Laziness… the habit of resting before you’re tired

20 Jul 2022 Leave a comment

How to tell if something has become a habit… when you feel utterly miserable if you miss a day. Kim woke me up when he left for PickleBall, which I assume was around 6:30, and the next thing I knew it was nearly 8:00. When I stepped out onto the balcony the sun and thick hot air made me duck right back inside to think it over, whereupon I decided some buttery grits with toast and jam sounded more rejuvenating… and here we are.

If every day went according to plan, we’d be robots, but missing my morning walk will stick like glue and I’ll be looking for shade toward evening to make up for it. Seven months ago I couldn’t envision ditching the lifetime nerve pain and doing whatever I wanted to do… so now when I pass up opportunities to DO… I feel it. I’m calling that a beautiful thing while I line up the day… there’s usually enough to do.

I remember scorching summers, some total drought-makers, but the current heat wave feels ponderous even when the humidity is below 50%. In an era when all our chickens seem headed home to roost, I’m not holding out false hope for consistently milder weather any time soon, by which I mean I may never see that day again. Good to be old… I got to see most of it at least once. Live with this we will, kids, ’til we die. The human race is nearly inscrutable on every level, but one thing we know about us… even the gods can’t tell us a damn thing because we arrived here knowing it all.

Not a lot to write home about right now, just felt like checking in with everybody. And I saved another little stack of stuff to share with you…

Right off the top, a commentary on the past couple of weeks:

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In that vein, and don’t let on that I told you, but Kim always wanted to invent a Braille halter-top.

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I like to reiterate the following on a semi-regular basis to keep misinterpretations to a minimum if possible:

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This is critically important, so don’t skim past it…

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And this… shared by a wonderful friend… because I love it.

Image by Judy Smith

Almost the weekend…

14 Jul 2022 Leave a comment

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8:30am

Big flash of lightning and now it’s pelting down rain, so I’m glad I got my walk in early. Now that they can actually go somewhere, my feet yearn for the sidewalks every morning and it’s getting to be a happy friendship. The annoying platitudes people have hit us with all our lives are turning out to be true. “One step at a time,” for example. Life in five little words. I can’t sit here for very long in the mornings before I have to put on my Tevas and get outta here, and by now I know old dogs can relearn old tricks, which is beyond gratifying.

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1:00pm

Guess what, I have no rant for you today. It’s beautiful outside, although entirely on the hot side, Kim and I went for a drive in the country after PickleBall, I got an egg & cheese croissant, and we stopped at a roadside stand where he bought sweet corn that was picked this morning. We’ll have it tonight with grilled salmon, and garden cukes & tomatoes, and does it get any better than that… ?

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So I’m just here to share STUFF, the bits and pieces I save all week with you in mind. I steal some of it from my friend Steve, and find the rest lying around loose. Enjoy…

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And maybe related, maybe not…

Image by Judy Smith

Unraveling the threads…

13 Jul 2022 3 Comments

The other day I shared this little story on Facebook and it generated a brief but interesting conversation…

My impression was that I surprised at least a few people in the convo, catching them off-guard with a confessional comment or two… and I’ve thought about it since. We give it all sorts of names and labels… apprehension, disquiet, restlessness, watchfulness… but by any description, anxiety can be crippling. The first two years of isolation after COVID began showed me just how intricately-wrapped I was in the arms of silent worry. That sense of disquiet has been with me since before memory, and the reveal came because the isolation left me with nothing but time inside my own head.

If anxiety lives under your skin you’re likely to identify with some of this…

I’m saving the pertinent details for my bestseller, so on the “how did I get this way” front I’ll simply say for now that LIFE HAPPENS. It’s been extremely sweet to me in certain ways, though, so I’ve had my good moments, stumbling through life, even at times feeling marvelously (and temporarily) in control of my existence. I cherish those times, which are ongoing. But the flipside that we’re not talking about right now never goes away, just hangs out in doorways and dark alleys waiting to trip me up and put me on the wrong side of myself. It takes only a word or a look, an image from the past, a riff of a song, a perceived disappointment… and that other me takes over. I don’t like her at all because all the things I want to be… she isn’t. I keep thinking year by year that we’ll reach a peaceful settlement, she and I… but she’s tricky and has been running the show far longer than the me I really am… the one who’s strong through everything and knows what she’s doing. (For some reason the witchy half of me just laughs when I say that.)

If you’re me, with Anxiety in the driver’s seat, you drag your feet about making plans, even though you want to see the people involved. It’s complicated. You make all your doctors’ appointments for afternoon because you need the whole morning to get mentally ready for it, which includes showering and dressing. Situations encompassing more than four people are anxiety-inducing because despite spending ridiculous dollars on high-tech hearing assists you can’t hear shit… all the voices and background sounds blend together, obliterating consonants from the beginnings and endings of words, which renders them unintelligible. My glued-on but sincere smile and the occasional nod of my head are intended to convey a general sense of understanding on my part, along with the acknowledgment that it doesn’t really matter, I know there won’t be a test, we’re all just being sociable here… as anxiety percolates.

