up was like trying to capture lightning. It was like we were playing a photographer’s strange version of whack-a-mole. Eventually, I decided to leave that spot for something closer. I thanked all of them for sharing the space with me and they said they’d see me next year.

That was the best part of my day.

For a brief amount of time, I was pulled into a circle of photographers and I was treated like an equal. I got to hang out with the cool kids. I saw respect and understanding when I talked about the reasons for choosing my current camera, because I didn’t just sound like I knew what was talking about. I knew what I was talking about. The moment reminded me of all the times Chad and I went on photo walks together. In that moment, every irritation and annoyance disappeared. Tension and stress from things happening in my life melted away. In that moment, I allowed myself to stop pretending to be a photographer and just let myself be a photographer.

I stopped judging myself.

MY ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND

We wandered into a very neat and tidy little independent bookshop on Granville Island in Vancouver and there was a table covered with classic books. Except, when I picked up one of the books and flipped it open, I discovered a blank page. All of the pages were blank and I knew that I had to have one of these journals disguised as books. I chose a blank copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. It has been sitting on my desk ever since our return. That’s not unusual. I often buy a new notebook and then wait for a while before I start writing in the thing. I find the new, clean pages of a notebook to be the most soothing aspect of owning it. I am always hesitant to put ink or pencil lead on any of the pages for fear of messing up the beauty of the page.

Of course, after all this time I never thought of flipping that way of thinking. Instead of messing up the page, I could be adding to the beauty of the page.

I’ve been focusing on where I feel the words ‘yes’ and ‘no’ when I say them out loud and when I came across this particular journal, my heart leapt with a resounding yes. I had no idea what I would do with it, nor did I have a need for the book. I just knew I wanted it. I do recognize that I am beginning to fall into a recognizable habit of owning journals that never get filled up. I have a stack of notebooks in my cedar chest that only have writing on the first four or five pages, leaving the rest of the books blank. They are Chris’s notebooks. I never go in and read them, but I will never throw them away. Now I have become the person with multiple journals floating around the house. This one contains a story idea. That one is more than half full of yoga classes I prepared for teaching. Let’s not forget the mostly full Fortune Cookie notebook. That one, right now, is the winner. Not only is it only twenty or so pages away from being filled, it is filled with inspiration. Part of returning to our regularly scheduled program around here, includes me getting back into the Fortune Cookie notebook.

I sat down with that notebook on Saturday morning for the first time in a long time, and I didn’t know how to even begin. Then, just as the story really got good to me, I ran out of room on the page. There is a very disciplined side of me that almost refuses to even place a dot of ink in the new journal before I finish the Fortune Cookie notebook. But I have a packet of fine tipped colored markers setting on top of the Wonderland journal and a clear image in my head of drawing fanciful mushrooms and intricate flowers and maybe filling this one up with something other than words.

I am not an artist.

I am an artist.

Cindy’s Adventures in Learning to Be. That’s the true title of this book.

THE TIME BETWEEN SECONDS

Michael and I rode our scooters out to Lees Summit on Sunday to get our hairs cut. It is not a particularly far distance, maybe fifteen minutes from the house if you are taking the highways, but I don’t do highways when I’m on the scooter. We stick to the smaller side streets, which turn into back country roads. There is a lake and plenty of forested land between our house and our hairdresser’s. It’s a nice scooter ride. As we made our way home, I noticed a doe and her fawn bounding across a yard to my left. They reached the road just as we were nearing and we had to stop so the two could cross. When they reached the edge on the other side, the doe paused, one foot hovering and her head turned looking straight at us, while her fawn darted into the thick brush. Once he disappeared, the fawn quickly followed after. The whole moment was just mere seconds, but the seconds felt stretched out and everything was crystal clear. It was like a dance of quick, quick, slow, slow.

That evening, I wiped off my dry erase calendar clearing away the month of July. Michael moaned as he saw what I was doing and said “Not August! Not the end of summer!”. He goes back to school in few weeks and only has a week and half left to sleep in late and do what he wants. It’s funny to hear him say that summer is over when we are still having hundred degree days. Our August calendar doesn’t look too different from July’s. Still busy. Still filled up with events and appointments. A little bit of travel. Most of the things have been clustered into that week and a half. Then we are back to our regularly scheduled program.

When Josephine and I leave the house in the mornings for our walk, the sky is now dark with only a hint of light in the East. The sun is shifting and preparing for the next season regardless of temperatures. Tuesday morning, as we started onto the side walk of the park at the end of our street, I saw a fox sitting on the side walk at the bottom of the hill. He turned to look at me and then darted off into the tall brush and trees that line the park. Quick, Quick, slow, slow. Slow, slow, quick, quick. These are the dance steps of August and I’m in the process of modulating the music to slow the speed of the song that we dance to. We are traveling to St. Louis to see Andrew Bird next week. I am stuck with the idea of slow dances, the kind where you rest your head on your partners shoulder and just sway gently from side to side.

That’s how I want summer to end, in a gentle swaying motion. I want to ease into our regularly scheduled routine, like maybe getting up an hour later to go grocery shopping on Saturday mornings. Maybe I will get organized enough to start doing weekend chores on weeknights. I want to gradually need to add layers for warmth. No sudden movements, just a gradual shift onto the next season.

