Tag Archives: hope

~thankful thursday~ hope and home

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11/25/21

~30 days of gratitude~ day 25

Happy Thanksgiving! I am thankful for all of you, dear friends and family!

 

11/26/21

~30 days of gratitude~ day 26

(Observed on day 27) At some point every November I will say I’m grateful for Grandma’s never-fail pie crust recipe. At some point I will notice that you don’t have to feel great to feel grateful. At some point I will skip a night and observe my post on the following day, showing up to the page only to close it again without writing a word, not feeling grateful enough, like there is some sort of minimum value. At some point the next day I will remember that it doesn’t matter what the reading on the gratitude gauge says, what matters is showing up for it. Grateful.

 

11/27/21

~30 days of gratitude~ day 27

I am grateful for mums, so there can be flowers in November.

11/28/21

~30 days of gratitude~ day 28

I am grateful for a sunny Sunday to follow a saturated Saturday. I am grateful to have travel arrangements made, to finally see my parents for the first time since the pandemic began. I am grateful to look forward to a trip that is a vacation, after the last several that were not. I am grateful for the tiny mascot for joyful flight who posed patiently for my camera today.

 

 

11/29/21

~30 days of gratitude~ day 29

Today I am grateful for the many connections made each year when I start posting November gratitude. If I was taking this class for a grade, I would not get an A in responding to comments this year, but I appreciated every one, and I see you all there, pressing your hearts and likes and hug faces. I felt your in-person encouragements at farmer’s market, and your messages directly to my inbox meant so much. It is just one of the ways that showing up to attempt gratitude creates the conditions under which more gratitude is generated. It comes on wings, it comes in waves, it comes one popcorn and one cranberry at a time.

 

 

11/30/21

~30 days of gratitude~ day 30

This morning getting ready for work:

“It’s day 30! Last one! I’m grateful for these hot towels! The End!”

Rich didn’t seem convinced. I guess I did already use the hot towels on Day 4.

~

After work:

“We have been alerted that the recent lone sea otter near Yaquina Head, has hauled itself ashore on Cobble Beach with an apparent injury.

It has been taken into captivity for assessment and treatment. That’s all the information we know at this time. We will keep you updated. Let’s hope for the best. (Elakha Alliance)”

Dang it.

~

Let’s hope for….

Hope, the thing with fur. Oh, I am so sad.

Let’s hope he lives.

Let’s hope he heals.

Let’s hope he has caregivers like D from 3 West in St. Francis hospital.

Let’s hope his caregivers do not have to play hospice nurse like D.

Let’s hope he swims free again soon.

Let’s hope for all those other bigger grander outcomes, too. The triumphant return of his kin to these shores. The reunions long awaited.

Let’s hope…

~

When I tried to learn more about joy, it turned out gratitude was at its root. Maybe there is a similar connection between gratitude and hope.

~

I am grateful for…. hot towels. Nachos. Rutabagas. Chocolate cupcakes. Injured butterflies who keep flying. Injured sea otters who keep swimming.

I am grateful for the love. Sometime early in November I scrolled by a Ram Dass quote that has been bobbing to the surface of my consciousness all month. “We’re all just walking each other home.” I like that. I am grateful for how well it sums up what this year’s 30 days have been about, and grateful for your company on the walk.

~thankful thursday~ seed bank

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11/5/20

~30 days of gratitude~ day 5

I have kept a gratitude journal for much of 2020. It helps me in November, and this year I needed help in all the other months. I was also looking ahead with some awareness that this November might not be my finest hour either, and thought of it as an investment, but it’s not really money in the bank I’m picturing. More like a seed bank, like I was putting away seeds from the flowers I grew this summer, knowing I would need to have the memory of past flowers and the hope of future flowers tucked in a safe place in order to get through the flowerless days. In July I recognized this, and was grateful for, “this garden of gratitude I am growing, one which will be able to be visited in November and harvested from when I may not have enough of what is in season.”

