Strolling into Spring in Everyday Ramblings

This is from our walk across town on Saturday morning. It was not a big hike or anything. Both of us had exerted ourselves to our limits recently so it was more of a stroll looking at the views and all the families and dogs that were out. There were a lot of dogs. We even walked in front of a dog training class. Frieda was a little bit of a distraction with her new very poodle trim. She has a cropped tail that is just a bob itself so no fancy trim there.

We’ve had the usual spring changeable mix of weather. It is still getting close to freezing at night, sometime rain, sometimes sun, sometimes a mix.

This Saturday was the halfway point in the Bodyweight classes. Usually, our teacher leads and does the workout with us, this is a live class, and her husband (and their labradoodle, Crow) do the workout in the background. She is very strong and while she shows us variations sometime even the first variation is hard for me, so I modify.

On Saturday her husband taught the class, and he gave us progressions and I could do the first one at least. She worked full out in the background. Because of this, without realizing it I worked harder.

Which meant that yesterday I had no interest in moving at all! None. The tank was empty.

I managed to get a few chores done. And a bath. But mostly I lounged around and read. I am on the third book in the Inheritance Trilogy by N.K. Jemison.

Before that I took one look at the dead Ukrainian children in the picture on the front page of the New York Times and said, um, no, not going there.

It is not that I don’t care. I care. And I am scared. And ache for the displacement and the disruption and the sheer unmitigated senselessness of it all. My students were talking about where to send money this morning.

We as a country are at the incredible mark of 959,000 dead from Covid-19. And more people than that have now fled Ukraine leaving so much behind. If this isn’t some sort of inflection point in world history, I don’t know what would be.

And yet…right this moment the sun is shining, the absolutely must get done chores are done, my stress test results were good, and Kes, my sister is feeling better than she has since mid-December.

We are going to the Oregon Coast again in about 2 ½ weeks. We are going a few weeks early this year because everybody wants a manageable coast vacation here in what might be a more open part of the pandemic.

A whole bunch of third graders went by my place earlier and only one kid in the whole class was wearing a mask. The restrictions are coming down. Even here, where they have been in place for so long. So very long. Next week the church is starting in person services again.

Half hour a day I clean something that is not in regular rotation, like blinds and windows and floors and walls to get ready for going away. Kes and I have committed to doing that before we go. We text each other what we are planning to do and if we did it.

I took everything out from under a desk I have in my bedroom and dusted all the wires and plugs and got my tax stuff out of the box under there and dusted that and vacuumed. Yesterday I washed my big heavy jacquard bedspread.

Diego has been off the last four days. He is getting better, but we have had some rough moments lately. Just the fact he is not insisting on being on me right now is a sign of progress. I feel so helpless when he has a bad day. I was thrilled to find out I can use my food processor to make fresh food for him, that I don’t need to buy a meat grinder. Kes and I were talking about our mother’s clamp on crank meat grinder this morning.

We think our niece might have it.

Mrs. Sherlock is taking me up north to a rural nursery to get the starts for my garden plot next weekend. And I have been to the grocery twice since I last wrote without any encounters with mentally ill folks.

That indeed has been such a gift for my own mental health. :)

Last updated March 07, 2022