THANKFUL FRIDAY

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

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

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

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

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

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

THANKFUL FRIDAY

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

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

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

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

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

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

MY FLAMING LIPS

Okay, this is not a real entry or worth a whole post but it is a ramble of things I’m a little bit proud of. First of all, most of you know about my peeling lips and how I pick at them. Most of the times my lips are in a state of scabbed, chapped or just a bleeding mess because I lack all restraint and cant’ keep my hands from peeling any bit of a possible flake of skin from my lips. It is a terrible ugly habit, but it is a habit of a lifetime. There have been short snips of time when I have not done this. Once when I was on a gluten free diet and once I don’t know why or remember, but I just didn’t. It has been three months now and so I feel like it is safe for me to disclose that my lips are healed and in the best shape of their lives. How did I do it? One morning I was smearing Aquaphor cream onto my tattoo and rubbed some extra onto my lips. Since then, I’ve been doing that twice a day and even though there have been times I’ve tried to pick at my lips, there’s nothing to pick off.

Pucker up! It’s a gosh dang miracle.

The second thing that I’ve done is print out cute little price tags that include a QR code for my Venmo account that I will place with the prints I’m hanging next month. Is this a big deal? Nope, but it makes me feel real tech savvy and hip like a young person. Some of you are sitting there thinking “But Cindy, you are savvy and hip!” and I’m here to say that I am savvy and hip for my age demographic. My generation invented blogging and online sharing of photos. I can do those things well, but Reels and TikToks and the Snaps? Forget it. I’m not saying I can’t do those things. I’m saying I have yet to create space for learning to do those things and I don’t feel like I’ll be making space for that learning any time soon.

Back at Christmas, when we were at Jenn and Wade’s, we all had to take turns saying something personal about ourselves. One of the questions posed was “what is something you lie about to yourself?” I tell myself that I am unhealthy. Like all the time. I have had people tell me that I am not enough in some way or fashion. Not every day or all the time, but eventually there’s been the review where I’m not doing my job enough or the relationship where I don’t praise enough. Commercials and ads tell me I’m not thin enough, eating healthy enough, young enough, happy enough. I am bombarded with outside ‘not enoughs’ and for a while I had started adopting this language when talking to myself. It’s like spending a week in London and suddenly picking up a British accent. That’s basically how the biggest lie came into being. The biggest lie I tell myself is that I am not enough.

Wait. That is also not true.

The biggest lie I used to tell myself was that I am not enough. I’ve been working on this for a while. That whole unhealthy lie I tell myself slipped by me and I was surprised it even came out of my mouth. Here I was smugly thinking that I had beat the habit of telling myself all the ways I am not enough. Habits are hard to dump. Celebrating small victories has become part of my strategy for dumping that bad habit. Neither of those above things are news worthy items, but both of them are small victories. I am not unhealthy. Look at my lips! They’re so healthy looking! I eat a bag of kale a week. Is that something an unhealthy person would do? Maybe? I don’t know, but you might also notice in that part on my second small victory, I did not allude to being not techy enough. I know enough things and I’d rather spend my time in other ways than spending it learning new tech.

Small victories for today (so far): I added my outside walking loop back in with my inside walking loop. I have taken over 8,000 steps today all before 10:00AM. I figured out a Jupyter notebook coding problem I was having last week. That’s amazing! And the day is young. I think I will celebrate with a dance party at my desk.

You should celebrate your small victories.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

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

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

But then the Moose Hunt.

And a weekend tulip festival with my mom and sister.

And some gal camp trips.

And…

And…

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

This feels exciting.

THE WEEKENDER

I met Amy and Deborah in a town that I have visited a thousand times. Honestly, it was not far from where I grew up, but we managed to see things and explore areas that I had never seen before. I actually went inside the Price Tower instead of just seeing it from the road and then we discovered another tower in a park that I had no idea existed. That was called the Play-Tower and it was built in 1963 by Bruce Goff, commissioned by Mrs. Harold C. Price. The spiral staircase takes you up six feet to a steel ball and is rather terrifying, because once at the top, you can feel the tower swaying back and forth. When we made it back down, the three of spent the rest of trip complaining about our old lady knees. As per usual, there was lots and lots talking and lots and lots of laughter and lots and lots of snacks.