A few of the summer seeds I collected in my bank:

7-12

Hummingbird having a snack of crocosmia while the sprinkler was watering the terrace garden, and then resting on the flower stem to have a little shower before taking off again.

8-27

Pulled over on Otter Crest Loop overlook and took pictures of the beautiful blue ocean, trees, rocks, Queen Anne’s lace. Whales came by to say hello.

9-1

The smell of fifty pounds of beautiful peaches ripening in the kitchen.

9-3

Egrets wading in the bay as we drove the bay road home for date night pizza night. Their reflections in the blue, blue water (so nice and sunny) were just stunning.

9-5

Having enough energy to chop two ziplock bags of peppers for the freezer and can nine pints of fresh chopped heirloom tomatoes in rainbow colors, the urgent care variety I salvaged from the compost bin at market. One green zebra tomato (with one tiny squashed shoulder) the size of my head filled two pints with one more chopped piece leftover… one pink damsel that was about the same size (with one hole poked in it from another stem)! By tomorrow these would have been slumping with mold. Some beautiful vegetables are so vulnerable that it defies all pragmatism to try to bring them home, but I do it anyway, to honor the farming wrought, against all pragmatism, to bring them into being.

9-17

Walk on the beach- a fun egg case, a new nudibranch, and the whole place to myself since I arrived at dawn in the fog. Just what I needed.

Date night. Always.

11-5 today:

Speaking of date night, it is date night once again… modified for the times we inhabit, but we still observe this weekly tradition. I am grateful my love didn’t look at my tenderness, my propensity to fall to pieces, and decide I was too vulnerable, grateful that he defied all pragmatism and brought me home anyway. Grateful for the gratitude seed bank today.

11/6/20

~30 days of gratitude~ day 6

I am grateful for the tiny bird that visited my window this morning, when the sun came out (grateful for the sun). I did not think I would get any photos but this little guy really wanted to check out what was going on in our living room, and kept lurking long enough for camera retrieval, and even after Lisa kitty wandered over and settled herself down to watch the nature channel. (The bird did decide to depart when Bart panther-pounced up beside Lisa.)

I am no birder, but my Sibley guide said it might be a Ruby-crowned kinglet. They would like our spruce trees, and would be coming down out of the treetops this time of year to migrate, possibly. When I first saw this bird’s head, I thought it could have bashed its head on the window and been bleeding. No, it was a little more red violet than red, so maybe it had smashed one of my last few raspberries on his head (DIY raspberry beret?) and finally I got a good enough look to realize it was the actual color of the feathers. (Parsimony would have helped me here.)

I later discovered that the scientific name of this little bird is Regulus calendula, and, of course this magical creature would be named after a star and a flower. Not just any star… the first schooner bunk I slept in on my first semester at sea was also named Regulus. And not just any flower… calendula, one of the only things still blooming in my flower pots in November, a botanical healer, an edible salad topping, and of which quinn asked me as a toddler, “are you going to put calend-u-willa on that owie to feel it better?”

Basically, this little bird might as well have started singing to me, “you belong among the wildflowers, you belong on a boat out at sea, far away from your trouble and worry…”

So it was an easy choice today, though happy nacho day to those celebrating (we’re out of avocados, such bad form! We all know I will be grateful for nachos other days this month!)

11/7/20

~30 days of gratitude~ day 7

I am grateful that a woman can hold the office of the vice president of this country, and not just in theory anymore, but in reality.

What it’s like for me personally, is I’m just now realizing how much it matters to me. I have been thinking for a while, like since maybe a little over four years ago, of how it matters to little girls everywhere, watching, listening, absorbing, that women be trusted with positions of power, but it hit me tonight that, as Quinn pointed out to me one time, I was once a girl. Tonight, hearing our Vice President-elect say, “I may be the first woman in this office, I will not be the last,” was the moment I could no longer hold back tears. The other thing this election outcome is like, for me personally, is like the time when I was leaving an abusive relationship and I was having a panic attack that I had almost forgotten to get some of his tools out of the vehicle we had shared, and my guy friend who was helping me pack my U-haul told me, “MB, someday, someone is going to say nice things to you.”

