Adaptations in Everyday Ramblings

A heat damaged magnolia flower from Sunday morning. We have had what in a more typical year would be high temperatures lately, but everything now is in our minds compared to the heat dome experience. When I go out early in the morning in short sleeves and sandals and it feels blissfully cool at 66 degrees, I am operating in the new climate paradigm. On some level the adaptation is in progress.

All of us are doing stuff as early (or late) as we can and settling in for the rest of the day. We have a few more weeks of this. They are saying now “The Bootleg Fire” is going to burn until October. We might even get a tiny bit of desperately needed rain this Friday. Do put in a word for us with the weather gods if you have an in.

Things are humming along in the garden so far. The parks department is going to fix the shed the tree limb fell on, eventually. I am harvesting cherry tomatoes and the bigger tomatoes look like they will start to ripen in a few days. The nasturtiums are going to seed and the green manure I planted where the failed carrots were is coming up cheerfully. I am getting these adorable little carrots from the ones I grew from seed, the greens I share with the wild bunnies and the doves and scrub jays that hang out near the local power station on my way back from the garden.

The Crepe Myrtles are blooming, as sure a sign of fall as there is around here.

Somedays I think I am just odd. I am doing this 30-Day Resilience practices program, that are about 22 minutes long. Some days are more challenging than others. It is prep for the Pullup Club that starts in about 7 weeks. A week ago, Saturday I tried doing the Turkish Getup and was intimidated. Yesterday I was able to do six of them, with a light weight. I can see why it is considered a whole-body movement.

This Saturday I allowed myself to skip a day. That is a good sign.

Other than thinking they are completely insane; I really didn’t know that much about CrossFit practitioners. There were a few people doing it from work at the track or on the public stairway when I was going into the office. I have always thought it appealed to vain people and we used to trade good natured teasing about yoga and their (unsafe looking to me) too fast power moves.

This program that I am working has well thought out safe CrossFit strength moves built in and blended with yoga. I ordered a set of rings. Apparently, we are going to use them a lot for Pullup Club. I can see me, out there on the track where the hanging bars are in October, la la la… (The rings are portable, that is the whole point and I have no idea when I am going back to the gym.)

The mobility I lost in the fall is almost all restored. I am not going to lose weight so I might as well be as strong, stable, and mobile as I can considering the limitations of age and arthritis.

The other day I went through a big pile of shorts I have accumulated over the years and tried them all on. Kept the ones the fit and put the others in the Threads bag of my Ridwell box. I just keep looking at the legs of those amazing Olympics gymnasts and think…strong legs are good, big legs are strong.

Shorts, another adaptation for climate change. That and sleeveless shirts. In six months, I will be whining about the ice. We are so deeply tethered to our local weather. Just like the plants.

There is a good new article in The New Yorker by Jane Mayer about the dark money and seriously delusional power-hungry folks who are behind all these voter “fraud” laws that are being passed. She ties all these pieces together that are composed of bits I have been hearing on the news lately. It is called “The Big Money Behind the Big Lie”.

What with Covid, Climate Change and the politics of resentment all firmly on display you can’t really blame me for focusing on my own well-being (and that of those that take the classes I teach) here in a world where strength, stability, generosity of spirit and resilience are much needed antidotes to the legacy of exploitative racist greed we Americans are being forced to face up to.

Last updated August 02, 2021