My drive to and from our meeting space had me traveling old country highways and somewhere in Kansas, I passed a sign for a Little House on the Prairie homestead, one that I don’t remember every noticing before. Talaura, Michael and I visited the homestead in South Dakota and we dragged the Cabbage to the Laura Ingalls Wilder’s home in Mansfield MO, but I didn’t realize there was a place in Kansas so close to the OK border. So on my way home from the weekend, I followed the signs and took a detour. I was the only person in the parking space outside the homestead. It is currently closed for the winter, but you are still free to roam the property. There is a replica of the original log cabin built in 1870 by the Ingalls. The other buildings came later, after the Ingalls had moved back up to Pepin WI.

The Ingalls family moved around a lot and not from town to town. They moved state to state, which is impressive considering they were traveling by wagon.

As I made my way around the property, a very vague and dreamy memory kept nudging the back of my brain. I could have sworn a preschool version of me, along with a group of other preschoolers ran around this place like the feral children we were. I can almost hear the slightly stern voice of a woman trying to wrangle us up. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and juice boxes made up our picnic lunch. If this is a true memory, I can assure you that I was wearing a prairie inspired dress with a matching bonnet. I don’t know what my obsession with all things Little House is all about. I read all the books and watched the TV show and reruns of the TV show, but I don’t remember reading the books over and over the way I did Little Women. Yet there was, is, still something about prairie life that hooked me. I spent hours building an imaginary homestead in our pasture when I was little. I spent hours imagining living life on the prairie while I was actually living life on a prairie.

Building something from nothing.

I think this is what I am drawn too in these stories and the real places that birthed those stories. Laura Ingalls Wilder and her family reinvented themselves over and over, move after move. When the first life they tried to build broke, they moved on to build a new life, starting practically from scratch each time. And there were times when it may have felt impossible to rebuild. There were times so awful, that Laura Ingalls Wilder couldn’t or wouldn’t write about them. Yet the family not only survived, but thrived so much so that we know their names and the stories Laura wrote feel like stories about our own grandparents. Life on the prairie forces resilience. I may have been raised in modern times, but I was still raised on prairie land. My high school’s neighbor was a dairy farm and we participated in more tornado drills than fire drills. Though, my HS was evacuated more than once due to wildfires. Bouquets of prairie flowers were clenched in my hands often wilting before I made it home from whatever pasture adventure I had been on. I know the tunes from the area songbirds.

I told Michael my plans for a moose hunt this summer and he is onboard for this adventure. We have started planning and plotting our route, a route that will take us very close to two other Laura Ingalls Wilder homesites. Homes I have yet to visit. I am placing pins in those towns with intentions for stopping on our way back home. I figure this could be my consolation for hunting imaginary creatures and coming up empty handed.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I am thankful for the promise of outdoor adventures.

I am thankful for soup days.

I am thankful for you.

WORDS

I’m not entirely sure where we were, but it was north of the river. North of the river is how the people of Kansas City refer to anything north of the Missouri River. This is an area that has gone largely unexplored during my time here. I know where the roller rink is and maybe a couple of casinos. I can get myself to Michael’s school and the airport, but don’t ask me for restaurant recommendations. Unless you’re into Indian food, then Swagat’s out by the airport is a solid choice. We happened to be in a completely unrecognizable area on this day because Michael was buying a used exercise bike. On our way home, we passed a billboard for a layer that read in large, yellow lettering “Winningest!” and I lost my mind.

At first, I couldn’t stop saying the word out loud over and over. I found the sound of the word to be ridiculously hilarious. It’s not like I haven’t heard someone use the word before, but it is always been used in jest around me. Seeing the word spelled out on the billboard just reiterated how stupid this word is. I was almost over my minor turrets moment when we passed the same advertisement on a different billboard. Then I exploded. This is an advertisement for a law office. Do you really want someone you cannot even use grammatically correct language in their advertisement to defend you in a court of law?!? Yeah, I know that my house is made of glass. My posts are the Swiss cheese of poorly written navel gazings, but I didn’t major in English. This dude is a lawyer; His job revolves around language. Besides, my editor is dead. What’s that lawyer’s excuse?

Lately, well ever since the “winningest” incident, I’ve found myself increasingly ranting about language. I will see a turn of words that makes my brain itch and I will go off in a ten minute rant. Yesterday, Michael had the TV on and it was all day coverage of concussion ball. There was a story about Brock Purdy (I didn’t know who this person was before this story) and the day he was drafted for the 49rs. They were showing footage of the draft and there was a woman standing on stage, holding up a jersey the read “Mr. Irrelevant”. I said “Why are they calling that guy Mr. Irrelevant?” and Michael replied “It’s because he is the last person to be drafted.” Disgust and rage instantly boiled up out of my body. Before they showed that footage, the sportscaster was talking about how Purdy has a “chip on this shoulder.” Of course he has a chip on his shoulder! He was just called ‘irrelevant’! That is just mean and uncalled for. As if I didn’t already think poorly about the capitalism and exploitation of athletes that is the NFL, now I think even less of them because they are bullies. Mean, hazing Frat boy, bullies.