I’m getting pretty used to the person I’m married to saying nice things to me all the time, I mean it’s pretty relentless, all the nice things he says, and does. Also, when I showed up wildly unprepared for cold rain and gusting wind at farmer’s market today (pretty sure I’m not the only one with some of my ducks not in a row this week), I was so grateful for his XL hooded sweatshirt (and the fishing community who keeps him supplied with F/V swag from all the boats he works so hard to build and repair every day) stowed in the back of the car, which nested nicely atop my size M sweatshirt and kept me warm for the whole day.

I am grateful to be able to look forward to having a president very soon who, when he speaks, will not trigger memories of years of emotional abuse. A nice aside is that the President-elect is the very guy who wrote the legislation that enabled me to get a restraining order when I needed one. America, get ready, because someday soon, someone is going to say nice things to you.

11/8/20

~30 days of gratitude~ day 8

I am grateful for the glorious weather today as my honey and I made our annual honey pilgrimage to obtain our four-gallon bucket of gold. I am grateful for the fully stocked chest freezer and pantry heading into the season of slow cookers and staying in. I am grateful for the way the god light was slanting through the conifers in the fog as we drove east, and for the colorful trees painting our journey into a rainbow road trip.

 

11/9/20

~30 days of gratitude~ day 9

Today when I was waiting an extra long time for my grocery order, I was grateful I had brought along my book. I am grateful for the ability to order groceries from home and pick them up outside the store, and for the energetic youth who cheerfully hoisted two cubic yards of potting soil into my trunk, saying he does the same to help his grandmother, who also likes to garden. I’m grateful the store gave me a discount I didn’t ask for, just because I had to wait; I basically got paid to read fifty delicious pages. I am so grateful, in case I haven’t said it yet this year, for good books. Sometimes, they take me right out of myself, and sometimes they pour me right back in. I have leaned on them hard this year for both of these essential services.

 

11/10/20

~30 days of gratitude~ day 10

There are days when writing a gratitude post is like plucking words from the air as easily as picking raspberries off the vines in the vase on my kitchen table. Even though I spent part of my day today studying word-crafting, tonight I am in percolating, not plucking mode.

I do have one gratitude I’ve been tucking away for a day when I was otherwise undecided. I have been having a much easier time waking up in the morning this November, having finally bought myself a full-spectrum light near the end of October. I’ve suspected myself to be a SAD puppy for a lot of years now, so I’m not sure why this took me so long. I’m grateful that when I mentioned it, my husband was also wondering why we didn’t already have one, and happily turned it on for me the first few mornings, during his usual wake-up (yes, I’m a grown-ass woman who has trouble waking up before dawn without help). The thing is, just a week or two in, I’m already awake enough to turn it on for myself, and more importantly, I don’t feel like rotten black death inside for the first hour of the day as my body rejects it’s-still-night-time like a mismatched organ. I don’t know what wizardry this is, but I know this little light is better than any supplement has ever done by me. We call it my sun ball.

When I was buying it Rich supportively said he thought it would help us both, though he felt he may not be as affected by shortening daylight as I am because, he said, “I generate light.” Boy does he ever. (He meant welding but I mean how he lights up my life.)

 

11/11/20

~30 days of gratitude~ day 11

Today I am grateful for and in awe of the connections… the unseen order of things… the cosmic consciousness. This may not make any sense to anyone else, and I’m okay with that. (I’m not taking this class for a grade!) I was told to “just obey it” yesterday when the wrong scene came to my mind during my writing workshop, and I spent ten minutes writing descriptive language about a scene I had no idea was connected to the piece I’m writing. Turns out it was so integrally connected, I spent the next twenty-four hours with wave after wave of profound revelations crashing over me. A significant breakthrough. In the earlier part of the class, when asked to explain why I was the most qualified person to write what I’m writing, I wrote why I’m the expert on mothering my son, including a sentence about the placenta that it still in a ziplock in the back of my freezer. Then today, as I was reading more of my book (my teacher is one of the authors), I came across a passage where she announced to her teen daughter that her placenta is still in the freezer. Shortly afterward, a rainbow came pouring across the page as the low and lazy November sun streamed in through the glass block window.

