Spring Traffic

Spring is making up for lost time hereabouts.

Out driving today, I was struck by the brilliant green of the newly unfurled leaves; a green I didn't see just a few days ago when driving the same route.

The birds and yard bunnies have taken to hanging out in my front yard when they're hungry in the mornings and late evenings. I like to watch as the cardinals, robins, sparrows, the occasional woodpecker, and the other birds I don't recognize on sight, take off and land, stopping to get their fill. 

The items  offered for their dining delight are a freewheeling mixture of clover, wild violets, wild strawberries and grass, along with the assorted bugs who like to hang around the salad bar. (I have given into peer pressure, and while I still cheer for the dandelions in my heart, I do pull them out of the yard so as to not incur glares from the neighbors who don't appreciate their flagrant beauty. I need no feedback from the neighbors to pull the crabgrass when its season arrives - that stuff doesn't share well, and is ugly to boot.) 

I find it interesting that while my avian friends do pass through my back yard, which is about fifty square feet of pristine grass (manually weeded to protect the bees), they haven't been lingering there. I'm guessing all those people who write articles in the eco-magazines are correct - the mono-culture of the grass just doesn't taste very good. I do know, from past experience, once the flowers start blooming in their beds, the birds will be visiting - but this is the first year I've noticed the way they shun the space until the blooms arrive. Food for thought.

These sights and the fresh aromas that accompany them have been helping to ground and center my soul. They help me to know all is not lost. Truth be told, I need the reminder.

I don't find much to like in the news from the outside world these days. I am glad I have a place brimming with positive proof the cycle of life is not completely broken to balance the bleakness portrayed there.

Here's to Spring. Here's to its life-giving new growth; its healing energy; the way it embodies hope fulfilled.

Good Is.

Growing

It's been two years since I got a starter from one of my daughter-in-law's succulents. I brought the bit of green home, stuck it in some dirt, and there it's been, ever since.

I've watered it faithfully, and it never turned brown, but it never grew, either. It sat quietly in its pot, neither growing nor dying, but just waiting. I can relate.

This past week, when I went to water it, I noticed something new about my quiet friend - there was a swelling at the top! After all this time, the plant has decided conditions are right to take a chance and to grow.

It still doesn't look like much, just a little bump of fresh green growth perched on top of the branch in the dirt, but it's there. Again, I can relate.

With the coming of spring, something inside has eased, and I have left the liminal space where I'd been lingering for the last two years.

I must admit, I'm a bit puzzled. My life doesn't look any different. I still haven't figured out what I want to do when I grow up. The difference is that this year, with the coming of spring, I no longer care that I don't know. Why the change, I'm not sure.

I've been waking up a little earlier, as I've wanted to do since retiring. Better, when I wake up, I don't have to have a 45 minute argument with myself about why I need to get out of bed. (I was beyond tired of arguing with me every morning...) There are no more foot-dragging I-don't-wanna-you-can't-make-me discussions. Rather, I open my eyes, spend a few minutes shaking off my dreams and orienting myself to the waking world, and get out of bed. I was beginning to think the concept was beyond me!

I no longer consistently run out of energy just before dinner. Turns out I can get a lot more done in a day if I can do some of it after 6 PM, so I've started to make progress on some projects. I have more interest in moving on; in figuring out options for things to do beyond my four walls. I've been reaching out to friends, reconnecting over lunch or dinner or coffee. 

Things are still messy as ever in the larger world. COVID has started its surge-of-the-month, and the drumbeats of war sound loud on the horizon. But within, something has healed, and I am beginning to grow anyways.

I feel a little - is guilty the right word? - for finding a sense of peace when there is so much upset in the larger world, but at the same time, I feel relief. 

Tomorrow will bring what it will, but I am able to enjoy today anyways.

It's a nice feeling. 

Alpaca Show

 

When you just KNOW
 the best bits are hidden
 at the very bottom of the bowl!

This past weekend, I took a couple of hours and went down to the Kansas City Alpaca Show with some friends.