And while everyone was speculating about Kelce proposing to Taylor and/or the Chiefs Super Bowl win being a government rig so that Taylor and Kelce could use that platform to endorse Biden (people are fucking crazy), actual genocide was/is happening in Gaza. I know many of you are sitting there thinking ‘But I can’t do anything about the genocide in Gaza’. Yeah, well, you can’t do anything about the whole Taylor/Kelce relationship either but it doesn’t keep you from chattering on and on about it. And if you can chatter and on and on about that, surely you can do some chattering to your representatives about demanding a cease fire and shifting our funding from weapons to humanitarian efforts.

Maybe now that we don’t have football to scream about, we can be the winningest by raising our voices against genocide.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

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

Chris’s birthday was on Tuesday.

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

Chris died four days after celebrating his 41st birthday.

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

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

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

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

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

There is gratitude to be found in the surrender.

MY TWENTY TWO YEAR OLD SELF

There was a thing floating around last week on Instagram that challenged people to post a picture of themselves at age twenty one. The funny thing about this was that so many of the people in my community only have actual print images of themselves from that time. We were all twenty one in the years before digital. The closest picture I had of myself on hand and printed was taken when I was twenty two. It’s a photo of Chris and I on our wedding day. He’s in a tuxedo and I’m in my wedding suit, a flower headband on my head. I’m holding a bouquet and our marriage license. It is one of the few pictures I have of the two of us where Chris is actually looking at the camera. It is the only decent photo of the two of us together on our wedding day.

We went with unconventional as our theme.

That is the picture I shared on Instagram but with a note that I was twenty two in the photo, but only just barely and that it was the closest I could get to twenty one right now. I’d have to dig through a box if I wanted something from when I was twenty one. There were a couple of people who responded to my post in disbelief and declared that I still look pretty much the same. I responded to these people with gratitude for the kindness but also an assurance that this can’t possibly be true. Though one person argued with me, holding firm to their belief that I still resemble twenty two year old Cindy. And again, I hold firm to my belief that it is impossible that I look the same as I did twenty six years ago.

I am the same weight now that I was then, but take better care of my body now. My haircut is the same, but my hair has more white in it now, but when I look in the mirror, I don’t see a twenty two year old me looking back. When I look at twenty two year old me I see more than the surface stuff and the reason I don’t believe for a second that I still pretty much look the same as back then. This was before I had finished undergrad and entered into the soul crushing world of graduate school. Chris always backed me up, never telling me “you can’t” or that I was doing things wrong or not good enough. I believed I could do anything and in time that confidence would be whittled down to nothing, but Chris would be right there helping build that confidence back. Without him around, my imposter syndrome is magnified for the whole world to see and to point at with critical pointer fingers. I am the house built on sand, continuously rebuilding my confidence levels while new tides come in to wash it all away. That picture was taken when I was at the beginning of what felt like everything, before bad career choices and bad financial decisions. Before I knew real heartbreaking loss. Before I even knew anything about imposter syndrome. Before I learned that I have to be my greatest ally. Before I knew anything about anything.

Aging is living. Living is aging. -Radiant Rebellion by Karen Walrond

That picture is of a woman just beginning to live. If I could go back and tell that young woman in the picture to do things differently, make different choices, would I? There’s maybe one or two things I’d recommend, like don’t buy that time share you’ll never use or think about clinical microbiology as a career. Otherwise, I’d say make the choices you’re going to make, but soak up every single moment of joy, even the smallest thing that makes you smile. Take millions and millions of mental pictures of those moments and there will be millions and millions because you will experience more joy than pain. In fact, I will argue that the amount of joy you experience is what will make the painful moments stand out and sting the most.

I would tell her that some times are not going to be great, but you’re going to be okay.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

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

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

But I didn’t stay in bed.

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

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

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

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

THANKFUL FRIDAY

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

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

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

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

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

THE WHALE

I spent the whole day on Saturday attending a chair yoga teacher certification class. I was supposed to go again on Sunday but woke up with a sore throat and a slight fever. After showering and eating breakfast, I didn’t feel much better. So I opted to stay home and not spread my germs, but I was very happy to see that pictures and videos from the day had been posted for me to scroll through. It was also really nice to watch a video of our teacher demonstrating how to get off the floor and it is exactly how I teach my students to safely get off the floor. The course was helpful and validating. Michael said that the experience seemed to have energized me, which is funny because I ended up taking a four hour nap on Sunday.

