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Daydreaming of Spring

March 3, 2024 //
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I’m taking a minute after my walk, this morning, sitting quietly with the sensations of leg muscles taxed by my pace, and skin chilled by wintry winds, slowly recovering in the warmth of the car. Switching back from my boots to my sneakers with fingers numbed from the morning chill felt awkward and clumsy, and being mildly out of breath from the modest uphill bit of trail back to the parking lot was uncomfortable, but I also feel exhilarated by the freshness of the crisp morning air, and the sense of purpose that lingers even now that I am no longer in motion.

The day looks likely to be a chilly one, but the garden continues to beckon me, and as much as I do love sitting around hanging out with my Traveling Partner, it’s not healthy to overindulge in that favorite activity. lol I consider stopping at a nursery on the way home for some bagged compost to add to the garden before I plant Spring seeds… No reason to let a drizzle stop me; it rains a lot around here, and it’s often the wise choice to go ahead and do things anyway.

… Do the things! (There is longevity and wellness in the effort, and far too much of who and what we are functions on a “use it or lose it” basis.) I remind myself how much fitness truly is packed into the many small day-to-day tasks upon which good quality of life is built. I remind myself to treat sitting around indulging in sedentary pleasures as I might treat indulging in sugary treats; very sparingly. Do more. Keep at it. Finish something and move on to doing something else. There are verbs involved, and sometimes the effort doesn’t seem “worth it”, but avoiding the effort is potentially a slow slide towards being unable to do when the time comes that I must. These are not new thoughts. I find value in repetition for reinforcing the need to do the verbs, is all.

The crisp damp morning aggravates my arthritis. I’m looking forward to a luxurious long hot shower and clean dry clothes. There’s laundry to do, and I have a plan to make stir fry for dinner tonight. It’s not always easy to push past physical pain to stay moving and active… But it’s worth the effort.

I sigh quietly. Finish my coffee, and get ready to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, breathe, Free Will, gardening, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Practices, Roses, Spring, The Art of Being, weight loss secrets, winter

Rain and Snow

March 2, 2024 //
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It’s March in the Pacific Northwest. I’m sipping coffee at a trailhead, waiting for a break in the… rain? Rain. At least, it’s raining here; a sort of steady drizzle, barely enough to discourage me from walking.

No tears this morning, I’ve got the rain.

When I woke and dressed for my walk, I hadn’t checked the weather. I kissed my Traveling Partner, and went to the door. I was surprised to see everything dusted with snow when I opened it. I stood there rather stupidly for a moment, stalled by my astonishment. I turned back to my partner and commented that perhaps I could not go… I must have sounded disappointed (I was), because he reminded me I could just take the truck; this small amount of snow would be nothing for the truck, at all. Of course. Totally made sense and I grabbed my other keychain and left, stopping to grab my hiking boots and cane from my car.

For a short distance, I enjoyed a basically very ordinary drive, aside from the dusting of white everywhere. Within minutes the snow started falling heavily, filling the sky with fat snowflakes, dense and visibility-limiting, but that didn’t last, and I reached the trailhead safely just as the snowfall stopped altogether, becoming this drizzly rain. It’s a rather ordinary rainy March morning.

I think about the garden and the work I am hoping to do this weekend. There are seeds to plant, weeds to pull, and I’d like to get a fresh layer of compost down on the vegetable bed. Weather permitting. I’m thinking about adding a rose with my dear friend in mind… perhaps missing her will be just a little less painful if I honor her memory in my garden… some lovely spot, where I can “sit with her awhile”, now and then? I think about beautiful roses and which of the many I had grown or shared over the years she liked the most or commented on most often… Or perhaps entirely new-to-my-garden roses that somehow capture my dear friend’s sense of style and creative nature? A splash of contrasting colors… A relaxed informal habit… I think about her fondly with roses, flowers, and fragrant herbs in mind. No tears, just love and fond memories. Progress. Even grief is a journey.

… My dear friend loved my roses, and even more she loved that I love them, myself. We spoke many times about the risk of slowing down and doing less, and the unfortunate “use it or lose it” nature of physical ability as we age. I keep walking, in spite of pain, in spite of “laziness”, in spite of fatigue – and it’s because I am so painfully aware that if I stop, and my fitness falls behind, it will become progressively more difficult over time to get it back. The physical effort in the garden is very much the same sort of thing. I sigh quietly and consider the garden and what I would like to do there this year. It saddens me for a moment that my dear friend, this year, won’t be around to share it with…

The rain stops. It’s daylight. The trail awaits. It’s time to begin again.