In other literary news, Rich and I discussed this morning what constitutes a nacho (singular). Grateful for November nacho nights, a pair of placentas, and rainbow connections.

~rainbow mondays~ smolder

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“How many fears came between us?

Earthquakes, diseases, wars where hell

rained smoldering pus

from skies made of winged death.

Horror tore this world asunder.

While inside the bleeding smoke

and beyond the shredded weeping flesh

we memorized tales of infinite good.”

~Aberjhani

 

~rainbow mondays~

a splash of color on monday morning

a photo study documenting the colors of the spectrum: the balance points between light reflected and light absorbed

~summer shorts~ firebirth

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My friend just went through breast cancer surgery and we are on the phone discussing poop colors and whether medical waste is incinerated, and unexpected emotional devastation even when all the decisions we’ve made have been absolutely right. I am not a good phone friend, but if you are going to call me, it’s likely going to be about something raw and gritty like this. In my imagination I am allowing fire to be the outcome of where breasts go when they are removed because there are powerful metaphors in fire. Inked across the shoulder and upper arm of this friend is, rather prophetically, a phoenix. We forget fire can be a creative source of energy when we see it cause so much destruction, but the phoenix dies engulfed in flame only to be reborn out of the ashes. There is so much about our current moment that feels devastating and destructive, an inferno threatening the best things about this world, and yet if I summon the courage to look into the fire, this little thing with feathers is poking its head up out of the ashes, getting ready to be reborn. Creative plans will hatch to make a way, through art, to integrate having been utterly torn down and the work it will take to be reborn, feather by feather. The other day as she noted that her breasts, or the breast-shaped spaces they used to occupy, were burning (a good, albeit painful, sign that she is told indicates healing; mothers understand about productive pain when it comes to birth), we planned a future campfire photo art session. Like a grappling hook tossed a long way out ahead of us that we can climb to if we keep putting one foot in front of the other, this tiny plan gives us a target, a rope to grasp, a direction out of the furnace. Though the flames haven’t even subsided, and the hatchling may be weak and covered in all this ash right now, she will eventually emerge powerful and courageous. In my life there is a son-shaped hole, while her kids are there but she can’t really be with them, and it hurts; these are the people we carried in our bodies, pieces removed from us with great pain and at great cost to ourselves, more than we ever expected. Your baby is born, and you need so much more absorbent cloth than you realize to soak up all manner of fluids drawn up out of you by the gravitational force of their orbit around you. You were expecting a swaddled bundle, not a planet with its own atmosphere and trajectory. What to expect when you’re expecting a phoenix: there are expectations and then there is reality, and that book title seems to be out of print, or maybe it hasn’t been written. Yet. For now, it’s DIY phoenix midwifery. Birth and rebirth are messy, painful, intense, productive, and creative. Our children, too, are being devastated by this fiery time, and they, too, will rise, powerful, from the ashes, stronger than before, better for it. Inked on the lower part of the same arm as the phoenix is the one word calling to mind that thing with feathers, the one being reborn from these ashes, the one that never stops: hope.

see also: water metaphors

~rainbow mondays~ uplift

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~rainbow mondays~

a splash of color on monday morning

a photo study documenting the colors of the spectrum: the balance points between light reflected and light absorbed

~thankful thursday~ a time to refrain from embracing

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~timeline~

Saturday 3-28 In between posts about “arm yourselves” and “protect your 2nd amendment rights,” last night there was a post about how the police of my hometown (including guys I went to school with) had a standoff with a guy who had 500 rounds in his house, across the street from one of my brother’s good friends. The post was by the friend, who was hiding in a corner of his house fearing stray bullets. One officer was shot, but this morning he was giving the thumbs up from the hospital and our friend had made it through the ordeal safely. Praying the officer is protected from the virus while protecting my town from those whose second amendment rights feel like the only things that are really safe.

