Category: Journaling My Days

I journaled for years on paper and I expect to be doing it in some form until my last days. In short summary, I teach mindfulness to parents of kids with challenges; I garden as often and as much as I can in Wisconsin and I am working through the threads of grief six years after my husband’s death. I am very grateful for finding and chasing the joy in this unexpected life.

process

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The warmth of the beginning of the week wanes into a more gradual spring-coming that demands a coat and suggests gloves without insisting.  Julia groans and inwardly I mirror her reaction.  We want spring.  During the weekend and again on Monday, I raked garden beds. I usually make myself rake the lawn in front of each bed and so I tend to drag my feet with the raking.  Not so this year.  I’m doing the beds, all the beds, first and then attend to the grass.  My reward, as if gardening needs any, was the first sighting of a clump of snow drops.  Not quite in bloom yet.  Tomorrow.  And Julia will be happy to see them.  We are aching for this spring; however, it is March and not really yet spring in Wisconsin.

In my neighbor’s side yard the daffodils are emerging.  They are some of the first daffs of the neighborhood.  The side yard is a microclimate — a small place that tends, because of protection or exposure to be slightly out of step with the land around it.  I wish for microclimates but I don’t really have any.  Still, I enjoy the early daffs and few tulips.  My plantings will come up eventually and it is so nice to see color even if it is not mine.

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a blue sponge

imagesI was going to write this very nice piece about mindful activity.  An practice that is only beginning to take root in my daily doings, but there is the kinda’ magical thing that is going on that I need to jot down about a blue sponge.

Back in the long ago, David and I were always on the look out for the perfect dish sponge.  David really loved washing dishes — very zen experience for him.  I didn’t like washing dishes but I do have this thing for good tools.  This was not a passionate search but a recurring, alway-short discussion surfacing whenever it came time to replace the tool we used to wash our dishes.  Over the years we tried many things. We rejected the wash clothes of my youth and the sponge on a hollow plastic stick that David’s Dad advocated.  Yes, the pleasure of washing dishes was, in this case, multigenerational.  We used plain manufactured sponges and the more natural ones.  I’ve never been clear on how sponges are made or their history.  We used scrubbies of different varieties and many sponge plus scrubbies.  Size and shape were always wrong, never comfortable in the hand—we cut some in half searching for perfection but that left us with something too small.  The sponge plus scrubby models were never pliable enough to get into the corners and crevices of cups and pots.  Forcing the issue would result in the untimely separation of the sponge from the scrubby.

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power & control

Sunday snow.  6-9 inches.   Why does it always look like more in my driveway?  Who measures and where do they do it?  I used the new-to-me snow blower twice for this snow.  It works well.  Much too loud.  It is almost three times as large as my old snow blower.  When we got the old one-the last gift that my mother gave me which is somewhat ironic-I chose a blower that I knew I could handle by myself.  David had already gotten his heart condition diagnosis and I was going to be responsible for snow removal in perpetuity.  I could lift the small blower and put it in the trunk of my car when it needed a tune up.  True it couldn’t handle any really deep snow but that was a trade off—going out to blow snow every few hours during heavy snows.

The new-to-me blower takes on more snow and cuts a wider swath than the old one but it is too heavy and too big for me.  Two months ago when I was shopping for something new, the very personable sales guy worked hard convincing me that this was the size that I should buy.  He was probably right in terms of efficiency of operation and cost effectiveness but I can’t move it around easily and after using it twice I have painful shoulders.  Today, I have really painful shoulders.  I guess I will either toughen up or, and much more likely, look for something smaller at the end of the winter.

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ice walking

IMG_3293A friend gifts herself on her birthday with novel experiences like hot air ballooning and power sailing. I am not as ambitious.  In previous years, I wished for perfect days on my birthday — wearing favorite clothes, sleeping late, no housework or homework, good food and culture.  My definition of perfect was pretty broad but these days my definition is still too restrictive to strive for.  And so, time to change.

I’ve started projects on natal days.  Some years I ‘finalize’ resolutions that I just couldn’t get right at the beginning of January.  For many years, I didn’t want to make a big deal about celebrating my birthday but without a partner, if any deal is going to be made, I can’t keep my friends in the dark.  And I am grateful for the rememberings — a few packages, morning coffee with, a phone call or two from, theater in evening and afterwards food so rich my tummy ached, and a big bouquet of Facebook wishes.

