Aches and Pains and Papas and Petals

After thinking for awhile that I have arthritis, medical appointments the past few months have confirmed as much--osteoarthritis and psoriatic arthritis--and I'm now scheduled to meet with a rheumatologist this winter.  "You should consider talking with someone," one of the doctors told me, "because chronic pain is hard."  I should take her advice--Trained Counselor, heal thyself!--but I'm not there yet.  In a dream earlier this week, my grandfather who died in 2017 smiled at me and said, "I want to see you happy again."  There was no disappointment or judgement in his tone.  I could feel his own seemingly ever-present lightheartedness same as always, but I understood the implied urging toward action in his words.  This was only the second time I've dreamed of him since he died, and this was the first time he's spoken.  I want to see you happy again.  Well, then!  My goodness.   I cashed in a little vacation time this week and next to sort myself out a bit and took pen to paper the other day to come up with some Operation See Val Happy Again ideas.  Treating myself to flowers every week was one.  I've had stretches before of doing it but never consistently for very long, and I'm determined now to indulge myself weekly.  The creamy white Hydrangeas caught my eye late last night and seemed a sweet start to this small part of my plan.  I have other ideas, but this voluptuous bouquet was enough for yesterday. 

I'd Be Running Up That Road, Be Running Up That Hill. . . .

While napping yesterday afternoon, I dreamed that while talking with Mom in her kitchen, I mentioned missing being able to write letters to Grammy and how I always ache when I see pink things in the stores that look like something she'd love.  "You can write to her or send her anything you want," Mom responded, clearly puzzled.  "She loves hearing from you." It didn't feel at all like a dream, our interaction and the setting were so realistic.  I goggled at her a few moments before telling her I didn't understand.  What was wrong with Mom neurologically now, I wondered, just as I would in real life, that she didn't remember that her own mother has died?  She looked back at me with what was probably an expression identical to mine until I finally explained, "Mom--Grammy died.  Or. . .I thought she died. . . ?"  She looked both pained to hear me say that and relieved to understand finally why I had been so baffled.  I spelled out for her that I had thought--wrongly, it was turning out--that Grammy had died last January, we had all gone to her service in New York, and I had even spoken at it.  I told her I could share more details but that I didn't want to hurt her.  She said, sounding just how she would in real life, that it hurt her more to find out that I had thought Grammy had been gone going on two years and that I hadn't been in touch with her in all that time.  None of it even happened, I realized, a thrill of horror and gratitude sweeping over me:  Grammy is still alive!  Sommer's cousin isn't on a ventilator post-Covid!  Stuffed is still here with us!  Mikes' mom didn't have a stroke!  It was all a dream!  All the other losses of 2020 and 2021 were just bad dreams!  I started to cry from the incredible relief of it, and I woke up then for real, and really in tears.  Mom called a couple hours later to tell me that one of my cousins has a brain tumor.  January 2020-onward:  And so it goes. 

I pray and rest and appreciate beauty and keep in touch and listen to music and walk and work and cook good food and try to write and try to read, but life has felt more rough-patch-ish than not for so very long now--and for so many of us.  I told Mike the other day that although I don't feel like I can focus enough to write very well the past couple years and can't concentrate long enough to read as voraciously as I did before either, I need to keep trying.  It will be creativity that saves me this time, just as it has so many times before.  Bear with me, then, as I try to find the words to tell the stories.  It's been a long hard slog that has almost muted me, but I will keep trying.  

I will keep trying. 

Easter 2021

It's been a lovely day here, but I have been floundering in an especially anxious sort of malaise the past few days that has marred my holiday.  Ideally, I could have either properly sorted out some of the things I've been struggling with or at least turned off the troublesome part of my brain for the weekend, but. . .no.  It was a gorgeous sunny day here, though, warm and with a perfect breeze, and both the dinner and table came together pretty much as I'd envisioned, which is always satisfying. 

Tomorrow is another chance to get it right, though, as they say, and if spring and Easter offer nothing else, it is hope for brighter days ahead.  

I am still feeling cranky enough, though, to point out that Blogger has already eaten this post once and that despite my choosing a specific font and size for that font each time I've posted since Blogger's change last summer, I have had to wrestle with each post's html and font/size/spacing options every time I've written which is taking a great bit of the fun out of sharing here.  It took me so long after Stuffed died last June before I even really felt like writing again, and then when I finally returned to it--and every time I have returned to it--it's been a complete hassle and aggravation.  Losing a longer version of this post a few minutes ago hasn't helped my mood any, I will say.  Bah!  Carrot cake and buttercream await, and they can go into the Positives column, and I'm hoping to join them there soon.  

Happy Easter to you all.  ♥

43 Begins

'Surreal days, all of them anymore, but a new year begins and I face it determined to focus on kindness and goodness and gratitude and beauty as always.  My seemingly-adult-life-long fight against depression rages on daily (hourly!) these days, of course, but I can lose a few of those battles and still win the war.  I have little concentration for writing or reading the past couple months, but I  journal a bit, at least, and I can get through about a chapter of a book before finding myself reading more news stories again instead.   I usually write a dozen pages a week and am such a fast reader, but not lately.  (What's turning into this spring's--and at this rate, maybe this summer's--books, then:  Unbroken: A WWII Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand and The Splendid and the Vile:  A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz by Erik Larson.)  The lost time between loved ones is what makes me saddest.  I know you know.  I have been writing and rewriting this paragraph off and on for three hours.  Ay yi yi.  'Alternate blog post title tonight:  The Pandemic:  I Know You Know. 

