Curious, Thriving and Befuddled in Everyday Ramblings

Thursday night I realized I had not been out since midday Monday except to take out the garbage and get the mail. Whoa. There was a break in the rain and so I geared up at sunrise to get out and see what was going on in the neighborhood, who had Christmas lights up, that sort of thing. This low light shot will mean absolutely nothing to you except to give you the feel for where I live and the mood and tone of it all.

The reason I took the shot though was because in that off pink house in the back there were low lights on in what I believe to be the kitchen. This house is rotting. There are blackberry vines growing from the front porch out across the leaf littered sidewalk. It is treacherous to walk there. Boxes and furniture are stacked on the front porch. Last year some sort of helpful hand team came in and rebuilt the front steps but now they are overgrown as well.

Of course, I am curious about who is living in there. One of the boxes has the label of a place that delivers pet food.

It is one of the enduring mysteries of the neighborhood.

After I got home it started raining and rained all day. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I find my whole approach to the holidays this year is sort of scatter shot. I don’t seem to be able to pull together a coherent gift giving strategy at all. Part of this might have to do with the fact that I live alone so am not picking up gifts to exchange at home.

Gifts are in all sorts of stages of arriving all over the place. I did pay for a small frivolous gift for Most Honorable to be delivered before Christmas but other than that… I like to think of myself as a relatively organized person…that self-concept bit the dust somewhere around May this year.

We have this lovely teacher from Australia in our Teacher’s Group that teaches communication skills to teachers. She and our facilitator were talking about the 3 to 1 ratio this week one needs to deploy.

It goes like this, every time you bring to mind something that needs work or could be improved, one needs to think of three things one did well, or just plain did, or could be not done, in terms of restraint.

I am trying to deploy this method when working with the ongoing recording of my live classes and restructuring of the business model to simplify and yet provide more to the students who choose to work with me.

There is so much to think about! And my brain is not operating at full capacity. I guess I need to remind myself that, oh yeah, you don’t start out being good at something you have never done before, you do need to learn.

Learning is a process. People text you in the middle of the class, cats literally walk all over you, you forget to change the orientation of the camera back towards the end and so on. We review and adjust and hope our students recognize that over time adaptations and adjustment are occurring to better the experience for them.

Same thing with the weight. I am up about 2 ½ pounds since lock down in March and down 1 ½ pound since the 6 weeks I have been tracking my food intake. My body is putting in a lot of effort to maintain this particular weight, which is about 16 lbs. more than ideal. But I am not gaining and considering the circumstances that is about as good as it is going to get.

I am active, I am healthy and although I have blue days because of so much difficulty and sadness out and about, basically I am thriving. And so is Diego. And the wild squirrels that monopolize my attempt to share a few shelled peanuts a day for the scrub jay pair that live near here to hide each morning.

It is not raining now, there is a light under the glare and the crew, and I are walking somewhere this morning in a few hours.

As I call to mind gratitude for all the good that touches my life…I am still really curious about who lives in that dull pink house with the faint light in the kitchen.

I wonder if she comprehends someone out here is curious about her.