Early on Saturday, our teacher passed out a deck of oracle cards. I thought that oracle cards was just a Roze thing, but turns out it is becoming a popular yoga studio thing to do. It’s cleaner than goat yoga. I treated this experience with the same eye-roll as I’d use for Roze. The card that I pulled from this deck is a card I have pulled before from one of Roze’s decks. It was the Whale: True Voice card and I half read the description knowing full well that somewhere in there it was going to say something about speaking with compassion to yourself and others. I have no problems speaking with compassion to others. I might even be real good at that. I don’t want to talk about the ‘yourself’ part of that sentence. There was one part of this description that I hadn’t noticed before and it reads “Getting in touch with the mystery and unseen realms of life.” To which I responded “Shut the fuck up.” I turned my ghostbuster trap into an Idea trap.

The description on this card also said this:

Singing your true song from a place of compassion.

Somewhere along the way I have forgotten my true song and I have been working really hard these last three months to remember that song. It has slowly been coming back to me, but in a really annoying way. It’s like I can plunk out a few notes over and over again in my head, kind of like hearing Chris try to sing out the tune to Brazil, which if you knew Chris, you knew he was tone deaf. It’s like I hear something that is kind of familiar, but not yet clear and I know some of that is from trying to hard. Every one I know has struggled with January and it has not turned out to be the fresh start to the New Year that we all wanted. I know I jumped into January first with the idea that I was going to figure everything out on week one.

Then January tried to kill me.

More than a few notes of that song revealed itself this weekend. The revelation came by immersing myself in a community of yoga teachers of various of levels of teaching experience. Teachers can and do learn from other teachers. I loved learning from the others in our group and I loved sharing my own knowledge with the group. At one point on Saturday, we were paired off to practice teaching sun salutations. My partner was a woman who is still working on her teacher training and still finding her teacher voice. She was nervous when it became her turn to teach me. She’s normally a Spin teacher and I said if you can teach a class while riding a bike, you can teach anything. But really, the best advice I gave her was that the more she loved this practice, the easier it will be for her to share her knowledge of the practice. And then I started speaking whale like Dory in Finding Nemo. (Not really)

This post is about to get real long because finding your voice and loving your practice ties into something I started writing last week.

Last year, I purchased a new camera backpack to hold my Nikon and the (potential) extra lenses and gear. I did a whole lot of research on camera packs and what I wanted in a backpack. That also meant narrowing down what it was that I didn’t like about the camera bag I already owned. The deciding factors included comfort and ease of packability while not being bulky. I didn’t want to settle on any of these things for cost and I spent monies to get what I truly wanted. It was worth it. I love everything about this backpack. It has specific and easy to get to pockets for just about everything I need while traveling. It fits my body and does not feel like I am wearing a pack meant for a month long excursion on the Appalachian Trail. It hangs nicely on my closet door and I generally just leave my camera in it.

The bag and camera have not moved in over two months.

I have fallen completely out of practice with my Nikon. In fact I can pinpoint the exact time when I felt joy in taking photos and that was when I was in Woods Hole back in October. Lately, when I’m sitting in bed in the mornings with Josephine and drinking my tea, I will stare at that bag and start to stew. I sit there and think about projects I could/should start to practice using this camera. Last year, I was gifted a flash along with a set of diffusers and I have yet to take time out to learn when and how to use it. That’s just stupid because now in the dark cold months when the last thing I want to do is to go outside is the best time to stay inside and learn about flash photography. When you look for the light, but can’t seem to find it, then you make your own light.

This weekend I was reminded that when you truly love the things you do, then of course you find time to do those things. But there is also joy, great amounts of it really, in sharing those things with others. Yoga. Photography. Words. These are my things and I’m clearing space for more doing of these things that I love.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

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

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

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

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

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

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

OUCH

I sliced my thumb on a can of beans I had just opened to go into the pot of soup I was making for dinner. It’s not bad, not a stitches situation, but when it happened I quietly said “Ouch! Fuck!” and then my thumb started bleeding. Michael took one look at the first drop of blood and said “Oh no…” and then he ran off in search of a bandaid, which once found he applied to my thumb with shaky hands. I almost asked him if he needed to sit down for a minute. A few hours later, I removed the bandaid only to put on a new bandaid five minutes later when my thumb started bleeding again. Thumbs tend to be workhorses of the hands and this particular wound is in a place that gets bumped around a lot. I feel every bump and it smarts.

January.