Yes, the newspaper headlines still scream of the latest atrocities of war. Too many people were shot, and too many more are still struggling with the effects of long covid. Politics have settled down not one bit, and it doesn't look like the series of climate change crises sweeping across the earth will abate anytime soon.

But, here in Kansas City, people came in from Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, and Arkansas. They loaded up their shampoo and their blow-dryers and their alpacas, and came to town for the big show. 

There were show rings and ribbons galore for the best and prettiest and spittiest and whatever-est animals. (I am clearly of absolutely no use when it's time to declare one soft, beautiful, fluffy or dreadlock-bedecked, animal better than another.) 

There were a few women spinning fluff into yarn, one making a sort of rope from her hanging spools. There were alpaca socks and soft animals and yarn and garments. There were dryer balls and a few books and a booth where you could buy a new leash for your alpaca.

There were several aisles of cages, most filled with animals waiting for their turn in the ring. I was honored to be there with several small children, so I took a three year-old by the hand, and we wandered off to whichever cage caught her eye to admire the wonders within. It was fun to watch - she was careful to look only with her eyes, but would put her face right up to the cage bars. Once, the animals inside were curious enough to walk up and peer back at her in return - she jumped back with a squeal; not sure exactly what they would do. (They just looked...)

It was a lovely spot of normal. So often these days, I feel like the entire world has spun off balance. I needed to be reminded there are people who live in a world that includes alpacas on a daily basis. It was good for me to see they are keeping on keeping on, caring for and loving their animals as they always have. 

Life, normal life, goes on. *whew!*

Covid Lives Lost

I know we've all seen the data - the number of people who have died from COVID-19 in the US alone is quickly approaching 1,000,000.

That's a lot of people.

It really hit home to me as I was driving to visit a friend yesterday and crossed the Kansas City city limits, with its population sign announcing some 489,000 people live here. This means, in the two years the country has been coexisting with this virus, the people who have died from it would have filled my town. Twice over.

Imagine.

The crowded sidewalks of the Plaza and Westport. The hallways of the museums, the paths at the zoo. The hospitals teeming with staff and patients. Block after block, from trendy condos, to apartment towers; from exclusive houses on huge lots with their carefully sculpted landscaping, to the rehabbed or run-down airplane bungalows crowded into the streets of the east side. 

Empty.

The young moms smiling at their stroller-ensconced babies as they walk around the park. The exercisers, the walkers and runners, with whom they share the path. The people in the center of the park, throwing balls for their delighted dogs. 

Gone.

The tired workers and demanding customers in the restaurants and grocery stores. The greasy mechanics in the car repair shops and the car owners hoping the bill won't be too high. The teachers and students who fill the schools with their joys and frustrations, laughter and tears.

Died.

Imagine miles of roads, their lights mindlessly switching from green to yellow to red, beckoning to no one. No obnoxiously loud motorcycles on the streets, no beleaguered Amazon delivery drivers, no SUVs or sedans or police cars or fire trucks.

Silence.

It's like the times when I ventured out during the lockdown days of the first months of the pandemic, the streets eerily silent, except that instead of all the people being tucked behind their closed doors hoping the shutdown wouldn't last too long, they're all dead. Twice over.

It would make for shocking fiction. Even as I write, my mind tries to evade the reality that it's fact. The number seems staggeringly (is that a word?) bigger when I mentally gather all those people into one place, give them the faces I see as I move about my days.

*sigh* May they Rest in Peace.

Spring? Spring!

Back in Minnesota where I grew up, winter seemed to get stuck in the dirty piles of leftover snow during these last weeks of March. It took FOREVER for it to loosen its grip and move on. One of the things I like about living in the middle of the country, as I have for the past several decades, is that spring outside my house shows up around the same time as spring does on the calendar.

Its appearance took me by surprise this year. Not sure why I was back in Minnesota mode after all this time, but there I was. I got back from Costa Rica, in the middle of a slush storm, and thought, yup, this is about right. The following week, we got six inches of snow, and I felt right at home.

