Settling In in Everyday Ramblings

After the big storm…we walked the long way to the grocery yesterday over the big hill and there were more trees down than I have ever seen before. And there were still patches of old snow. At one point Charity was kicking a pile saying it was depressing and it needed to go away. That is right before we saw the lawn seeded with wild yellow crocuses, which was not depressing at all. There was even a purple one coming up amid them.

Charity has been doing these paint-by-number projects while she has been housebound and a few weeks back she was telling me about one in particular of a bird that was driving her crazy, bringing out some subconscious angst or something. She could not get the colors to come out to her satisfaction. It was this bird. She uses her own color scheme, as you can imagine.

She was telling me about this when we made the same walk two weeks ago and this time, she wanted to show me the results so when we got home, I stood in the breezeway next to my door and she brought down three of her completed canvases to show me outside. It was fun; I haven’t been to an art showing in a very long time. Her “problem” bird is beautiful, she just doesn’t fit in with her background.

There is a traffic barrier on this curvy part of the road we walk on with cement posts and a few months back we noticed there was a little door stuck on one of them down near the ground. Then a few weeks later there was an appropriately sized snowman right outside the door. Yesterday on two other curbs in the area we saw more doors with little well-lit windows. The whimsy is refreshing.

It is a long walk, well over 8 miles, with yesterday 72 floors. As we have been trapped inside most days for the last few weeks by the weather it was a gift to get out and get moving and challenge ourselves. I was ready to get home. Charity doesn’t like trails, particularly muddy ones with footing that one has to look at, so we walk the long way around on the home stretch instead of taking the shortcut.

I have been doing more yoga on my own while inside and my back was already a little sore. It turns out that I only had three people in class last night and I was relaxed and none of them were in my Monday class so I could repeat the bits that I know were particularly effective. This week it is a gentle work out of the core. I have one student who is naturally stiff and mostly comes to class to support his partner and at the end when we said good night, I could hear in his voice that he had completely relaxed! You can tell, the voice is not only the window to the soul, but it is also a good indication of what is going on with the nervous system. Yay.

I made some progress on the website. I am about a third of the way done. I need to get it done, as on Monday one of my students couldn’t find the email with the links and missed class. If I had them up on the website, she could have checked it when she discovered the email was missing.

Much as I would like the cats to assist and send out links early in class, they just aren’t effective administrators.

I also discovered I am missing a tax form, which led Tuesday into a fruitless search through embarrassing piles of papers that need to be organized. It is clear that after Mr. Finch died and my job got more and more crazy, and I started teaching that certain aspects of domestic harmony…slipped.

What have I been doing this last lockdown year anyway???

Listening to a lot of podcasts.

I have learned so much. Last night after class I learned the legal term the “Glomar response”, or Glomarization, which is when someone says, “I can neither confirm nor deny”…whatever it is you are avoiding answering. The person I heard use it said…Glomarring. You can use it instead of saying, “No comment”.

A cheeky teenager would have fun with that.

The night before last I had a terrible dream full of menace that I woke myself up out of and said no, don’t want to continue here.

Last night I had an amazing dream, I was looking at these lovely homes to purchase with pools with some unspecified family members and we looked at this one house that was nice but there were problems and then we looked at this place behind it and it was excellent , with window seats and this gorgeous tile pool and a long lawn and good light and a space for a garden and…the mysterious we just moved right in there on the spot.

I think there might be some settling in going on here.

Last updated February 26, 2021