Happy Holidays to All

Happy holidays to you all, and may you find much to be grateful for in the new year.  ♥

December 7th's Book of Good Things

Yesterday's walk to work was surreally bright, the sky glowing a golden-white despite the many charcoal clouds in it.  I had forgotten my gloves as I walked out the door and soon had near-numb hands but was otherwise warm enough in my raincoat, while parents and children around me were emerging from cars bundled up in coats and hats, and a runner darted past me in just a t-shirt and shorts.  When there was a pause in traffic, all around me was hushed and stilled save for the leaves skittering down sidewalks and being whipped off the trees by the wind.  My umbrella stood up to the weather the entire walk, but I heard an embarrassed-sounding whoop behind me when another woman's began to turn inside-out in the wind just as we approached our building.  Yesterday's rain and wildness have moved on now, though, and a morning that began here in the low twenties will end with snow tonight only to disappear again this weekend with temperatures in the low sixties.  I give children at my workplace coloring pages depicting "Sesame Street's" Elmo making an igloo--I is for igloo!-- and Winnie the Pooh building a snowman and wonder if they even relate, the weather is so strange anymore and December is so rarely the way it was when I was their ages.  My work-schedule for today is an adjusted one that sees me starting four hours later than usual, so I've had precious time to catch up a bit with Mike before I leave for today's walk back to work.  The sun is shining.  I slept well.  My work-day is only eight hours.  I will treat myself to a slice of cheese pizza for lunch halfway-through it.  This news story keeps making me smile.  I am off tomorrow.  I feel I'm on an upswing.  'One day at a time, as ever, and today looks good. 

Lunch Plans

One of my quirks that makes Mike shake his head is my habit of eating a variety of snacks over a period of a few hours--sharp cheddar, some almonds, something leftover from supper, carrots with hummus, cucumber salad, a hard-boiled egg, whatever sounds good--as breakfasts and lunches on my days off instead of taking the time to "eat something real."  I don't think one way is better than the other, but it occurred to me this past week as I brainstormed ways to make this winter better for myself that taking the time on one of my days off every week to cook a "proper" dish that has some fondly-remembered significance to me would be a sweet habit to get into this winter.  Similarly, a friend from high school who is a marathoner mentally dedicates every mile of a race to a different loved one to get her through the hardest stretches and to refocus the endeavor for herself in that way.  Yes, yes, yes.  I've long thought the finest thing about my life is the beautiful people who have been in it, so why not honor them in the days ahead by measuring out the same ingredients and performing the same steps of measuring and boiling and baking that they did or do.  Yesterday I kicked off the project by cooking my grandfather's gnocchi and my grandmother's meatballs.  I cried once as I smelled the potato-flour dough and then again when I tasted my first bite.  I make the meatballs often, and I used to cook the gnocchi a few times a year, but neither Mike nor I should have the extra potato or white flour anymore, and I'm not interested in the healthier versions out there--I want Papa's heavy gnocchi or none at all--so it had been at least five years since I'd made these foods together.  I will modestly but honestly say I hadn't lost my touch:  My grandparents would have proudly recognized both their beloved dishes.  :)  Here's to the best of grandparents, here's to memories of Sunday dinners at their house the first 24 years of my life, and here's to all the LOVE.  How blessed am I.   

♥

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. 

Ingratitude is a shabby failing. ~ David McCullough

the sweetest of Thanksgivings to you all  ♥

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. 

10 Years

♥

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.  ♥

The Desk Corner Is Done

The fact that I recently--for the first time since All Things Covid-Related began--have been able to concentrate enough to write and read again means more to me than finally putting together this little desk corner, but still:  Let us admire a finished project.  :)  I knew when Mike and I moved into this apartment ten years ago that this little corner would be perfect as my desk corner and also for our Christmas tree, and a few months ago, I got to see the vision come-to-life.  

For years, I'd been doodling pictures of the desk corner and gathering bits and bobs for it, and last spring, I found a desk and chair that would fit into this spot. As with the hutch re-do and mantel-painting, the desk went through a couple stages before I found the right color for it.  It began an unfinished wood--

--was briefly black--

 --and then I realized if I love the green of the hutch in the corner opposite from the desk so much, why not just use the same color here?  Green it became, then, as did the chair.

I dolled up the front of the desk and the back of the chair with a decoupage paper.  I replaced the desk's round wooden drawer knob with a letter V drawer pull.  I added pink gingham paper to the sides of the drawer.  And I texted photos to Mom throughout the process.  :)

The lamp was a rare splurge, a heavy Italian bust lamp I found on eBay a few years ago and stored in the bedroom until I figured out the rest of the desk. Love, love, love.  ♥  I found a top hat lampshade for it, jazzed that up with a different shade of green paint, velvet ribbon for the brim, ferns, and Rosemary--for remembrance.

The chair cushion started out as the black gingham pillow Mom had made for me that Stuffed would always rest on on my lap when we sat across the room together, but when I was ready to see it back on that chair without him, I moved it back and bought the black and white ticking stripe cushion to use with the desk.  Months of looking for a rug led me to this one on eBay.  The seller's mom had made it in the 1940s.  The size, pattern, and colors are perfect for this little corner.  ♥

The pink gingham desk skirt is actually the skirt I wore to my grandmother's funeral last January.  She would more than understand.  :)  ♥  It is simply slipped onto a tension rod across the front of the desk, which lets me store a bin of rough drafts, index cards, and notes underneath.  On the wall above it is an "I Love You" cross-stitch Mom made while pregnant with her oldest, my older brother.  She had it in all my bedrooms as a kid and at some point gave it to me to keep.  She painted the pink gingham flower pot-turned-pen pot for me years ago too.  ♥

The photos on the plant nook underneath the cross-stitch are of Laura Ingalls Wilder and Louisa May Alcott.  The narrow wall to the right contains my collection of silhouettes of women writing.  

 Well, that only took ten years.  :)  

 ♥

A Few Days Off

I ran into this orange peel heart on my way to work Tuesday and took it as the "Hello, I see you, keep going, hang in there" from the Universe that I always choose to view these found hearts.  Gahhhhh, what a week.  As I limped up the front steps near midnight after last night's shift, I muttered "Thank you, God.  THANK YOU, GOD!" out loud, so glad I was to be home--and for three whole days.  I will soak in cocoa butter and shea bubble baths.  I will make myself mixing bowl-size "Grandma salads"--endive with oil and vinegar--for my lunches.  I will enjoy Mike's homemade chili and finally catch up with him after this aggravating-to-us-both week.  I will write some more of my 80s memoir:  The house that belonged to our next-door neighbor back then was listed for sale a few weeks ago, and seeing the realtor's pictures of it online has spurred me on anew with my project.  I will sleep until I've slept this week's bad mood away.  I will treat myself to a new tea:  I gave up caffeine more than a year ago and have been trying herbal teas, yet to find one I love, but this could be the weekend.   (←  I trust you'll all be waiting with bated breath for an update.  These Covid Times thrills are endless, I know!)  I will walk in near-balmy upper-50s weather for the first time in months.  I will read in bed.  I will read in my chair.  I will read while I do my laundry.  And Sunday night, I will cook a healthy lunch to pack for the next day's 12-and-a-half-hour shift.  Sunday is the last day of February, so even if next week is as "gahhhhh!" as this one was, at least it will be March.  Onward and upward.  But first:  Sleep.  ♥