At least, I felt at home until the snow melted overnight, despite the temps hovering around freezing. To my surprise, the March sun had enough oomph to speed winter on its way. Who knew? Suddenly, it's moved on; we've (probably) seen the last of winter for this year. For the last week and a bit, we've had periods of warm sun alternating with cooler, rainy days - clearly the combination the local plants have been waiting for, because things outside are turning greener by the day.

This week is my favorite week of the year. It's the week where, when you glance around outside,  everything looks just like it has for several months - gray and brown; the trees sleeping away the cold days. But then, when you look a little closer, you can see a halo of green around each one, proclaiming it is time to wake up and greet the season.

The birds outside my window have been paying closer attention than I - I've been waking early to their urgent-sounding song. "It's here!", they proclaim. "Time to build a nest and welcome back the bugs!"

Until they started singing, I didn't realize how desperately I needed to hear their song; needed to know that some things are still going right in the world.

The news from around the world is full of awful images. There are displaced peoples; spoiled children/tyrants willing to kill indiscriminately to try to force the world into a shape more pleasing to their egos. COVID is still a thing, and rumor has it we'll see another surge of cases in a month or two. Our efforts to mitigate climate change have been too little, too late - I fear that die is now cast.

But, also true, the winds have grown soft, beckoning me to come outside and breathe deeply of the scent of spring. The sun gently caresses my face, the flowers are beginning to bloom, and I am reminded that "this, too, shall pass" also applies to the parts of life I don't particularly like.

Good Is.

Control?

 

I've long tried to follow this bit (along with several other gems), of advice from Victor Frankl's book, "Man's Search for Meaning":

"Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation."

Given the givens of the upheavals in the world, the advice seems particularly on-point these days, and his words have been surfacing in my musings quite often.

Some of my thoughts have been circling back to recall how my interpretation of his words has evolved over the years.

Back in the day, when I first read these words, I took the word 'control' in an almost physical sense. When I reacted in a way I didn't like, I'd sweep up the offending reaction, open the metaphorical dustbin lid, stuff it in and slam the lid down, hoping said reaction would stay properly tucked away.

There was a lot of judgement in my response, lots of shoulds, and should nots. Shoving things away helped me in the moment, but over time, it always seemed like that dustbin lid would pop back open, and my reactions would overflow onto the floor, making quite the mess.

I've reached a new (though hopefully not the last) stage in my learning these days.

Rather than just stuffing the parts of my reaction I don't like away, I work to break them down some. I try to step back, and just notice, withholding judgement as best I am able. (This works better in some situations than it does in others, I gotta admit...) 

I try to understand why I reacted as I did. I take note of which pieces of my reaction I found helpful, which parts not so much. Then, I try to remember the understanding, so I can retrieve it the next time I'm in a similar situation.

Reacting less often in the ways which no longer serve me, trying to tilt the balance to the ways which serve me better, these have helped me in ways stuffing the dustbin never could. It kind of looks the same on the outside - my external behavior changes - but the real change is visible only to myself.

I am kinder to me, give me the benefit of the doubt more often, treat my bruised and lonely soul with a little more grace. Because of this, I am happier. 

Turns out that I can strive to have better relationships with the people in my life at the SAME TIME I'm striving to have a better relationship with myself. Turns out, the two aren't mutually exclusive. 

Good to know.

Tropical Vacation

Back in the fall of 2019, when Kate mentioned an upcoming yoga/meditation retreat to be held in Costa Rica, the last week of February in 2021, I was all about it. The retreat was a ways off, but I jumped right in and put my deposit down. She waited just a few weeks, then followed suit. I thought it would be an excellent way to celebrate my odometer birthday, which was in March of last year.

We all know what happened next. Long before February of 2021 arrived, no one was going anywhere. However, rather than cancel the event, they pushed it out a year, and when the date rolled back around this time, COVID was under control. Kate and I were thrilled to embark on our long-delayed vacation this past week.