Fedex delivered my purple asparagus crowns that I pre-ordered in February, and I have to decide where to plant them. I am grateful to have started 2020 with some gardening goals.

Rich is working this morning and I’m not, which is unusual for a Saturday. Grateful for his steady job. Everything about him is so steady, actually.

Alberta succumbed to world domination, so Quinn and I finished our hour-long phone call with a couple logic puzzles. Quinn’s paleontology camp director has sent out feelers for a lecture series delivered by zoom, and I plan to have him watch them for quull school.

I had a tearful moment watching video of the whole city of New York applauding health care workers at the 7pm shift change.

Turn turn turn sung by Dolly Parton made my evening. A time you may embrace, a time to refrain from embracing… to everything… there is a season…

~meme of the day~

“This is the dude. The dude is not panicking. the dude does not get uptight. The dude is not buying in bulk. The dude takes it easy. The dude is not arming himself. The dude does no harm. The dude is staying home in his own private residence man. The dude abides. Be the dude.”

~timeline~

Sunday 3-29 I couldn’t sleep in on the one day I could have, and finally got out of bed around 6.

I made a big breakfast, and we had a mellow morning. In the afternoon I sat in the trout lily patch for an hour with my camera to see if a hummingbird would visit again.

So much is so serious. Especially when I’m in a New York state of mind. Real people close to people I know are very sick or have died and it is heartbreaking. I am feeling very scared this evening after talking to my mom, hearing my dad has “a husky voice, but it’s nothing to do with coronavirus.” I couldn’t breathe very well. I went back down to the trout lilies one more time and sat there for another hour to listen to the birds and feel the wind and watch the flowers sway in the breeze. It took a while but my breathing went back to normal.

Climbed into Rich’s recliner with him to listen to Dave Grohl play there goes my hero from his home studio. Then Rich serenaded me with Lukas Nelson playing to make you feel my love.

~3-29 gratitude~

Rich and I have both been wearing our new t-shirts from the 50th anniversary of the Oregon Country fair last year, which feature hummingbird art. It reminded him of his hummingbird encounter and he retold the story. His cat Spot brought him a hummingbird that was still alive but its legs were tangled up in spider webs. He worked hard to pick off all of the bits of web, trying not to hurt the hummingbird while doing so, and when he was done it was very still. So he held it on the palm of his hand, marveling at the colors of its feathers, and then suddenly it was off his hand and in the air, hovering in front of him, saying thank you. It came and visited him at some point later that same day to thank him once more.

I had my own hummingbird brought to me by my baby kitty one time as well, and held it in my hand just the same way, holding my own breath as I watched its tiny rib cage heaving, unsure if it was able to fly. Then zip! Up it went, and just like Rich’s, it hovered nearby briefly before zooming away.

Tiny hearts beating inside tiny ribcages heaving to catch their breath but being pressed down upon by the jaws of this threatening time is a metaphor that feels relatable… but so is holding hope in the palm of my hand that we will rise, set free to fly again, to joyfully spring forth into the world. I am grateful for hope and hummingbirds, the things with feathers, today.

~timeline~

Monday 3-30 Quull school starts today and I think it will mean an extra hangout later in the afternoon to touch base on how his school day goes.The best thing ever is he is so prompt every day for our hangouts call at noon and they are always over an hour long. He is accessing it through his own email which he is truly in control of now that he is 13 and he is getting so grown and these are all such good skills for him to be acquiring, showing up on time for meetings and screensharing.

fibonacci spiral with nets; we’re math doodling together

More internet one-sided arguments about constitutional rights, government overreach, whether our December colds were Coronavirus… OHSU health workers are testing positive for the virus.

