The Loss of Christmas Socks

 

I was looking in my dresser drawer today for a pair of socks with little grips on the bottom.  Hot, pink, ankle socks. My intention was to give to a friend who my husband, the man reported was slipping and sliding in her pretty, silver toned socks. She shares lots in her conversations with us.  I figured she could wear the pink anklet socks over her silver pair when she needed to pad off somewhere without her shoes.  I located one sock.  In my reaching for the pink socks, I re-discovered my Christmas socks.  I had forgotten all about them.  Really, they had gone out of the dusty realm of my brain.

I guess it is hard to be in the Christmas spirit when you worry each day whether you will be exposed at work to someone with Covid.  Plus, I am alone in an office by myself.  What is the point?  No one to ooh and aw over my socks though mainly I wear them for my benefit.  I like to look at them without my shoes on. About that, I, now have plantar fasciitis.  I am walking about my house in sturdy shoes which does leave much time for sock gazing. 

What else have I lost?  A good general piece of mind.  Gone.  Somedays, I find it though it is hiding much better than it used to.  I have moments of clarity.  Thank goodness for those moments.  Generally, when I am drinking a good cup of tea or listening to classical music as I read or the quiet of the house with birds trilling, chatting outside to break the silence.  There are birds at work on the rooftop.  I hear them rustling about, talking.  It is enough to bring smiles to my face, letting me think, oh, you lovelies. There is my clarity of spirit.  All is well.

I have gained a lot this morning.  It is a day off!  I have enjoyed several different cups of tea. I went on an errand to bank taking only twenty minutes versus the hour it took the last time I went.  They encourage on line banking but if you want real money, you still need to go to the bank.  Teller or ATM, it is a long, long line.  I was lucky and was able to have another cup of tea before my massage appointment.  Just letting the tea percolate through my body.  Another score, my massage is now fifteen minutes later.  My bladder, I am sure will be thankful.

Guess what?  I am writing.  I went to bed at six-thirty pm last night.  I am not working.  I was inspired.  I just might gain lots of moments of clarity today.  Hey, it is a good day.

Thinking about it

 

Thinking about it

 

Often when we are talking to someone, they will reply, “I am thinking about it.”  What exactly is thinking about it? And what is it?  According to MacMillan Dictionary, the phase is “used for adding something that you have just remembered about a subject that you are talking about.”

When I was a child, it meant what I want was probably not going to happen, or thinking about it by my parent was going to take the length of time a small child would take to generally forget about the immediate want. When I am on vacation, I like to visit several little shops, tell them, I am thinking about it and might be back later. The man, my husband’s strategy has always been to kiss me soundly so I forget I wanted to go into a particular shop or boutique while on vacation.  His method is a very good and sound one. It means his patience for standing around has reached its limit. Our child on the other hand had had a very physical response to his mother’s shopping, once he stood in front of a doorway to a boutique, arms out stretched and told me in his small voice, “There is nothing in here for you.”  It worked.  I laughed and we went to a playground. Now he is grown up and has a wife, I wonder . . .

There was no afterthought, when I said “I am thinking about it.”  What does the thinking about it mean now to me?  Choices.  I do the thinking in a different way.  I ask more questions.  Do I think about how the universe is running along just fine without me?  Does it need my input?  In a strange way, the world does need my input, my thoughts, emotions are constantly flying into the energy of the world.  It is invisible, subtle, yet powerful all the same. One of my favorite authors says this.

Anything you do for yourself, you do for the world. Don’t think that you and the world are two separate things. When you breathe in mindfully and gently, when you feel the wonder of being alive, remember that you’re also doing this for the world. Practicing with that kind of insight, you will succeed in helping the world. You don’t even have to wait until tomorrow. You can do it right now, today.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

I don’t need to say I am thinking about it.  I just need to remember I can do it.  You may have noticed, I said I can do it.  There is no should or need here. I can do it. Simply, because I can.

