Finding Comfort Where We Can in Everyday Ramblings

This is a quite nice elaborate chicken coop down the block from the miniature goats. I saw a rabbit in there too. A little gray guy. The man that lives here was gently shooing the girls back into the coop one day when I walked by. He laughed and said hi.

I keep an old chenille blanket on the end of my bed and Carlo often kneads it in the morning while the cats are trying to get me up. I’ve never seen Diego do it but a few days ago he started it. He gets a bit of it in his mouth and then kneads it because it is warm and comforting.

Yesterday afternoon (Nimrod let both Saint Joe and I come home because we are both sick) I had my hot water bottle on the bed so I could curl up with it intermittently while answering work emails and Carlo parked himself under the blanket next to the hot water bottle and Diego was kneading the other end.

I then (of course) went into the kitchen and started eating everything in sight that was sweet and had fat.

We find our comfort where we can.

I was trying to decide if I should cancel class or not.

In the end I took a bath (after I logged out from work) and wrapped up in warm accessories and went anyway.

I only had two students so we had a simple class working with what was going on with them in the moment. I couldn’t get the Sonos sound system to respond and so with my shredded voice I had to talk over the Pandora massage music that was being piped into the studio.

When we got to the rest period at the end and they were all wrapped up on their blankets (the studio was warm but there was a draft) I was able to get the sound off. And I let them do their own guided body relaxation exercise internally so they didn’t need to listen to my mucus inflected vocal chords. Bleh.

I actually felt better after teaching and slept well last night so it was the right decision to go. The food binge was not, but oh well; it was one day.

And I was able to stop at the depressing expensive downtown Safeway that is this mix of homeless and rough living folk, very rich folks and mostly foreign students from Portland State for sore throat stuff and spinach.

A woman needs her spinach.

Although I have Christmas chores to do I am staying home all day today and resting and keeping warm. Nimrod was nice enough to let both Saint Joe and I work from home today. We both started exhibiting symptoms at exactly the same time as we both are in the office at the same time and so our exposure was congruent.

Even though he is 34 years younger than me this virus is not an ageist.

I put another picture of trash from a homeless encampment up on Facebook. I know it is depressing and people want laughter and uplift and distraction but this is the world now here for people who don’t drive by in cars and don’t need to walk through and around the piles of trash left by people who are suffering and living in tents and lean-tos and nests made out of donated blankets and tarps. Seeing a wheelchair next to a tent right smack above the freeway is a bit gut wrenching and brings up fears for ourselves and our future too.

All I ask is that we find a way to engage with each other. We have so much more in common than we disagree on.

But sometimes that is really hard to see, isn’t it?