~3-30 gratitude~

It has been noted that in a time of crisis, we have relied heavily on the arts to get us through. Today I am grateful for music. I listened over and over to Mirko and Valerio the twelve-year-old Italian twins who played Coldplay’s Viva la vida in their quarantined home. It really made me smile. The Rainbow Girls sang Angel from Montgomery, and a lot of other John Prine songs have been making the rounds as the singer songwriter fights for his life. Amanda Shires and Jason Isbell have been playing every night live, and that has been a nice part of our quarantine routine. They are all wearing sunglasses tonight. They are Amanda’s trademark but also I can tell there have been tears.

~meme of the day~

Chronologically beset memes have transitioned from uncertainty about day of the week to the duration of this month. “In case anyone forgot what day it is, today is March 97th.” “30 days hath September, April, June, and November, all the rest have 31, except March which has 8000.” “This was a pretty big leap year – February had 29 days and March was five years long.”

~Tuesday 3-31 timeline/gratitude~

Speaking of how we’re leaning on the artists, I am also grateful for writers. As I am thinking ahead to posting a thankful Thursday on 4/2 i read rarasaur’s blog post soft voiced and this quote resonated

“In my perfect world, Rarasaur blog is a dinner table full of food, a place of nourishment. If there is wine here at all, it is for the celebrating, not the aching, not the barding of aches. Here, I want to talk about the harvest. I want to say soft-voiced grace and have it reach the furthest chair. I want to lean forward, elbows on the table, and just, look at you.

Just look at you.

You’re so beautiful.

When I’m ready to leave, I want to be full.”

I drove into Newport to pick up Rich’s birthday present painting at 8 am and an incredibly bright rainbow appeared that accompanied me along the highway for a mile or more. It was so bright I could see its end down by the horse barn and sitka spring farms, and on the other side in the swamp. The painting is amazing, and it felt good to support an artist friend, especially right now. I paid via paypal for it and I picked it up off her front porch – no contact birthday shopping.

Then I was going to drop off the rent check but the bank drive-through wasn’t open yet so I drove down the coast to scope out if any beaches or waysides were open so that I could walk with Quinn on the beach on Friday. Almost none were, and even one out of the way favorite spot had some of its parking blocked, but the one closest to the highway was unblocked and there was one space available for me so I parked and got out on the beach for a few minutes. This was needed. Somewhere near lost creek a pair of bald eagles was circling above 101, and they were still there when I was driving back north again. A rainbow/eagle blessing felt fitting for my husband’s 50th birthday present.

I dropped off the rent; after handling the tube I touched nothing but my hand sanitizer and only after that rolled up the window and put the car back in gear. When I got home, I sprayed isopropyl on all knobs and handles I had touched on my way inside, and sprayed down the outside of my hand sanitizer for good measure. Seems circular, and yet does not feel like overkill.

I measured egg diameters all day, while enjoying a tilt parenting podcast on executive function during a pandemic. I had video calls with Quinn at noon and four. His schedule is coming along and gaining lots more detail. On our first call we got him set up to use zoom for his paleontology lectures. On our second call he told me about geometric morphometrics, which he explained very eloquently. I know he found that area of study quite intriguing – math plus fossils.

On our mailbox date, Rich and I received our pre-ordered Pearl jam album Gigaton. Happy birthday to us both! And then we walked to the bayou and had yet another hail rainbow vista.

~Wednesday 4-1 timeline/gratitude~

The Age of March has ended.

Teleworking rhythm established, phone check-in with my therapist friend, placed order for birthday dessert from Arr place, ordered GTF VSA box for next week (week four box… wow. Four.) Sent Sifu a check, a friend’s 84-year-old mom a birthday card.

Q sent me a photo of his organized resistors for making a foot pedal for his dad’s guitar. “Electronics day 1” was his caption. This is something he’s interested in, without being interested in playing guitar, just for the electronics learning. So quull.

Sewed my first facemask.

