3rd House Journal

Blessings 2009

1. A snuggery for my heart
2. My companion, my curer, my catnip
3. The verve and spark of citified weekends
4. A livelihood maintained in downbeat times
5. A high desert respite
6. Salty-aired seaports in sun and storm
7. The picturebook of my year
8. Strain eased, arms freed to work, to embrace
9. Crazy quilt of friendship still stitched together
10. The stars above, forever turning

Thanks to you all for being there, and Happy Thanksgiving!

---

I started counting my Thanksgiving blessings in 2005. You can also read the posts for 2006, 2007, and 2008.

Take 5

[Duck pond, Boston Public Garden; 10/25/09]

Having launched this blog five years ago today, I feel that I should post a retrospective of my life and blogging over the past five years (not counting the prior year with my first blog). It has certainly been eventful. Days after the launch, I dealt with a nerve-racking crisis with my mother needing to be hospitalized and then its aftermath. My parents moved away less than a year later, and a couple of years after that my mother passed away suddenly. Meanwhile, after 13 years freelancing, I took a full-time job, and a year later rented out my condo I'd had for 20 years in bucolic central Massachusetts and moved to an apartment in the Boston suburbs, then a year later to another apartment nearby. I traveled on vacation to Mexico twice, to Paris, Montreal and New York City, San Francisco and Santa Fe, New Mexico. I've had many joys and also heartbreaks. I've made many new friends and regained others I'd thought I lost. Through it all I kept blogging, and through blogging made far-flung online friends, several of whom I was lucky to meet in person and become real-life friends with. It's been a wild ride.

This past year I learned I couldn't do everything, not by a long stretch. But I've continued to keep the blog periodically fed, even if sporadically and usually with a lot less depth than in my freelance days. It's still a wonderful outlet for the bits of creative expression I can summon up, often more in the form of a photo documentation of where I've been, what's caught my eye. Since my job is a word factory, a "writing sweatshop" sometimes, photography lets me exercise another part of my brain altogether. Life continues to evolve in unexpected ways. So right now, I'm going to take 5 and enjoy the rest of the evening in peace.

Thank you all for being there on the journey.

Float time

Some interesting links:

Dale writes:  "I don't think anyone should work at a desk for a full workday. If you have to, then you must take care of yourself, by doing, at a minimum, this:... (including get the hell away from the desk)... (it's in part two, past the musings on massage therapists needing to take care of their body mechanics).

Simon Critchley, in the New York Times, writes that "Our lives are filled with the endless distractions of cell phones, car alarms, commuter woes and the traffic in Bangalore. The rhythm of modern life is punctuated by beeps, bleeps and a generalized attention deficit disorder" while happiness is to be like God (or, like floating in a boat in fine weather)...

Sara

Sara from Moving Right Along has passed away. Her True Love, as she always referred to him, posted a wonderful tribute here. Her writings were a joy to read, and I had the pleasure to meet her in person just once, all too briefly. Erik says it all:  "In her art she took delicate human emotion and put it out there for the world.  To Sara, art was an act of love and courage.   A love for life and beauty which was too big not to be shared..." Rest in peace, dear Sara.

--

I bookmarked a number of Sara's posts in Bloglines. Looking at them now, I just might have to make some of her very own Hair of the Ice Cream Dog Peach-Oatmeal-Spice Muffins. Very soon.

Revival

[Grape hyacinth, front yard; 3pm, 3/29/09]

Through the long winter months it's hard sometimes to remember that the cold and darkness will pass. And when spring comes, no matter how many times we've been through it, we're still surprised by the extraordinary life sprouting up all around us. Every day we spot something new that wasn't there yesterday. Look! Yellow buds on the forsythia! Or, Finally! Crocuses on the lawns in my town! Is that hyacinth? I had no idea it grew in front of my apartment! Granted, I only moved into this place last July, after the sunflowers had taken over the tiny front yard. There may be more surprises in store.

[Gardening supplies at the Ben Franklin five-and-dime; 12:30pm, 3/28/09]

When we're ailing, it's also hard to remember that it, too, will pass, in most cases. We forget that when the body's weak, the emotions tend to be also, confusing the mind. And when illness ends, it's like spring.  Each old pleasure newly found is a joy.

[Crocuses in Cushing Square, Belmont; 12:30pm, 3/28/09]

My tendonitis and muscle strains aren't completely healed yet, but I'm done with my 2 weeks on naproxen. It made me feel like I was walking around wearing a lead suit - that on top of the exhaustion I'd already been feeling from stress and overwork. Yesterday I also started on herbs to strengthen my chi that my acupuncturist had compounded for me. It's beginning to work. Grocery shopping was actually kinda fun today - I want to cook again! I'd also like to clean up the clutter that's accumulated around the house when I was too fatigued to do any more than the minimum. But that's going to take some time. Yesterday, I went to the library and I also compiled a list of books to borrow in the coming months. Perhaps optimistic, but that in itself is a good sign.

Last night I saw the new movie, Duplicity, with a friend. David Denby had given it a good review in The New Yorker, and I have to say it was quite enjoyable. Not hard to watch Clive Owens at any time, but the story was also good fun.

Well, getting offline - need to minimize typing and enjoy the rest of my free Sunday.