 

 

 

It is What it is

 

It is What it is

While driving back from a doctor’s visit, I starting thinking I need to start blogging somehow.  A subject is always hard at times to come up with.  I mused over the visit in which my doctor viewed parts of my body for irregular moles and such.  The nurse had asked if I needed a gown and I had told, “No, it wasn't necessary as my husband was there and I was fine.”  A waste of paper as far as I was concerned.  I stripped when necessary, removing my t-shirt, bra, lifting and separating my breasts for an under the breasts check.  I am sixty-six and it is my doctor so who cares.  I was fine, a good check up with nothing to worried about thankfully for this sun burnt babe of the late 50’s, all of the 60’s and some of the 70’s before I stopped cold turkey, wore sunscreen and hats and long-sleeved shirts.  I had seen those who had worship the sun turned to leather in their late 40’s and no way I going the road of tanned leather ready for shoe making.

I was enjoying the trip home with the sun on my face in the comfort of my car while the man drove, gazing at the ocean sparkling in the sunshine, drinking in the beauty of the trees lining the road, just happy to be out of my little office at work, out of our house, out of our neighborhood and see a small part of the world again.  I thought about the doctor visit, the pounds I have piled on and wondered if I was truly worried about the added weight or content with everything I was eating.  I have been hungry. One of the nurses at work tells me when we are stressed, the body craves carbs.  I asked myself are you stressed?  No, not like the nurses working at our office, faces lined with despair, hating their jobs, not wanting to come to work as they faced some of the realities of Covid 19.   

I tell myself daily, I am not feeling the strain of everything happening around my little bubble, or am I?   I don’t want to go to work.  I would like to be home cooking, baking, stress? It seems to be centered around food.  Nope, I have always like to be home cooking and baking.  Eating, I have always loved to eat but unfortunately as I have gotten older, metabolism has changed, slowed down and has practically disappeared. I want to be home.  To spend more than five minutes meditating, to read without tired eyes from staring at tiny print on the computer as I add more tiny print and numbers to the screen, double checking everything.  I want to be home.  To write dribbles and dabbles, to piece, to string together words in tales of somewhere, of some time, and hopefully have characters challenge their selves with external and internal battles.  I want to be home.  To play with light, dark, color mingling, blending into forms on a paper tablet or a primed canvas delighting my eyes and my soul.  I want to be home.

And yet, I go, I go out the door like other poor lost souls, to another day’s comings and ends. I am lingering in what light I can find.  I am glowing with beauty of a world unseen.  I see the anger, the hate, with no remorse.  I grow tired with the wrapping of my heart, my arms around so many.  It is what it is.

I eat more than I use to.  I am trying more interesting pastries.  I have never been a pastry girl but I am working my way into it. Oh, my favorite things to eat still is fruit and the summer is supplying such lovely choices.  I use to walk miles but now my feet grow tender after walking.  Solution, stop eating so much and you won’t have to walk so much.  I wonder how the miracle of cutting back is going to happen.   Still it is what it is and I am still working on the problem.

 

 

Workng on Something

Working on Something

Every time, I even thinking about writing something, I have been stopping myself except for a fictional story in which one of my friends has become a character of sorts.  I am not sure at times what she is up to but she is quite secure in whatever direction she might be going in.

Here is an excerpt:

A rather large basket was being filled with fresh baked cookies, pies, and scones. The little witch who was not a witch asked her cat, “Can you think of anything else?”

“Firestarter?” questioned her cat.  “Don’t be impertinent,” the woman said. “Not on a first meeting.”

Because of the brakes going on in my brain, I have put several small essays in this blog.  Random thoughts but they were what I was thinking at the time.  As for our life style for the man and I are doing pretty much the same things we were doing before Covid 19.  Staying home, doing laundry, cooking, eating, reading, walking, and working on writing when inspired or not inspired.

Yesterday, I felt the magic returning.  We were listening to Loreena McKinnett when the feeling returned to me.  I am feeling it now as I am playing Mummers Dance.  I could attempt to explain my magic, the joy, the beauty of realizing power.  You may believe or maybe not.  The magic may be just the beauty of the music vibrating in my body.  I know it to be more.  All is as it is intended.

Perhaps today, you will find yours.

What you’ve Got

There is a song about “You don’t know what you’ve got until its gone.  I was realizing this more and more as I worked on deleting pictures from my cell phone.  I had gotten a message from my cell phone about your space is dangerously low and could affect your applications.  I have a bit of time on my hands like so many of us do in this unsettled time of Covid 19.  I worked on deleting conversations, pictures, and videos to free up more space.