Quick, Quick, slow, slow.

REVERSE-THINKING IN EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN

I started writing this post weeks ago after reading this article Hypothesis-driven fluorescence microscopy - the importance of reverse-thinking experimental design because it pertains to my job. The article started feeling like a personal attack. So, I started reevaluating the goals I set at the beginning of the year, but some of the blocks I’d put into a particular place shifted into a new place. It’s like I built a very specific pyramid structure with alphabet blocks sometime in January and now that structure looks like steps, really wonky steps like the ones in my basement. That last one is a doozy.

I have been writing here, spilling my guts out for all to read for twenty two years. With each posting, I think I’m being real vulnerable and brave in my sharing, but honestly, I never get that queazy-oh-my-god-i-can’t-believe-i’m-putting-this-out-there feeling when I hit the ‘publish’ button. That queazy-oh-my-god-i-can’t-believe-i’m-putting-this-out-there feeling has happened more times in this year than ever before and has had nothing to do with blogging. At the beginning of the year, I filled out a form answering some really hard question, for Self Care Circle. The questions were part of Human Design and the answers determine what kind of human you are. I am a Generator. Look, you know me. You know how I feel about auras and energy bodies, but I have to admit that there is something in the description for Generator that resonates. As a Generator, I am not a chaser of life. I am at my best when I have to make a decision or have an interaction if the moment comes to me. I need to wait for the moment.

Well, the moment came or I’ve gone off script.

I saw a thing and when I saw it, my heart said “yes!”. For a week, I sat with that yes while doing nothing but thinking about that yes. And I know I’m being vague, but I’m just going to have to be vague about the thing because the thing is not important (yet). The important part is that the thing I saw made me really question my own complacency and complete lack of ambition. I settle into whatever is comfortable and easy, never really pushing myself. This thing caused me to push. It’s made me giddy and simultaneously nauseated. I’ve had to think about what it means to feel valued and if where I am currently is meeting that need to feel valued. Is feeling valued in what I do important to me? I think it might be.

Just a little.

I have no expectations. Either something will happen in regards to my yes or nothing will. For me it’s enough that I did the thing that I was scared to do and put myself out there in a really vulnerable way.

MY HEART WANTS FRIED CHICKEN

Last week, I met with Roze, my self care vibrational advocate and guru. I’d scheduled the meeting to talk about cannabis titrations and developing a plan for taking advantage of the actual medical properties of cannabis, but before all that we chatted about other things. One of things had to do with my tendency to say ‘yes’ to everything. They told me that I needed to make space for me and that requires saying ‘no’ sometimes. Then they said the thing that wrecked me. They said “We are taught to put the oxygen mask on our own faces before helping the person next to us. Cindy, you’ve been holding your breath for a really long time.” There’s a whole a bag of feelings to unpack from this. Anger and shame and relief. Relief from being seen and understood without saying a word. Roze can see right through all of my walls and barriers. It’s something that I hate and love all at the same time.

But yeah, I’ve been holding my breath for a long time.

So, I’ve been practicing with putting my oxygen mask on first. I’m practicing with saying ‘no’ more often instead my default ‘yes’. In our time together, Roze and I established that I feel true yesses in my heart and nos in my guts. I need to pause long enough to notice if my yes is a true a yes. Do I feel it in my heart when I say it out loud? This practice of breaking my habit of ‘yes’ is so incredibly difficult. When Chris died, I jumped off into the deep end of yesses with the idea that this would keep me from becoming a recluse. I somehow got it fixed in my head that saying ‘no’ was a negative response that results in needless disappointment from others. But every time I was saying a not so truthful ‘yes’ to someone, I was saying ‘no’ to myself. I say ‘no’ to myself in so many different ways. No to foods. No to rest. No to loving this body. No to easing up on myself. No to releasing any and all guilt for the few times I give myself the ‘yes’.

We spent the holiday weekend at a lake house with Robin and Summer’s family. I told myself that I was getting up early every morning and getting in a kayak. That first morning, I stepped out onto the deck at 6:00 AM and hauled the kayak into the dock. I spent almost an hour out on the lake by myself. There were no other boats out. The lake water was smooth and calm. It was the quietist moment I have had in a really long time and it was the only morning I made it out for the kayaking experience. After that, I said ‘no’ to the early morning wake up time and ‘yes’ to just floating in a tube like a bobber. I said ‘yes’ to eating the fried chicken my family would drive two hours to eat when I was a kid. The inside of the restaurant looked exactly the same as the last time I was there in maybe 2004 (?). The chicken was almost the same, but not quite. I said ‘yes’ to the memories of Dad which floated around everywhere because we were in the area of Arkansas where we had camped almost every year of my childhood. The Graham produce stand where I’d get my pumpkin every year is abandoned, but still standing. We passed it on the way to the chicken place.

I said ‘no’ to taking pictures.

I said ‘yes’ to eating a chili dog.

I said ‘no’ to immediately going back to work when we got home and instead, took a day to rest.

I’m working on making sure my oxygen mask is on securely before helping others. I might just discover that once my own mask is secure, I’ll look over at the person next to me and find that their own mask is already on their faces. Because as it turns out, not everyone needs help securing their oxygen mask.