[Sprouting in front of the apartment, basement window, this afternoon]

New Year's Day 2009

[Highland Farm Meadow, Habitat Wildlife Sanctuary; 3:30pm, 1/1/09]

All day, brilliant sunshine streamed into my apartment. I puttered around, cleaning up the debris of travels and various dregs of 2008. I made Moroccan stew for lunch with the vegetables I'd bought for New Year's Eve in case I was stuck inside with the snowstorm (it cleared enough to go out and meet a friend for dinner, albeit on a street swirling with blown snow, Zhivago-like). I contemplated the Christmas tree, which should come down and be put out on the snowbank for Friday's trash pickup. Taking it down would remind me of putting it up, the shared negotiations of preferred placement, hand-offs of strands of garland and lights, the early weaving of romance soon thereafter cut short. I put it off.

[On Wellington Hill, Habitat Wildlife Sanctuary; 3:15pm, 1/1/09]

Mid-afternoon, I put long underwear on under my jeans, wool socks, a wool turtleneck sweater, my new hooded parka and warm snow boots, and drove over to the wildlife sanctuary. Cross-country skiers had tracked the trails, along with others like me tromping out in boots. I got very warm and unzipped my jacket, then very cold and zipped it all back up, depending on the direction of the wind and ups and downs of the terrain.

[On Highland Farm loop]

Positive thinking is all well and good, but only the gods are allowed perfection and then only sometimes. I've been thinking of this as I read exhortations to plot out our New Year's goals and to blast away negative thoughts that prevent us from manifesting our desires. What horseshit. Okay, not total horseshit - it's always good to examine how we get in our own way, including holding beliefs that we can't do something, and so forth. But to imagine that we have so much control over our destiny is hubris. And to think we can will away the old hurts and fears even when we know them clearly, leave them in the dust as we ride shining new into our future, is to set ourselves up for pain and confusion later when we find life doesn't cooperate, and the feelings we thought we left in the dust are still there and madder than ever at being ignored and stuffed away. Maybe they simply need to be accepted, along with accepting that whether or not life turns out as we hoped has little to do with perfecting ourselves.

[Potting shed; Habitat Wildlife Sanctuary]

I took down the tree last night after a long phone date with someone I'll meet for coffee later this weekend. It went easier than expected! There are things I want to renew a commitment to this year, and hopes and dreams that will or won't be fulfilled. Unanticipated joys and sorrows will appear suddenly in frame, detours and meanderings, and I will learn new things, meet new people, see new sights, see old sights anew. At 50, you realize life is short and you're not going to be given a new set of cards to play with, so you work with those you have as they grow less shiny and slippery and more textured and flexible.

---

Heh, just read Relatively Retiring's post, wishing us a Happy and Obscure New Year. Perfect.

Reflection

[Turtle Pond, Habitat Wildlife Sanctuary; 10:15am, 12/13/08]

Somewhere beneath the maelstrom of socializing, card-writing, work-accomplishing, tree-trimming, trip-planning, hand-wringing financial doomsaying, lovelife obsessing, obsession analyzing (ie, obsessing), exhaustion-inducing holiday shopping, cooking, cleaning shouldn't-we-be-hibernating... there is a cry for reflection. The winter solstice is this Sunday, followed in ten days by the calendar turn of year - take your pick.

Blessings 2008

1. A soft landing in a new nest
2. My walking flock, belonging
3. Fruit fresh from vine and tree, gifts at my doorstep
4. My fiftieth feted with friends
5. Golden State trip worth more than gold awarded
6. The audacity of the vote
7. A divergent path spied at the salt mines
8. Pilot light of a dream found still burning
9. At port for the storm, watching
10. Body and soul as yet holding hands

And thanks to all of you for being there. Happy Thanksgiving!

See last year's blessings here.

Beantown

[Custom House Tower, Boston MA; 1pm, 10/11/08]

I caught a wealth of images last weekend, so I thought I'd share the wealth.

Here are a couple more shots from last weekend. This weekend, too, looks to be beautiful. And, taking a page from the extreme ups and downs of the stock market, the Red Sox rallied last night from a 7-0 deficit in the 7th to win the game long after I'd gone to bed. So for now, all's well in Beantown.

[Trellis in Christopher Columbus Waterfront Park, North End]

[On the waterfront]

Life on Foggy Lane

This morning I brought my 80-year-old dad to the rental car agency so that he can go visit various friends and family back home for the week. I crossed my fingers, and prayed, assuming he'll make it up to New Hampshire and back in one piece; any drivers he cuts off without seeing will, as always, compensate, and he'll see enough of the rest of them to stay out of trouble. I remember being in the back seat a few years ago when he was driving with my mom and he pulled in front of someone and continued on, completely oblivious, while the other driver jammed on his brakes and I looked helplessly, wide-eyed, out the back window, willing the guy to be forgiving.

Anyway, as I was waiting in the car while my dad was inside signing the rental agreement (I'm leaving out the back-and-forth emails last week between us, culminating in my calling up the agency myself to straighten things out), I was thinking about how many people manage to get by in life without all of their faculties intact, including myself at times, by the grace of God and/or the kindness of strangers. Just this week, I forgot to pay my rent until a few days later when the check arrived in the mail from my own tenants. Oh, it's October? Damn! And yes, that's a fairly minor incident, but it's all I can remember at the moment. ;-)

I was reminded of this reading Amy's post today at Atlantic Ave about going to the gym wishing we could wear explanatory notes, such as "torn rotator cuff," offering "excuses for our temporary or permanent imperfections with no questions asked."...

"Around the gym... "Bad back."  "Arthritis."  "Pulled calf muscle."  "Just got bad news."  "Acute PMS." "Broken heart."  "Mild dementia."

I can so relate! So often I've wished I could pin a sign on myself explaining away my inability to function or be responsive enough to people when depleted of energy -- by allergies, insufficient sleep, stress, etc. Somehow we get by...

[Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco; 1pm, 9/27/08]