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.

friday status

Hard week for me and for Julia, but our challenges pale in comparison to what is being inflicted upon young people who our universities invited here to study and practice being Americans.  Since law school, I have put a good deal of faith in our legal system, checks and balances, respect for the law, the ethics of judges. I don’t always agree, in fact, the republican packed Supreme Court disappoints me regularly; but I’ve believed in the process. That belief that is shattered daily. There is no way to keep up with the barage of awful news, but miss one day and life as I’ve always known it may turn completely upside down. No hyperbole at all.

This was not what I began to write but it is very hard not to follow rabbits down deep holes.

Today, I need to reset from the overwhelm of the week.  I am privileged to be able to sit back and take stock and right myself. I am aware of that.  

Morning painting after Julia was picked up, some writing, a quick vacuum of floors that have gotten very dirty in some unknown way, folding four, or is it five, loads of clothes (temporarily giving up on getting Julia to notice that an over full laundry basket is a good sign to wash clothes). I have reading for next week’s classes and writing that needs to be finished, but the sun is out, the gardens need cleaning and the sadnesses need airing before the day is finished. 

What was personally challenging and hard for us, for me should follow soon.

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micro-climates

“A microclimate is a local set of atmospheric conditions that differ from those in the surrounding areas, often slightly but sometimes substantially.” ~some website

I’ve never noticed that I had one in any garden I’ve made.  My neighbor, Maria, had one. Along the side of her house that faced my side door in Madison, daffodils bloomed at least a week before the rest of the neighborhood or my front or back gardens.  The thing about her microclimate was that she did nothing to it.  I mean, the bulbs were planted and the bed cleaned and tended, but no special watering or fertilizing went on. Those daffodils just returned year after year a week or so earlier than any others.  And I was able to step outside of my side door in the early spring and be greeted by their absolute glorious yellow-ness.

And I’d like to report that I may have my own microclimate right by the stairs off my back porch.  I noticed it last week. This is my third spring in this house–during the first one, I was still unpacking, last year, it was the front garden bed that I paid most attention to, this spring, I have the eyes for smaller things.

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just a few thoughts and words

Once again, to begin again, to begin again and to wonder if it is possible to begin again, and to wonder what is possible in the long run other than the daily round.

I feel like I have been very far away.  Every so often during the last weeks, I’ve had the slight impulse to write something, a slight burst of energy. But all energy has been spent doing work for my UU church’s annual pledge drive (“APD”).  I am on the pledge drive team, such an unlikely position for me to take up. It is far out of my comfort level and the changes that have been made to the drive this year have pulled the work only further beyond my ken. However, I’ve had the chance to work on a few parties and thank goodness, parties are in my bailiwick. Two parties in two nights last weekend, and I admit I was quite flattened by exhaustion. The APD has one more big blow out of a party this weekend, and then the work shifts in nature.  There is at least another month to it but no more entertaining.  

And so, I start this way, writing about the pledge drive and the parties because it is where I can start.  At the moment, I am far from she who writes every day and sometimes comes up with something thoughtful.  I haven’t looked at the memoir in months and have only been working on a few thousand words of the novel at a month. I have not been keeping written tabs on daily life or Julia’s doings.  

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february

It has been a whole month. So much has been left undone and much of that has fallen aside. Right now, there are no projects needing completion and no tasks that I’ve scheduled. So many naps, staring at ceilings and walls, much too much junky tv, a bit of reading, some writing, and last week the beginning of walking outside.  Yesterday, I logged a bit more than 5,000 steps.  Not that impressive, I know, but if you saw my numbers for the last month, it looks like I climbed mountains yesterday.  

I went to chuch services last week and will again yesterday. I still have very little voice—a month of coughing can wreak havoc on the vocal cords—so no choir yet.  Maybe this week.  I miss choir practice. 

I’m still not feeling up to driving but again, perhaps this week. It has been a focus issue and then also exhaustion. As I began to feel more like myself last week, writing was not easy.  Not the physical act but the focus needed.  I have it for short amounts of time, but not for what I needed to produce anything. However, what I wanted to do almost as soon as I was able to sit up for long periods of time was to indulge in some mindless beauty and do something with my hands.  

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new year’s day

I lay on my red couch in the sun.  I imagine that the sun, as well as the gallon of water and coconut juice, not to mention my kale salad lunch is healing me. 

It is another quiet day right that began right after Julia left for her program and Ed for his daily round. A few texts, a Facebook message, a phone call—that’s all that break the quiet. I am reading Seamus Deane’s Reading in the Dark, for a new HILR class that begins at the beginning of next month. The book—memoir or fiction—is beautiful.  I  read slowly to savor the metaphors and adjectives. The sentences, every single one, is rich dessert. Or perhaps it is the protien rich mind meal that I need to pick up where I have left off of on the callendar’s new year’s day.

Today is my new year’s day and a strange one it is at that.  Never before have I needed so much to recover and heal, never before have I so much needed to nap—well, that is probably not true but this nap need has probably laid dormant for three score and ten years.  

I have great gratitude today for today and yesterday and tomorrow and for those who people my life when it is very small and when it grow again bigger.  

It is all very good.

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off oxygen

This morning I woke up ready to take off the oxygen. Just ready.