Every time, I think it will be easier. If anything, the passing of time makes it worse and when I tell myself that I just have to make it through January, there’s a voice that whispers “February is going to be just as bad.” I want to blame it all on the weather, the bitter cold that makes it impossible to move around on this planet. It wasn’t this cold back then when we first moved here. It wasn’t even this cold the year he left us. Passed away, whatever. Some days it’s “he died”, some days “he departed” and some days when I’m feeling really cranky it’s “he left us”. The goddamn nerve of that man and the choices I have made since have set me up for a lifetime of knowing my life was better in the before times. Maybe that’s the why of making those choices.

Sometimes, I get so mad that I am still writing about this. I will write paragraphs around my unhappiness and then I will delete it all. I will fill the empty space with forced joy while asking myself when was the last time I was truly happy. This question always arises during the coldest, darkest months of the year when I’ve been the most stagnant, when the air is the most painful. Every year I make a plan, a strategy for navigation around this time and every year that plan fails not just miserably but epically. With flames and destruction. It is quite possible that my plans have failed more epically this year than any other year, even though on the outside it all looks normal and happy. She smiles. She make an attempt at laughing. She pretends.

I pretend.

After Thanksgiving, I calmly told Michael that I was no longer putting any work into this relationship. In some ways this made my life easier. I have dropped any expectations I had of him being a true definition of the word ‘partner’. That means doing tasks that I’d have to do any way if I lived alone. Shoveling the driveway, clearing the snow from my car, making a meal plan, holding myself accountable. I’ve stopped expecting an equally emotional and intellectual relationship. I had been working and striving so hard for this to be that kind of relationship, that the more effort I made, the more I was reminded that I didn’t have to do this in my previous relationship. I thought for the longest time that I was compromising, but what I’ve really been doing is conceding and with each concession, giving up pieces of myself until I just didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything.

Mostly, I didn’t care about the loss of myself but how is that different from the days that followed Chris’s death? So now, in the darkest coldest months of the year I have more time and space for the past. Again with these choices I have made. I am not sure I ever really figured out who I am without Chris other than a bit pathetic. I’m tired of everything but mostly I am tired of being pathetic. When will I ever learn to lean into the stillness and the benefits of rest that come with these months? The truth is that if I stop being pathetic and less conceding, I will see that I am still the person I was with Chris. I had my own identity then and there’s no reason to believe that I don’t have my own singular identity now.

Knowing that doesn’t make this month feel any less poky. January will always be a cut on my thumb that’s deeper than a paper cut but not so deep that it requires needle and thread.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

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

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

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

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

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

This is a weekend for making a choice of stillness.

WHY DOES JANUARY EVEN EXIST?

Three of us braved the icy, snow crusted roads this morning to come into the office. I had no choice. I have service people in town right now to do preventative maintenance of some of our very most popular microscopy systems. Rescheduling would be a difficult option for all concerned. But honestly, I probably would have made the treacherous drive here any way because I have become the First Law of Motion. The act of getting ready to go in to work is the applied force this ball needs to start moving.

And this ball really needs to start moving.

But that’s the thing with January. It is the first month of the year and should feel like a month of possibilities and fresh starts. The reality is that the month of January is my old 1976 Buick Skylark that took three to twenty turns of the key to get the engine started. This is where you decided if you are a ‘glass half full’ or a ‘glass half empty’ kind of person. If you lean towards the half empty way of thinking, you might think that January is here to ruin all of your plans. Michael attempted to make reservations for my birthday dinner in two weeks and there was zero availability at my first two choices. That weekend kicks off Kansas City Restaurant Week and there is the potential for an important Chiefs football game on that day. When Michael asked me for another option, I said “just forget it.” Then four to six inches of snow got dumped on the city and there’s more coming on Friday, canceling plans I had made for my mother and sister to visit so we could celebrate my mom’s birthday. So it really feels like January is looking at me and saying “Hey…I get that you want to do things. I really do, but nope.”

January. Wrecking plans since 1976. Or 2012 (if I’m being generous).

The month of January is named after the Roman god, Janus, the god of new beginnings and transitions. Janus is not the god of good new beginnings or bad new beginnings. He is the god of just new beginnings and new beginnings of any kind requires some transitioning. Back in 2012, I did not see January as a month of new beginnings. It was a month of painful slogging tasks. It was a time of conditioning for a transition into a new beginning that was most definitely not a good new beginning. All Januarys since have been compared to this and treated with an expectation that January is going to be hard as fuck. But I so desperately want to see January with ‘glass half full’ eyes, so here goes.

What would a ‘glass half full’ person think about January’s shenanigans?