Talking with Rich about what we want to keep doing vs going back to normal fully. The obtaining of food from people in our near vicinity feels so good, the intentional spending of our dollars on goods we feel so good about supporting; let’s keep doing that. We are reflecting on how this time provides an opportunity to take stock, be intentional, choose what to embrace and what to refrain from embracing as a wider variety of choices open back up again after all being retracted for a time. I am feeling grateful for the meaning that can be found even in this difficult time.

~Meme of the day~

John Cusack holding up the boombox in Say Anything, playing In Your Eyes. “Gen X. Expressing love from a responsible distance since 1980.” Tied with the Pacman version of going to the grocery store. “Avoid everyone, get the fruit, and take any route to avoid contact.

~Thursday 4-2 timeline/gratitude~

It’s my birthday eve, and my husband woke me by telling me so.

I have been alternating sleeping hard and being restless/waking up in the middle of the night. Last night I slept hard. I prefer those nights. Getting off social media early in the evening is helpful.

Food is like the sleep, some days it is snack all day, some days it is forget to eat all day. Weird.

The sun just came out so I got outside and now I’m finally making lunch which I will take and eat out there too. Quinn is quull. He has been having me watch Vi Hart videos with him and some of them I have not watched so the one today called the science and math of frequency and pitch was like her version of my tide thing/rabbit hole/post/learning endeavor. Sine waves and graphing and math and such great stuff. He is always learning.

Brene Brown has a podcast and I am so grateful for her work and plan to listen to every one. This one on grief and finding meaning, and long spoons, was particularly moving.

Also grateful for friendship and this exchange from camp boss came at such a good time:

CB: I’m sure you have seen this article already… I saw it on a blog I really think you would like. the article kind of made me think of you/ something you might say.

MB: YES I did see it and appreciated it a lot. It is such a head game. one of the very first links NOAA leadership sent around was the article about how Isaac Newton developed theory of gravity while quarantined. Not helpful!!! Not for perfectionists anyway. Love you.

CB: I’m working on my first plasma laser so hide the cats!!!

MB:Rofl!

CB: No dispersed bundles here!! It is ALL syncing as I wish it to be!!

MB: Oh yes everything is stellar here as well. Shipshape.

Grateful for good friends and humor. (Camp boss, I can’t find the Robin Williams video clip to reference, so send it my way if you can locate it!)

While I made dinner, I watched several you tube videos of different ways of making facemasks, including the vacuum cleaner bag method and the pocket mask that can accept a filter.

~Friday April 3 gratitude/timeline~

Rich woke me up with a snuggle and told me happy birthday right away – he always remembers before I do. Then he serenaded me first thing as I made coffee and breakfast.

In the morning, I spent an hour making face masks with pockets (organic knit cotton).

I worked on egg diameters after that, diligently until it was time to go. First I stopped by Arr place and picked up my bag of goodies I had ordered for birthday dessert. I put the ice creams into my cooler and went south to a wayside beach. I had a little time before Quinn would get there so I got out and wandered down the beach. It had been raining until ten minutes before I left the house, and now it was beautifully sunny and gorgeous, with a little wind.

Quinn and I had a wonderful walk for an hour and a half. We inspected tiny treasures in the sand, Quinn told me about things he has been thinking about, we peered into tidepools, he found a green worm, I found squid egg cases, we absorbed all the sunbeams.

The two treasures I brought home…

smooth round stone (as small as a world and as large as alone)

and a tiny, imperfect sand dollar.

 

So many treasures I just took pictures of, but these two came home. I wish I could have taken home the lanky teen treasure, but I just took pictures of him as well.

The origami yoda birthday card he made for me:

I went to Local Ocean and picked up our dock box for dinner. Receiving packaged food outside two buildings where I knew the actual person who had handled them felt much easier to deal with than going inside the grocery store.

A sweet friend made a socially distant no contact treat delivery.