Healing was looking good on Sunday. The nurses and techs were encouraging me to move about the house, to do a few things, nothing extravagent but easy chores.  Christmas still needed to be put away. Ed and Julia had brought up my 4 christmas boxes and I had taken down a little bit a few days before.  I needed to straighten the boxes, put away garland and some of the lights, and then tackle the tree.

And I felt ready.

These sick days have found a rhythm of nurse and PT visits and meals and phone calls and email.  After lunch and a nap, I was ready to tackle christmas. I was puttering when a pain crept up in my chest. It bloomed on the right side of my chest and radiated into my jaw. It was not intense but present and different from anything I had felt before.  I debated whether to call the nursing line, remembering vividly the mistakes of not calling that David made.

And I called.

I relayed my information but the nurse was not too concerned.  She said she would push up my afternoon visit but to otherwise just continue as I was.  Then, 20 minutes or so (my time awareness of the next few hours fractured. It was 20 minutes, it was 2 hours.  I wasn’t 2 hours but it might have been much longer than 30 minutes). Then, the pain happened again. More intense this time, longer, and did not immediately fade.  It retreated very gradually, especially in my jaw.

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another notice to all who read here

Thank you for reading what I put on these pages. It is always surprising, shocking and amazing that I have a reading community that goes beyond my immediate friends. Your continues presence continues to inspire me to move beyond my perceived limitations. Thank you for your words of encouragement and advice, and for just showing up.

And to my immediate friends, I am profoundly grateful for your interest, your love and your care. I write because I have to write, but I publish here because I have a need to share. In the analogue workings of my mind, I have a vision of a bunch of us sitting on the couches at the Lakeside Coffee Shop in Madison just catching up.

Many of you read my posts via Facebook. In the coming days and months, I am contemplating moving away from Facebook for a short time or forever. I would ask those of you with whom Facebook is our connection to consider subscribing or following ChasingJoy on this page. If the process to do so is not clear, I will try to clarify it in the coming days.

Thanks and love you all!

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healing

Eleven days into the new year and I have been sick each and every day.  What a way to begin something new no matter how artificial the construct of time and new years are. 

So, first off, I am home and have been since late Tuesday, arriving by ambulance because I was attached to oxygen. I am participating in a Home Hospital program. I am still technically a patient of Newton Wellsley Hospital—my wrist band and IV port prove that—but I am getting my care and monitoring at home. I needed to meet some health criteria—after lots of tests to rule out other causes for my condition, I was found to be relatively stable and treatable —as well as home condiitons like a supportive carer.  I wear a very sensitive arm band which is constantly monitored, two nursing visits each day, PT and PA visits and daily deliveries of meds. It felt like too much activity the first day to keep track of everything. Meds are delivered by the nurses when they visit but I must coordinate for myself the early morning and late night meds including five times using the nebulizer during the day.  It felt like too much to take in and actually do on Wednesday and I was quite grumpy about it all.  It didn’t help that my cough was still wicked then and answering either in person or on the phone was tortuous for everyone. 

For me; however, this is a great program. I am home.  Julia, who had a hard time when I was in the hospital, is doing much better with me home. Other than the visits and care that I am getting, there is nothing more that a hospital stay could offer me.  And I have my best carer, Ed, seeing to what I need.  I feel a bit guilty for all the cooking and shopping and cleaning up and caring for Julia and just making me as comfortable as possible that he has done.  But it is lovely having his support.  He is much more than taking-up-the-slack these days. 

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RSV

Yesterday, after hours in an emergency room bay, I was put in a holding area, hooked up to monitors and oxygen, and told I might be moved to a room later on in the evening.  It had been a long day and I was hungry, head-achy tired and still coughing but the day of oxygen cleared some of my brain and I felt a shift to giving into this process of being sick. 

My not-feeling-so-well of new year’s eve blossomed into just plain sick the next day. The seasonal cough that humidifiers and inhalers and gallons of water could not conquer shifted into something else — a dry hacking that would not stop.  The cough and chills and body aches and an exhaustion that drained every ounce of will power out of me.  

The beginning of January is probably a good time to be sick.  Julia’s activities, as well as mine, are on hold for the holidays. We had gotten through almost all of the seasonal visiting and partying. I was looking forward to a few days of lying low; however, not quite as low as I was laid. 

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consequences

New Year’s Eve has always been a veguely uncomfortable holiday for me. I’ve never been to Times Square to watch the ball fall, I don’t favor loud parties, rarely have I gone out for diner and dancing. We never built any traditions for the evening which didn’t bother me at all until I was alone.

I think I was happiest when I was working in restaurants or when David and I (and one or the other of the girls) went to movies and maybe somewhat of a quick dinner out. The turning of the century was a good NYE—a bunch of friends gathered at David’s father’s house in Jersey. We were living in Indy then and we still had NYC friends, some with small children. We cooked a nice dinner—I don’t remember what. Wine and maybe champagne. We sat in the kind of dining room that I knew growing up and ate on Dad’s good china, lifting his best wine glasses. One friend didn’t accompany his family because he was a computer guy and needed to guard his hard and soft ware if the worst case of Y2K predictions came to pass. Another friend announced that she was adopting a baby from Vietnam—the baby who now has one year old twins of her own. 

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