My main thought was the same one during the process of deletion.  Well, I don’t think that will be happening for a long time.  Road trips back from the valley with great pictures of clouds building up for storm, pictures of breakfasts, lunches, cookies I had bought for friends.  The moments of life, the past of truly wonderful times of being with the man, my husband doing things outside of our home, eating new things, window shopping without really buying. Telling someone you don’t know excuse me as you pass them in the narrow parts of a boutique or small shop. The man making cookies for Christmas with frosting everywhere, pictures of the Challah being braided, finally baked and cooling. 

Why, do I need to delete my life?  

Everything has its time

Each morning, I wake up and try to think, is this the day?  The time of decision of when I say I am staying home, retiring to play.  Particularly now, in this time of uncertainty I am wavering a lot.  Insurance is a good thing.  I will be sixty-six in a month from today.  Do I get a prize?

I would like the feeling of being in a bad story to go away. This morning for the first time, I faced the facts of a world turned upside down.  I have always looked forward to my latest birthday.

This year, my husband, the man is going to make a banana cream pie.  Of course, it will depend on whether or not we can go shopping, with Covid 19 everywhere.  We are becoming more and more careful each day. I had us get lots of things nearly 2 weeks ago with the intent of not shopping for a long time. But there is always something not on the list.

There are advantages.  I don’t have to pluck my eyebrows, or worry about my chin hairs.  If you are social distancing, the recommended 6 ft no one of your age bracket is going to notice.  In fact, I imagine farts are prevalent. Unless, a big cracker is let go, no one will notice.

Still, after the run on toilet paper, the charge to get graham crackers may be the next big thing.  Smores?  Oh, that is right, no outside events.  Can they be done in the oven?  I just want some for my banana cream pie.  It is a favorite.  After the birth of my son, my only wish was a banana cream pie when I got home from the hospital.  It was there.

Clothing in its place

Clothes, I have too many.  It has really hit home just this last week or so.  I have changed my wardrobe to just a few pieces.  Daily, clean socks and underwear.  Weekly, one pair of black pants with pockets to hold my photo ID, a credit card, keys for the car and for the post office box.  Two cotton shirts and a fleeced dark blue jacket courtesy of where I work. I stuff my cell phone, computer reading glasses, and badge for work in the pockets of the jacket. I added a bottle of lotion to help my parched, washed hands.  I felt naked.  The weight on my shoulder is gone. My purse sleeps at home.  I came to the realization it is extremely hard to sanitize leather.

I have a coat for work, gloves for work, a mask for work.  When I come home, I strip, black pants, long sleeved fleeced jacket are placed on bed we aren’t using for the night, I wash my hands and put on my home clothes.  I can’t imagine what others have to do.

 

I saw a shirt in a window at a small boutique. I private messaged the little shop on their Facebook page.  She checked the size on a Monday, called me and I bought a shirt on the phone.  She delivered.  It is in the trunk of my car.  In a week or two, the bag will be bought into my house.  I will take it out of the bag. Hang it up in the closet where it will stay for another two weeks in quarantine. It is pink.  It will be warm. It is beautiful. I haven’t seen it except in a window.

Not by the Hair of my Chinny-Chin-Chin

Not by the Hair of my Chinny-Chin-Chin

Since I have started to wear a mask daily at work, I am letting my chin hairs grow.  I am a woman in her sixties so it is quite natural to find a sprouting offender where nothing was the day before. Depending on the speed they grow will determine if I need a curling iron or just a couple of bobby pins like the ones my mother used to curl her hair

.

Or maybe a braid like I have seen on a few men with long beards.  Somehow, I doubt I will ever get enough chin hairs to warrant a braid.  Though my skills at braiding are quite adept.  But then again if I let my chin hairs grow will my mask fit?

The man, my husband has shaved off his beard so his mask will fit better. I had been having him wash his face each night after coming home from work despite the fact he was wearing a mask in and out of his office.  Sigh, a fresh beard that I can’t snuggle next to.

I washed two of our masks last night.  I might have been a bit over cautious.  I boiled water in a saucepan, let it cool a bit and added soap.  I placed each mask in carefully at the end of tongs and whisked the masks about in the steaming water.  I let them sit in the hot water before the man rinsed them for me. We placed them on a towel to dry.  Good fabric—no shrinkage, no bleeding of colors.  My friends who made the masks really know their stuff.