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ruts

Blue-Moon-ExpeditionShould it be surprising that as it has warmed up slightly in the last few days—from below zero to almost 20 above—the nano-catastrophes of the last week have found solutions?  Perhaps I am warm brained.

We are settling into the cold.  Flannel duvets on the beds, insulated shades  in colder rooms pulled up only on sunny days over 10 degrees, lined pants and silk long underwear are not merely fashion statements and neither of us runs out of the house without coat, hat and gloves.  Recently, I has a conversation about living in New York City with someone who felt that he would never move to the city because of the high cost of living.  I thought it was about priorities—cultural, education and business opportunities, etc.—but he still couldn’t see it.  Then I said that we choose to live in Wisconsin even though we are predictably miserable due to cold for at least three months, and many years almost six months, every year.  Home, family, job, beautiful and vibrant town, public schools, etc.—a good deal of priorities.

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encores

IMG_2755It looks like Julia’s dancing ballerina dinosaurs will again be offered as part of a Paper Cloud Apparel fund raiser.  This time, they have asked if we have a local cause we would like to have proceeds going to.  I thought of the adaptive skating program that Julia is going to on Sunday afternoons.  Julia and a gaggle of other kids from very little to older teens work with volunteers in small groups and one on one to learn to skate.  The same folks offer an adaptive hockey team for older kids and adults and I know at least one person who is on the team.  Julia struggles a bit but she is willing to go each week and she is getting better little by little.

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asking

imagesThere is a bison in the bathroom.  Julia wants to start decorating for Christmas.  And I am in deep wonderment about why over a thousand people checked out my blog the other day.

Deep wonderment first.  I usually get between a dozen and fifty folks popping into this space whenever I publish a piece.  I do wonder what makes anyone who is not a friend read and possibly return but I am grateful, a bit intimidated and very happy about it.  Of course, many times I am pretty sure that I know the two people in Australia, the one in Bolivia and the one in Canada who check in.  I get too many US hits to identify readers by the numbers but if wordpress broke the US stats down by states, I’m sure I’d recognize most readers.  At the beginning of the month, I considered disconnecting news of my blogging on Facebook, because I planned to be blogging a lot during November and I am never comfortable pushing my ideas on others.  But I remind myself that making available and pushing are two different things.

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dreams

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“Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.”

― Rainer Maria Rilke

Came across these Rilke words this morning as I looked for something else.  Rilke always speaks to me, from wedding vows (“. . . a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude . . .”) to growing a spiritual life ( “. . . learn to love the questions . . .“).  I come back to, stumble across, have quoted back to me words that he wrote that always draw me deeper.

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cleaning

Written 13 November 2014 and once again too fell asleep before getting it here.  A pattern emerges.

Didn’t write yesterday because I was  . . . um. . . um . . .cleaning.  I don’t at all mean that I am ever a slave to my house but there are a few weeks in the spring and the fall when the garden takes precedence.  The garden might always take precedence if I lived somewhere where I could garden year round, but Wisconsin demands an obvious respite from the garden in the winter and somewhat of a respite when the bugs of high summer ignore clothing and chemicals to feast on dedicated weed movers.

During those weeks when I am “taking out the garden” and then “putting the garden to bed,” I passionately want to be doing those earth based chores.  There is little that is more satisfying than emptying the compost bins and covering a bed with a few inches of that gold.  Or clearing away what is left over from the late fall and seeing the smallest shoots appearing.

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slack

The slack.  Like in “taking up the . . . “  That used to mean, leaving my car with almost no gas because I was too tied to stop for a fill up and finding a full tank the next morning.  Or having someone to wash dishes when I cooked, or taking a turn cooking.  Or running the vacuum while I straightened up before guests arrived.  Or picking up milk or the kid after school or the conversation that I let dangle.  Or getting the coffee/tea started after the main course.  The slack is what a partner does without really thinking.  Not part of the grand division of labor or assigned chores or anything that you talk about.

God, I miss it.

I was thinking about the slack after I wrote that Julia changed the toilet paper roll yesterday.  A tiny piece of slack, true, but one thing, just one thing that I did not have to do.  But that one little thing brought to mind how I would like to have a roommate, a partner in crime, a partner.  Period.  I was not built to live alone.

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