As in my last post, almost every picture I take anymore is taken on my walk to work or my walk home from work--Essential Workers, unite!--as the only other place I've been since March is the grocery store weekly and the post office once.  From what little I see of it on my walks to/from, though, this has been a beautiful spring.  I've missed seeing and smelling Lilacs this year, since there are none along my to/from work-route and I've been skipping longer walks until it feels safer to be outside, but all the other spring blooms have been lovely, and I've appreciated spring--both the fact of it and the specifics of it--more this year than any other.  Birdsong, for example, is especially lovely and welcome in the wee hours when I'm either still struggling to fall asleep at all or awake too early after another night of nightmares.  I have somehow always loved birdsong but never truly appreciated it until this spring--so now, I suppose, I can say I'm truly loving it for the first time.  It is one of the good things I will likely most vividly remember about this anxiety-filled time, the tender sounds of the birds breaking into the darkness.  There have been more than a few days this year I've gone to work on no sleep or two-or-three hours of sleep.  On my days off lately, I sometimes relax enough to fall sleep only after the sun's come up for the day.  Maybe I'd never truly loved mornings until now either.  Maybe even I, then, ever-determined to live looking for the pretty in the rough patches, will now learn right-down-to-the-bones-and-beyond levels of gratitude. 

Take care of yourselves and of each other, Friends.  If we can't be kind to ourselves and to each other during a PANDEMIC, though, really. . . Heaven help us.  And I do think most people are rising to meet the moment.  ♥  I leave you now with not only a flower petal heart,

but also--and this year would be the year I find one--a heart in a roll of toilet paper.  :)

Twenty Minutes Straight

The woes of the world have been getting me down this week, and I skipped Sunday's run and then Tuesday's too.  And after such a beautiful run last time too!  Sigh.  I forced myself into my pink shoes and out the door this morning, determined not to let myself slip-and-slide deeper into Ye Olde Depression, figuring I'd run the first five minutes of Week 5's podcast then do a walking break, repeat-til-done.  At five minutes, though, I felt good enough to go for eight, and at eight, I knew I could run ten--and was amazed at what an experience I'd had to push myself to have at all was turning into--and soon enough, my Garmin-watch read "[Time-Run:  14 minutes and however-many seconds]," and I decided I was way too close to twenty-minutes-straight at that point to stop.  ("Now, I figured since I'd run this far," explained Forrest Gump, "maybe I'd just run across the great state of Alabama. . . .")  :)  Maybe everything on my mind just distracted me enough mentally to make it easier to do physically, but I completed the twenty minutes and felt okay at the end of it.  Last month at this time, I hadn't even (re-)started running yet!  It's fascinating to me what the body adapts to and learns.  Onward and upward, then.  Twenty minutes straight! Now we're getting somewhere. 

You must begin to think of yourself as becoming the person you want to be. ~ David Viscott

The past two weeks have been wearying, and aside from a Saturday when a combined headache, kink in my neck, and day without sleep found me waving the white flag from my bed, I have plodded on and even have some good things to show for it.  The bathroom has been put back together post-painting, with new shower curtain and curtains too.  The bedroom wall-painting is almost done.  The headboard project is at least begun, with stars, string lights, and waiting-for-payday pillow shams next on its to-do list.  The bedroom curtains are up but lacking their ruffle-trim, tie-backs, and the hankie-patchwork-type sheers I'm planning to hang underneath them.  The 1980s childhood memoir-writing continues. The healthy eating continues.  It feels, though, like I've just been hanging on and getting through this fall so far.  Do you remember the brilliant exchange between the frustrated sheriff and his secretary in Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men?  It keeps coming to mind this month.  "What is it that (Justice) Torbert says?"  he asks her.  "About truth and justice."  She distractedly answers, "We dedicate ourselves anew daily.    Somethin like that."  The sheriff responds, "I think I'm goin to commence to dedicatin myself twice daily.  It may come to three fore it's over."  Hear, hear.  I brought in Halloween cookies for my coworkers this week, and the cashier yesterday morning told me "I love your smile" while bagging my groceries, and I'm choosing to accept both gestures as signs that hope is not lost.  :)  Here's to the plodding-on.  

Spring in My Parents' Yard

One of the joys of my last visit home two weeks ago was getting to see spring starting in my parents' yard.  My last evening there found me taking a break from watching Jurassic Park with Mom--actor Jeff Goldblum is one of our shared crushes--to try to take a few photos while it was still light out.  

Dad always shakes his head when he sees me admiring Dandelions, but I think they're beautiful. 

I keep arguing that he should think of Dandelions not as weeds but instead as a gift--free flowers!  and so many of them!--especially since we've enjoyed their greens in salads and he, at least, has liked dandelion wine, as well, but so far, we agree to disagree. 

The wind picked up while I was outside, but the rain held off until early morning.  The sound of rain falling against the roof of my parents' deck is one of my favorite sounds and something I miss from my four years living at that house with them. 

Ah, to see color outside again! 

Computer issues prevented me from writing again, post-visit, until now, and it has been interesting to me to feel myself missing this little space I carved out here back in January 2007 that I continue to use to share things I find beautiful and funny and wise and true and sweet. 

I still think it is worth it to make even such a small effort to share with others both life's "pretties" and its "pretty roughs."  I began this blog that winter as I emerged from a long period of depression, and I believe that even my coming up with its title was a bit of defiance that helped me focus and figure out how to stay strong and move forward. 

Exactly eight years ago today, it turns out--I posted this.  

The two weeks away from the blog this month clarified for me that maybe even more than the stories and the photos of the beautiful and the worthwhile that I share here, I love the determination to appreciate the beautiful and the worthwhile in the first place.  A sweet realization this spring.  ♥