One of my friends made some more masks with the hopes that hair ties would be a good substitute for elastic, she had run out. I was going to send some masks to our son.  I am glad I tried one on.  Ouch, unfortunately, the hair tie is too thin and cuts into the back of my ear.

I search my closet and found some more elastic, there is enough for half of the masks she made me.  The rest of the masks will have to do with the elastic straps from some of my bras.  Bright pink and a nice chocolate brown.  I could not part with my purple bra so the straps stayed.  We will see what my creative friend can do.

I toyed with the idea of fixing my new straps on the mask myself but remembering the conversation I had with my friend who declared she was having problems figuring out what to do, I decided to give her the joy of ripping out seams and attaching the elastic.  She is retired and really stuck at home.

Since the writing of the above paragraph about hair ties, I have received a gift of fabulous crocheted extenders.  You loop the hair ties or elastic over a button so you have nothing over your ears, I am in love. The bra straps are going back on the bras.

    

(I lasted a week on growing my chin hairs.  I plucked the six quarter-inch little devils this afternoon as my husband was not very supportive of the idea of letting them grow.  Oh, he didn’t care about them growing but it wasn’t a project he had interest in.)

Each day brings a new reality.  A new moment of wow, is this really happening?  But I am grateful. It is the only thing I can be.  “Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.” ― Thich Nhat Hanh

Walking Along

Walking Along

Easter Sunday, I went for a walk this bright, sunny morning here in the Northwest along the Oregon coast. 

Birds chirping—a murder of crows off in the distance raucously calling to each other. I drove or steered my man and I as we walked down one street to the next.  We walked to our little church on this Easter Sunday where the parking lot was empty in the midst of Covid 19.  We walked on.

The man and I walked by the elementary school where a reader sign proclaimed in bright letters, school closed for the rest of the year.

We walked on the back road behind the school where a lonely trillium plant blossomed with its singular white flower.  On the mossy bank where water steeped slowly, little yellow flowers close to the ground bloomed.  Yet, we walked on. 

To where the pavement ended, we walked.

The gravel left puffs of dust at our feet. In the quiet, the crunching of stones loud beneath our shoes.

We continued arm in arm—happy for the touch, the comfort of  one another in the cold morning where our breaths curled and gather in wisps until we reached our stopping point. To listen to silence, silence shattered by calls of birds while small insects hovered and flitted here and there.

Across the ravine, a forest thrives and for the moment so do we.

This is the first of my small essays

Our Conversation

While crawling out of the tub this morning, my toes and feet started a small but serious conversation with the scale in the bathroom. It went sort of like this.

“You really should consider it.” The scale voiced encouragingly.

“The pants fit just fine, thank you.” A rather sarcastic comment from the thighs and butt.

“Wait,” the toes speaking sharply, “Conversation is with me.”

“Ah,” a chirp from the feet, “I was included in this. After all, we will be standing there.”

A comment from high above, the head and brain, “Well, we will be the ones getting us there.”

“Says who,” just another complaint from the thighs with butt being silent.

In exasperation, somehow it happened. I was on the scale.

“Now,” said the scale somewhat smugly, ”that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

With everything going on in the world, do I need to worry about a few pounds added to my already gorgeous body?  Hell, yes.  I am thinking of my pants, and other clothes made wherever, plus my growing paranoia about touching things in the stores. Things just might be hard to find.  Now might be the time to really consider fitting into the other pants hanging in my closet for the last 10 or more years.

It really is a zipper problem. Zippers need to be able to expand on their own to accommodate the bulging tummy. I struggle after every washing of my black jeans which seem to give it up after a couple of hours of wearing, regrouping about my middle to a comfortable state.

I could be like one of my nurses who stated “It has come to this. I am wearing my sweats.”  But I don’t own sweats.  Hmm, maybe part of the problem of the bulging tummy?

Thankfully, all of my nurses and I work in a locked door clinic.

We are lucky.  I am lucky.  I didn’t realize the extent of how the open door bothered me until one of the supervisors brought up a sign stating the doors would remain locked until further notice.  I cried. Together we hung up the sign.

I am still going to work.  I am thankful about that as well. I just wish my next size pants weren’t several pounds away.