I left last Saturday afternoon. One big plane, one medium plane, a pause to meet up with Kate and grab a few hours of sleep in San Jose, then one small (12-seater) plane and a van ride later, we pulled into the drive of the Hotel Tropico Latino in Santa Teresa, on the Pacific coast.

It was lovely. The hotel looks like something out of a travel brochure, with small cabins scattered about, carved out of the surrounding jungle. There were palm trees and rocky paths, ocean breezes and meals right next to the beach. What more could I ask?

There was yoga most mornings and at night, right before bed. We also had a one hour yoga study session each afternoon right before dinner, but other than that, our time was our own. 

The larger group went on several excursions, but I skipped all but the zip-line trip, figuring the heat and too much sun would rob me of any joy I'd get from snorkeling or hiking in the jungle. The zip-lining, though, THAT was worth it. I've always wanted to jump out of a tall tree!

Kate and I got to play in the warm ocean waves several mornings after breakfast, before the sun got too strong. There was less retreat and more vacation on the trip than we'd anticipated, but we didn't let that bother us - turns out we are more than capable of formulating our own questions and looking within for the answers. We spent several memorable afternoons sitting in the shade, eyes feasting on the waves just a few feet away, bodies reveling in the caress of the warm ocean breeze, delving into the answers we'd found for our self-assigned retreat questions. 

It's been ten years since my cancer surgery, seven since Kate started her own journey down that hard and bumpy road. That we are both still here, our relationship made stronger by our shared pain, is a gift beyond measure. 

How do I describe the joy I feel when I think of the relationship Kate and I have forged in the fires of the past ten years? I never got to know my mom as an adult, a peer; I have no model for how to be a mom to an adult. Yet somehow, we've figured it out. She has patience with my foibles; I delight in her wisdom.

And. And. To have a week out of time, to rest, to share, to deepen our connection. *happy sigh*

Good Is!

Priorities

I've been doing a better job managing my priorities - doing the things I want to do each day, as opposed to spending too many days falling down rabbit holes or trying to read the entire internet in case there will be questions about it on the test.

But I've noticed something about my activities in the past few weeks. Despite trying to consciously choose what I do, I tend to do first the things where I get a gold sticker once I've done them; the things tracked by my electronic devices.

I mean it's great if I'm going to fit everything in anyways, but on those days when something's got to give, I don't want to always cut out the non-electronic ones, which is what I've been doing.

I mean, does the little owl in DuoLingo REALLY care if I've broken my daily streak of studying? Will he be personally disappointed in me when I fall out of the Diamond League down to the Obsidian League because I didn't complete as many lessons as my arbitrarily chosen group of peers? I'm thinking probably not. 

And I'm going to be grateful I was wearing my Apple Watch if / when I take a fall, but I'm pretty sure it won't refuse to call 911 in a snit just because I didn't move enough to close my activity rings yesterday.

On the other hand, no one raises a cheer, electronic or otherwise, if I remember to practice piano. No one even knows if I manage to begin to tackle one of my long-procrastinated-on house projects. No boxes get checked if I complete a pen-and-ink drawing.

Now I've noticed what I've been doing, it's bugging me. Here I've been so proud of myself for beginning to find structure in my days. Now, it seems I need to go one step further. I'm going to begin to take a closer look at the structures I'm building. I want to make sure I'm working on the things I most want to work on, whatever those are, and not just the things that are screaming the loudest. 

Honestly, I'd think I'd have learned this lesson long ago, as I wended my way through the world of work, but I obviously need a refresher on the concept. I'll be out of town for a few days shortly and I'm going to cold-turkey all of my electronic winning streaks. If I let them lapse, I hope I'll be able to let go of the likes of Duo and his proddings to keep up my learning streak. I do want to keep learning, but I want it to be my choice to study (or not), not his.

It's time to Stop.  Breathe.  Relax!

Cancaversary #10

I woke up this morning.