January is your therapist telling you that all those things that you want to do requires you to put in some work to do them. There’s no waking up to written manuscripts or finished marathons. Goals are not met by happenstance. You have to put in the work, but January is also forcing you to focus only on the things you can control. It’s going to throw all these obstacles or tests out there that you have no control over to train you both mentally and physically to focus on the things you can control. To a ‘half glass empty’ person, this looks like the bare minimum of activity, but ‘glass half full’ people know that looks are deceiving. The hardest pose in yoga looks like you’re doing nothing while doing nothing, but this doing nothing time allows for molecular level recovery for our bodies.

I can’t control the snow, but I am able bodied enough to shovel my driveway and dig my car out. I made it to work, but did concede to canceling my yoga class this evening (safety first). Plans are not ruined; they have just been rearranged to different dates and venues. Everything could be so much worse right now. January could be really making me do much harder things this year than just navigating snowy terrain and cold weather. Maybe I should give the month of January a new slogan.

January, the month that is the kick-you-in-the-ass trainer you didn’t know you needed.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

Michael and I declared an ‘only stockings’ present year for Christmas and he filled my stocking with ridiculous desk toys. I now own a “Badass” button that tells me how wonderful I am every time I press it and a tiny glowing crystal ball that continuously tells me to '“ask again later.” The Ghostbuster’s trap, I was told, was really more of gift for Chris. So I did the very most Chris thing I could do. I printed out a tiny label with the label maker and gave the trap a name that implies it is a trap for ideas. Good ideas or bad ideas. The trap is an equal opportunity idea catcher.

At the same time I was making the trap label, Amy sent me a picture of a set of books that she would probably have purchased for Chris. It was a series of books of William Shakespeare’s version of Star Wars. She included a shot of dialogue from Scene 1 that included the line “he beepeth on and on.” Michael has a habit of asking me if I know about subject A and then explaining subject A to me even though I said ‘yes, I know about that.’ Now, all I want to do is interrupt him with “Must you, Sir, beepeth on and on?” I am truly surprised that I do not have this set of books already sitting on my bookshelf because while there are many things I got rid of, books were kept. I mean, we should all have our very own copy of Catch 22 stacked next to our bibles (yes, I have a bible, know thine enemy and all that).

I’ve told Michael my theory of soul absorption and how I believe that I have absorbed most of Chris’s soul. It is the reason why he is not surprised when certain phrases fall out of my mouth. He has yet to notice that I sometimes cross my eyes and stare at passengers in the cars stopped next to us at stoplights, not unlike Chris’s goofy-faced alter ego. This was the face he used for Rosco, the hitchhiker Chad picked up during his cross country road trip, the trip that started our friendship with Chad. I have more pictures of this face than I do of Chris’s actual face and I’m not mad about it. We recently started watching Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones and in the very first episode, we listened to a woman who is 102 talk about the importance of laughter, but this is not the first time I have heard such advice. I have experienced it first hand. The amount of laughing Chris and I did is why I never really consider anything I did as ‘grownup’ until I was thirty four and moving us to Kansas City.

The years when I feel I have laughed the least are the years I have felt decrepit and ancient and those are the years I regret the most.

When I started writing this entry, I couldn’t remember the name Chad had given to his imaginary hitchhiker and when I asked him about it, he replied “What made you think of that?” It was so many years ago, so many life changes ago. I told Chad it was because I was writing about Chris’s dumb face, which is true, but it’s really because I’m holding onto joyful moments and reminding myself to be silly. I don’t even need to look at Chris’s goofy face to start grinning; all I have to do is think about it.

I am making it a practice to laugh daily, but I do beepeth on and on.

HUNGRY FOR WHAT

I opened up the editor side of this website and looked around like it was brand new territory. This was not unlike the feelings I had when I walked into the microscopy room at work Tuesday morning. In fact, after taking all of the objective lenses off of one system and cleaning each one, I set them next to the microscope and walked away to do something else. It was about twenty minutes later when I remembered that I never actually put those lenses back on the microscope. I have been away from work (and here) for a week and two days. I let my emails fester in my inbox for nine days before finally giving in and clearing things out. I barely took or posted any photos. After returning home from Oklahoma and furiously cleaning my house, I was down right lazy, not leaving the couch unless it was absolutely necessary. Do I have regrets?

Just one. I don’t feel as though I ate as much cheese as I could have eaten in the last eleven days.