Tuna kabobs and crab cakes for dinner that took only a little bit of effort to prepare. Rhubarb crisp with rhubarb and cinnamon ice cream for dessert. Whiskey and coke. A lovely evening. Really, I have had far worse birthdays than this shelter-in-place birthday. And now I am 42, the answer to life, the universe, and everything!

encouragement from crab

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i was tagged in a facebook post by a woman whose friend is having surgery for breast cancer, with a request for sending love and encouragement from one woman to another, so her friend would arrive home to a pile of cards and well wishes. it is easy to ignore such a post, because i think it makes us face our own fears, and what do you even say anyway, and then there is the fact that i don’t even know this woman.

but i do know her on some level, don’t i?

aside from the fact that she is a friend of a friend, we’re all one, when it comes right down to it. so i decided to snail mail it up, sent her a mix cd, a buoy quote in a card that i printed, and some beach sand in a film canister. it felt nice to share, and it prompted me to do a teensy amount of writing as well, which i will also share here, in case anyone else can use some encouragement today.

this crab jumped out of the card pile to come to you and i figured out why. cancer and crab are written together in the stars, but i see another layer of meaning. crab wears protective armor on the outside, and follows the moons and tides just the way all of us women do in the salt water cycle of our blood and tears. what’s inside is vulnerable and soft, but crab is tenacious, knowing how to hold on, clinging to rocks as challenging waves wash over, knowing when the best way forward is sideways. crab intuits what needs to be shed, and though it can be extremely vulnerable when it is exposed, it replaces its armor, a little bit stronger each time, taking what it needs to rebuild it from the healing waters of the ocean surrounding it.

i wanted to send you a little beach sand and ocean healing magic, from one woman to another.

~tuesday tunes~ something good coming

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the dragon house soundtrack has consisted of every tom petty and the heartbreakers album on repeat, since we lost tom. our alarm clock has been playing the last dj and the living room player has rotated through wildflowers, hypnotic eye, highway companion, and mojo. it was while quinn sat on my lap in the happy spot one afternoon while mojo was playing that he told me he liked this song, and i had to admit i agreed. while i like all the other songs folks have shared since tom’s passing, they tend to come from the greatest hits album, ubiquitous in music collections across america, while i think a lot of people may be missing out on some of his more recent albums. 2010 is “recent” ish, right?

since i know at least a couple of my readers will want to look up the lyrics, i will save you that step:

I’m watching the water

Watching the coast

Suddenly I know

What I want the most

And I want to tell you

Still I hold back

I need some time

Get my life on track

I know that look on your face

But there’s somethin’ lucky about this place

And there’s somethin’ good comin’

For you and me

Somethin’ good comin’

There has to be

And I’m thinking ’bout mama

And about the kids

And the way we lived

And the things we did

How she never had a chance

Never caught a break

And how we pay for our big mistakes

I know so well the look on your face

And there’s somethin’ lucky about this place

There’s somethin’ good comin’

Just over the hill

Somethin’ good comin’

I know it will

And I’m in for the long run

Wherever it goes

Ridin’ the river

Wherever it goes

And I’m an honest man

Work’s all I know

You take that away

Don’t know where to go

And I know that look that’s on your face

There’s somethin’ lucky about this place

There’s somethin’ good comin’

For you and me

Somethin’ good comin’

There has to be

my working man is on 10-hour shifts this week (monday’s turned into 12 as they took advantage of a dry day to get as far as they could on their current project) and i’m mulling over the experiences of friends shared in #metoo posts, pondering domestic violence awareness month and how to use my voice most effectively, hearing a lot of unease from friends in general, feeling some myself, especially in the context of my career, dreading the onslaught of winter… but also savoring the last blooms of summer, the first wood stove fires, appreciating my hard working husband, and the steady supply of work available to him, enjoying the bittersweet emotional processing my son has been doing, enjoying a small uptick in creative energy and time to deploy it, enjoying this coffee i’m sipping this morning, and feeling gratitude for this life. something good coming has just the right sound for today, suggesting spirals and cycles, a bit melancholy, but ultimately hopeful.