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Categories breathe, Free Will, gardening, gratitude, grief, health, Healthy Living, inspiration, loneliness, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Moments, Oregon Trails, pain, Perspective, Practices, Relationships, Roses, solo hiking, Spring, The Art of Being, weight loss secrets, winter, women

One Way or Another

February 28, 2024 //
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I’m sipping my iced coffee and thinking about mortality. Not really a surprise after visiting a dear friend who is facing hers. Thing is, there are options and “ways to go”, and I’m not surprised by my dear friend’s choices, and I’m so fucking grateful (and relieved) that she’s gotten to make those choices with her own voice and mind and will, and that her family loves her enough to respect those choices. It’s a difficult time. Saying goodbye was less trying than simply somewhat sorrowful (and also unexpectedly joyful and deeply connected), and in part that was because my dear friend is cared for by people who love her, who have also managed to keep their senses of humor intact, and are so skilled at balancing respect for this dear woman who has been so much to us all, while also fending off the medical bureaucracy and bullshit (yeah, there’s a surprising amount of that) to ensure she is cared for and comfortable while the clock ticks. I’m glad I went to visit.

The private anecdotes illuminate the loving good-nature of my dear friend, and her continued sense of humor and awareness of her circumstances. I won’t be sharing those, they feel too private – but g’damn do I love this woman, and admire her strength and practicality. I hope when it is my turn, I have some measure of her strength, wisdom, and will. She’s managed to make things so much easier on her family simply by having known – and communicated – what she wants for end-of-life care for a long time. Fuck it is going to be a lonelier world without her in it!

…What I’m saying is, think about what you will want when “that time” comes, and then actually say words about it to those that you love. Don’t run from it. We are mortal creatures, and at least as of 2023, there’s no dodging that.

I arrived home last night after as close to an effortless drive back as could have been achieved. Almost no traffic, things moving along smoothly at slow points through small towns, pretty good weather… even the rain that began to fall midway through the drive stayed quite well-behaved and wasn’t much of an impediment to safe driving. I got home more than an hour earlier than expected, but that was mostly due to taking shorter/fewer breaks. I took plenty of those, and more frequently, with the result that I didn’t need so many or such long ones. Funny how that worked out. There’s a self-care lesson there. My Traveling Partner was pleased to have me home. I am happy to be back. Feels good. Comfortable. Familiar.

…The comfort and familiarity of home reminds me of the disappointing blandness of the hospital my dear friend is currently in. How the hell is anyone supposed to heal in that unengaging, unappealing environment?? I sip my coffee and think about that for some minutes…

The pre-dawn darkness became daylight… I barely noticed. There’s quite a lot to catch up on with work… time to begin again.

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Categories breathe, Free Will, gratitude, health, Love, Perspective, Practices, Relationships, winter, women

Restless

February 22, 2024 //
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I’m having a restless sort of morning. I’ve stepped through the details of my morning routine, my commute, the start of my work day, and I feel… restless. Like there’s “something more” “out there”, or as if I am unsatisfied with life, generally. It’s an illusion, as much as it has any basis in reality. Emotional weather. I breathe, inhaling deeply, and exhaling slowly, feeling my subtle anxiety lurking in the background fall away ever so slowly with each breath. It’s a practice that works to reduce my anxiety, before it can get out of hand, but it does nothing much to change this strange feeling of restlessness.

…I could plan a camping trip… It’s a bit early in the year for (me to be) sleeping on the ground, but I enjoy the exercise of planning, and I don’t mind planning well in advance – in fact, some places I might wish to camp require quite a bit of long range planning (they’re just that popular, I suppose). On the other hand, I’m not feeling any sort of urgent need to be away from home (quite the contrary). This feeling of restlessness is inconveniently timed. I sip my coffee and think about it for some minutes – what am I “running from”? Something? Anything? Am I tussling with unaddressed urges? No doubt I’ve got my share of those…

The morning sky has clouds, and broad streaks of blue between those. The sunrise surprised me with it’s earliness, and was gone before I gave it much thought. It’s definitely morning, bathed in daylight diffused by the cloudy sky. Pretty. I gaze out the windows awhile, watching the streetcar make the trip around the block, from one stop to the next, heading the other direction. As early as it is, there are already people in the park below me, walking, sipping coffee, sitting on a bench. The water features are bland brown blocks of earth tones, not yet reflecting the sky above in any visible way from this distance (and angle of view). I wonder to myself when the Koi fish will be there, again, and where they go when they are not in the pond. I don’t care enough to look into it further, I’m just momentarily curious.