Well before the holidays, I was feeling a constant gnawing hunger twinge in my guts. I wanted to eat all of the things and none of the things. I wanted to fill my body up with something, a lot of different things and not necessarily food. I was hungry for changes. My social media ads went into overdrive, filling up my feed with food prep services, fancy ramen noodles, weight loss programs, face yoga and shape wear. For the most part, I ignored those ads, but every once in a while one would sneak its way into my brain. I’d click on the link and search for price tags. Then I’d come to my senses, shake my head and turn it off. Being so well organized for Christmas allowed for some reflection time and I sat down and wrote out a detailed list/flow chart for what I want in 2024. There is nothing unreasonable on that list, except maybe the part about seeing a moose, but I woke up on January first feeling a little bit guilty for not getting right to work. Instead of getting up and getting on my mat or playing my seven minute exercise app, I snuggled back under the covers and watched three episodes of The Diplomat.

When I finally did that seven minute workout on Tuesday morning, I thought “Damn, why is this so hard?!?” while I coughed between squats and mountain climbers. That head cold I had the week before Christmas turned into a cough that still hasn’t gone away. It has at least changed from sounding like masses amounts of wet cotton is about to explode from my body. The cough has been reduced to an irritant and a wish for a zero gag reflex (yes, place all of your dirty thoughts here) so that I can scrub my esophagus with a bottle brush. Half of the people I follow on Instagram posted pictures of New Year’s Eve plans that included cold medicines and tissues. I don’t feel alone in thinking that a mere seven minutes of exercise right now feels like two hours of torture exercise.

On Christmas Day, Michael and I went over to our Jenn and Wade’s house to have Christmas dinner with them and their family. Upon walking into their home, every visitor was handed a card that contained some kind of conversation starter and then everyone in the room would take a turn at answering what ever question was on the card. One of the questions that came up was “What’s a lie you tell yourself?” Look, there’s a number of lies I tell myself on a daily basis, but the one I was willing to speak out loud to the group was this. I tell myself that I am not a healthy person, that I do not take care of myself. Some of that stems from a month of sporadic yoga practices and a pause in dog walks because of the weather. Some that stems from allowing someone in my life to speak to me on a daily basis in a way that is not healthy and letting it go on because I just didn’t care enough to stand up for myself. But also, if I don’t speak kindly to myself, how can I expect others to speak to me in a positive way?

This is something I’ve been working on before the new year, not just being kinder to myself but demanding kinder and more thoughtful speech from others. So by the time New Year’s Eve rolled around, I wasn’t as hungry for change as I was in late November. Just the act of writing down the things I want for this year, filled up some of that empty gut feeling. So many things on my list are not resolutions of self improvement, maybe only two or three items. Everything else is all true wants: camping, joyful movement like roller skating, bike rides. I treated my resolutions like they would be part of my Life List, filling the year up with activities of joy and spacing those activities throughout the year like tapas plates of snacks. I’m walking into this year with a little trepidation (the world is very much a dumpster fire and it’s an election year), but mostly I’m walking into this year feeling peckish and excited about snacks.

I’m going to treat this year like Rick Steve spends an evening tapas bar hopping in Madrid.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

I’ve been battling a head cold all week, pretending that there’s nothing wrong with me. Each day has been a progression from sore throat to nasal congestion to barking cough. I refuse to give into the idea that I am actually sick because there’s been no fever or aches. I’ve tested negative for COVID three times now. On Wednesday morning I didn’t nudge Michael to get up. Instead he came to me and when he placed his hand on my shoulder, I opened my eyes and croaked “I’m getting up!” Then we sort of argued because he said “I’m sorry you’re not feeling well.” and I replied “I feel just fine…cough cough…..I’m not sick.” This week is a short week leading into a fairly long break for the whole institute. Our microscope calendar is full and I have several projects I’m helping with. I may have the available sick time, but I didn’t feel like I had the luxury to use it. Besides, the cough hit by Wednesday and that’s always the last symptom in the head cold progression.

So, I am not sick.

Though, if I was sick (and I’m not saying that I am, just if I was), now is a pretty good time for it. I have been relieved of all chores and duties until Saturday morning when we go get haircuts. My job today is rest and an eventual shower because the Cabbage wants to have dinner at the ramen place down the street tonight. I will shower for soup. The following days will be quiet ones. Our Christmas with the Cabbage is on Christmas Adam/Eve. Our Christmas day will be spent with friends for a low-key dinner with puzzles and games. We will spend two days with my family in Oklahoma and then an evening with Michael’s mom’s. Then our plans are to stay still and ring in the new year quietly at home.