Ten years ago, as I readied myself for surgery, I didn't dare think this far ahead. As I went to the hospital, and they put me under, I thought I was beginning the last stage of my life's journey. I thought my cancer would be the kind Libby got, the kind Mom had; the aggressive kind that never slows as it runs amok through your body, creating unbalance, systemic chaos and death.

I woke up this morning.

At first, as I was dealing with cancer and the aftermath of its treatment, I thought of the experience in entirely negative terms. I'd been having the time of my life in my camper van, and was NOT HAPPY to have the trip cut short. I hated the breast implants. I still miss my girls, saggy and unlovely as they were. That-damn-shot left me exhausted me in ways I can't describe. 

But still, I woke up each morning.

Time passed, and I began to feel better. Time passed, and people I loved died from cancer and other stuff. Time passed, and I realized the good I'd found in my bout with the disease. I remember (still) how loved I felt when going through the initial treatment; more people love me than I'd known. I see how my brush with death sharpened my awareness of the preciousness of each day. Cancer taught me cancer is not the enemy; death is not the enemy. The enemy is fear.

I woke up this morning!

I've learned to listen to my fears as they arise, to tell them I hear them, to tell them I am not going to let them rob me of any of my good days, to then move on. Because today is the only day I have, and I don't want to waste it fretting about fears, real or imagined. Each day, I try to have the best day I can have, anyways.

I woke up this morning.

There was sunshine today. I saw a robin. Spring will come. And, margarita truck willing, I'll be here to see it. Ten years in, the cancer docs have cut me loose. The cancer will probably come back at some future point, but for today, there is no evidence of disease. Ten years in, I am grateful to know, that while I will carry the scars on my body as a reminder of my trial for the rest of my life, the scars on my soul have largely healed. 

I woke up this morning. 
I am still here!

Snow Day

We got a lovely bit of snow last week, our first real good round for the winter; about six inches fell, with a minimal amount of ice underneath - as good it gets around here. I was following the weather Tuesday evening, and woke up Wednesday to a beautiful winter wonderland!

Snow day!

But, but, but... what good is a snow day when I wasn't planning on going anywhere anyways? *sigh* Retirement, thus far, has a way of taking all the fun out of an unexpected day off. I've been running a bit short on fun, so spent my morning coffee time looking pensively out the window at the snow coming down, and pondering my day. My usual routine beckoned tiredly, but had little appeal.

Hmmm... If I decided to ditch my todo list for the day - this thought had much greater appeal - how would I then spend my time? I certainly wasn't going to take the Mustang out for a spin! It didn't take long to decide - one of my favorite ways to waste a couple of days is to put together a jigsaw puzzle. Fortunately, like a good puzzler, I had one (or three) stashed away for just such an occasion. (You never know when you're going to need a good jigsaw puzzle...)

My mood immediately lifted. I cleared the table, got out a puzzle and set to work. This! This was a proper way to spend the morning. I sipped tea, worked on the puzzle, and watched out the window as the snow fell. Contentment reigned.

The snow stopped early in the afternoon, so I put on my coat and hiking boots, and went outside to shovel. It does occur to me that, one of these years, I will regret it if I spend 90 minutes clearing the driveway and sidewalks. Fortunately for my lower back, one of these years has not yet arrived, and while my muscles weren't exactly silent after the first thirty minutes, they quit complaining shortly after I finished and went back inside to warm up. It helped that it was light, fluffy snow; if it had been heavy, I might just have regretted pretending I am still young enough to shovel like that.

Once I came back in, I immediately got back to work on the puzzle. As always when I get started on one, the day flew by, and it was bedtime before I knew it. I didn't do too badly - I only just-one-more-piece-d it for an extra thirty minutes. Mostly because I knew (and this is where I show proper appreciation for the gift of time retirement has brought me) that I could pick up where I left off in the morning. With no one but me to care if I got back to my todo lists, or not, I was free to indulge in my addiction, and spent the next day and a half completing my masterwork. 

Now THAT is how one ought to properly observe a good snow day!