I breathe, exhale, and relax, taking stock of my pain and considering how best to manage it. I sip my coffee, and pull myself more upright, correcting my posture (again). I think about my Traveling Partner, his recovery, and how much I adore him. It’s hard being injured and being patient with the tediously long time recovery can sometimes take. Some injuries don’t heal quickly. I feel for him and kind of regret coming into the office, when I could be working from home where I could easily do things to care for him and make life easier. I sigh and shake my head when I realize I’d also very much like to just go back to bed and maybe nap awhile… Fucking hell? Really? The day has hardly begun…

…I hear a flurry of negative self-talk comments begin to develop in my thoughts, and put myself on pause; there’s literally nothing whatsoever wrong with wistful thoughts of sleeping in and napping, especially for a woman who struggles to get adequate healthy sleep! I laugh out loud in this quiet room and remind myself silently to “be nice” and treat myself with care and kindness – to do otherwise puts me at risk of losing sight of how I treat others. If I’m a dick to myself, how can I expect to treat others gently and with compassion? It’s something I’ve been working on a lot, lately.

Another sip of my almost-cold-now coffee, and my thoughts slide towards far away friends, and a dear friend struggling with mortality. Maybe that’s really the thing driving my restlessness, I realize; I miss far away friends, and I know I will regret not making time to see them (more often than I do). I find myself wondering if I should simply plan a trip to see my ill friend, and make a point of doing so while I can. It clearly matters enough to fuck with my head. I think that over quietly, and the restlessness begins to ease. Okay, so I got there, eventually. Now to do something about it, I suppose…

…I finish my coffee and get ready to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, Anxiety, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, Love, meditation, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Practices, Relationships, solo hiking, Spring, Summer, The Art of Being, winter, women

Be Present, Time Is Short

February 20, 2024 //
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I’m sipping the last of my iced coffee and finishing a bowl of oatmeal. Healthier choices are on my mind a lot lately. I look out the window at the stormy looking gray sky and wonder whether the sun will come out, or the day will be rainy. It makes no particular difference, I just wonder.

The hint of blue in the morning sky reflects my mood back at me.

I’m not weeping, nor feeling bereft or despairing. I’m just a tiny bit blue, and contemplating the potential that I may be saying a final good-bye to someone dear to me, if not “soon” for sure sooner than I want to have to face it (which would frankly be not at all). We are mortal creatures. Fucking hell, doesn’t that suck all the damned ballz?? I sigh out loud and think about dear friends, far away family, and peculiarly close others that I feel, sometimes, in my day-to-day experience as “ghosts” of times past. Yes, even in spite of my fondness for solitude, I too am a social creature, and I miss those dear to me whose geographical distance keeps them from being with me “in real life” (isn’t it all “real life” though? email, text messages, phone calls… all real). I make a note to myself to reach out to more of them, more often; time is short and the clock never ever stops ticking.

…Let’s not make that a grim thought, it’s just one of many truths upon which to build our perspective…

I woke once during the night from unpleasant dreams of loss and loneliness and disconnection and mourning. I didn’t stay sad, once I woke. I had reminders of love right there, welcoming me back to the safety and comfort of home. I said a silent thank you to my Traveling Partner for the glow objects he’s added to my space alongside the art I’ve wrought over the years that also helps ground me in my “now” when I wake from a bad dream.

A lotus votive holder and a reminder that I am loved, greet my wakefulness in the night.

I take a breath, exhale, and relax, letting the lingering recollection of my dreams fall away as I watch the sky turn from moody shades of morning blue to shades of gray that threaten more rain. It’s a new day, a new week, and it’s time to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, grief, Healthy Living, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Moments, Perspective, Practices, Relationships, winter, women
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