During my Wednesday chair yoga class, I gave my student a little bit of extra time in final relaxation. As I helped each student gather and arrange cushions and blankets to be comfortable for a long savasana, I told them to let this time be their gift to themselves. Sometimes we need to bribe ourselves in order to allow for moments that may seem splurgy. Being still and resting for fifteen minutes feels like a splurge to many of us, me most of all. There’s something about ‘gifting’ those fifteen minutes to yourself that feels like permission. I told Michael I didn’t want anything for Christmas this year. I just couldn’t think of anything that I wanted that I would not buy for myself. I told him to save the money for when we go back to New Orleans. We are only doing stockings, but I think I will follow my own advice and gift myself a holiday of rest.

I hope that you are able to give yourself a similar gift this holiday season.

I am grateful to have the luxury of a long holiday that allows for rest. I think that this is my last Thankful Friday entry for the year. I think that having a holiday of rest includes taking a break from this space. Before we know it, we will be blinking in a brand new year, a year for new adventures. I am excited for the adventures awaiting me. Some of them are going to be big. So, with gratitude, I am taking this moment to rest and prepare my body for those adventures.

Many Happy Holidays to you.

THINGS CHANGE

The Facebook memory that popped up the other day was a picture of a collage of holiday cards that I had stuck to the side of my refrigerator. For a tiny moment, I almost shared that memory but then I looked closer at some of those cards. Many of the cards were photo cards containing pictures of my dear friends and their families. I didn’t share the memory because first of all, it’s not a great picture, but secondly a few of those cards do not reflect a few of those families today. In fact at least two of the families in that picture have had drastic, heart breaking changes in the last five years. One photo card is from a college friend with her husband and two children all smiling brightly for the camera. I considered the husband to be a great friend too, but he left my friend in a surprising and shocking way. He turned out to be not the person I thought he was or who anyone thought he was. After deciding not to share this memory, I studied that photo looking for signs on his face or in his eyes only to shake my head and realize he was the best actor of us all.

I’m sure my friends remember my holiday cards of the past and how different my cards look today. I wanted to hold onto a tradition that could not be recreated with any other person but Chris. I have given up on the idea of elaborate and funny holiday photos. I like to think of my cards now as more of a sarcastic head nod to the suburban family unit. I’ve stopped trying to get a nice photo of all of us together and instead, I patch together individual pictures of us. I’m the hardest to find because I am rarely in front of the camera these days. Maybe it’s time for another 365 day self portrait project. I always seem to quilt something together just in time to take advantage of a big holiday card print sale, even if the picture of Josephine on this year’s card was actually taken last year. It was the best I could do this year. A series of unfortunate haircuts made Josephine not as photogenic as usual and let’s face it. We’ve all experienced a year of unfortunate haircuts.

I had Talaura on speaker phone Saturday evening and we chatted while I roamed around my house doing chores. I had a stack of unopened cards sitting on my desk and I began to open them one by one and then tape them up on bookshelf for display. Anna and Greg greeted me from the cover of their card with a drooling half grinning baby. They referred to themselves not by name but as “Mateo’s grandparents”, as they should. I am kind of in love with their new empty nest status and how they have entered a stage of life that is less parenting and more spoil the grand baby. The card also arrived from a different address than where I sent my card to them. So, hopefully that gets returned soon so that I can put the correct address on it. Then I opened the card from Todd and I said out loud to Talaura that these children are unrecognizable. That’s not entirely true. I still recognize Todd’s boys, but they’ve mostly lost that ‘boy’ look and have moved on to ‘young man’. Talaura and I chatted about how strange that those two were now closely resembling adults.

Michael has been struggling to get the Cabbage to send them a Christmas wish list this year. They finally responded with “I’m a teenager now. I’m not supposed to want or like things.” They have grown past the surprises and excitement that comes at Christmas when you believe that a white bearded old man is going to break into your home, not to steal your toys, but to give you more toys. I still plan on setting out a nice beer and some pretzels for Santa because I like a bit of whimsy with my holidays. It feels strange to see everyone growing up and getting older when I feel as though I have not changed. It took me so long to finally do “adult” things like buying a lawnmower and a house, cremating a husband. I feel stuck at an in between stage of life where I’m just responsible enough to stay employed.

For a brief period of time as a small child, I can remember spending hours pretending to be Wendy from Peter Pan. I’d interrupt adventures and insist that it was bath time or tea time or bed time. I would tell my stuffed animals who were playing the Lost Boys to be more sensible. I’m sure many of you are nodding your heads and thinking “of course you did, Cindy.” Commanding sensibility is my brand, but as I watch my dearest friends’ children growing up, I find myself wanting less sensibility or more silliness. I don’t want to be a Wendy any more. I don’t want to be Peter and leader of the pack, but I think I’m ready to try fitting in with the Lost Boy crowd.