Phone calls are a test of will, mine against the witch under my skin. The anxiousness attached to this one harkens back to the days before I realized I was losing my hearing, I just knew people were talking softer and faster and why was this happening all at once? I’m realizing that it’s really not such a big deal to have a phone conversation, and it’s where these expensive earbuds shine, so I’m on the verge of winning this one. In fact, since breaking out of the prison of nerve pain, I’ve been taking on lots of tiny challenges and winning, which bodes better for the future.

I’ve learned how to be a duck, calm on the surface, paddling for my life underneath, which as it turns out is the definition of adulting. And I’m learning that the world of my thoughts is the true one… as long as I keep them real. When I was little I wondered what people did after 40 or so, when they knew everything. Just read books ’til they died, I figured.

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I don’t know the answer to the question posed in the graphic, but I know I’m a champion at letting things steal my joy. I can break my own heart in record time with conversations that never happened, slights that never came my way at all. It’s crazy.

But never mind, it’ll all be in the book…

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Image by Judy Smith

Personhood…

11 Jul 2022 3 Comments

**Ironically, Mr. Salinger was one of them.**

Tomorrow will be the coolest day this week at 89º, then mid to upper 90s after that for the foreseeable. Mornings are prime and on this one I managed to kick myself out the door after doing less than nothing all day yesterday. I love wandering around East Lawrence… there are no two houses alike, and I see something new every morning. There’s art everywhere… on the porches and in yards… not for sale, but because artists on this end of town are crawling out of the woodwork and then carving it into fantastical shapes. I’ve been staying on good sidewalks for a little while… just a stage in the process… but I’m about ready for all-out hiking with Rita again when it isn’t dangerously stifling outside.

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The fallout from the Supremes’ ill-advised meltdown continues, and it affects every one of us who values herself as a person, especially since it takes some of us a lifetime to get there after being “groomed” to believe we’re weak, ineffective, wrong, and less-than. I was close to 60 before I started really getting to know and appreciate myself, and this official smackdown feels personal despite the fact that I turned in my baby-making equipment decades ago. It was never about babies anyway… it’s always been about power and control. For all the reasons, I have a problem with that approach, and I know I’m not the only one. Millions of women are still consistently voting against their own safety and well-being, but millions more know we’ve been had from the beginning, and I doubt your run-of-the-mill man-on-the-street has a clue how deep that current runs. We can’t please everyone, nor is that our reason for existing.

Why would I care… I’m old, right? Why do I even harbor an opinion? What if half my fellow Americans want me to fade out and shut up about all of it? Sorry, not that old yet. I go on Twitter in the mornings and wave my freak flag around for a while, happily giving a heart to everything I agree with, mouthing off, venting, picking up a few laughs… then wander away to Facebook with my adult face on (sometimes). I’m harmless, if annoying, and people should be grateful I don’t have the piss & vinegar to be an actual problem, which is true of most “old” people I know. Word of advice: Don’t turn your back on us.

I say we purposely go about changing the perception that we’re accessories who are better seen but not heard in public…

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General male wisdom** holds that feelings and emotions interfere with real life, but Mansi and I say…

**My personal husband Kim Smith is exempt from all such aspersions.

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Apropos of nothing, and reflecting only a mood of fond reminiscence…

I’m fine, it’s fine, everything’s fine, hope you’re fine…

Image by Judy Smith

Living in harmony…

08 Jul 2022 Leave a comment

Good morning, fellow conspirators, I hope your day’s spooling out in proper order so far. In my own little world, I was gently awakened with the words “There’s a bagel waiting for you,” and indeed there was. Everything… toasted… still warm…with veggie schmear… after which I was ready for anything, so I walked to Massachusetts… and from there to the Kaw to watch it roar and tumble. I stay close to the head-high railing because lots of bicyclists go back and forth on the walkway and I can’t always hear their shouted “On your right” or “on your left.” This morning I waited for someone on a bright yellow bike to pass, but instead the rider slowed and pulled to a stop. He turned out to be a very cheerful skinny old man my age who immediately struck up a conversation about how much water continues to sluice through town from the west. Turns out he’s a retired professor from Baker University by way of Atlanta, lives not far from downtown, loves to ride the bridge, and has a knack for making somebody’s day. Old people are so precious… if you make eye contact we’ll talk to you, so watch yourself, but we do know shit and we feel seen when somebody acts marginally interested.

From the category of Unsought Information… you see me talking about walking to various states. Here’s the deal… I’ve always heard that our north/south streets were named in the order the states entered the union, so here’s what I did, I googled it. Right there’s the fraction of difference between thinking you know something and finding out. Here’s what I found…

ARE LAWRENCE’S STATE STREETS REALLY NAMED FOR STATES IN THE ORDER THEY CAME INTO THE UNION?

Great question! The answer is, sort of. Here are the states by order of entry into the Union. If you go by this list, the state streets in Lawrence are numbers 1, 2, 3, 11, 5, 13, 9, 6 (Massachusetts). Then numbers 14 (Vermont) through 27 (Florida) are in perfect order. Then it goes 32, 30, 38, 31, 29 (Iowa). It seems that after Iowa Street, the city planners pretty much gave up. Here is a great article on the reasons (or lack thereof) behind this order. It’s interesting to note many of the southern states were purposefully left out.

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Okay, there ya’ go, make of it what you will… or can. My job is to keep walking cross-country.

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Currently making the rounds online is a rant that requires a second and third look and a well-measured rebuttal, which someone has been kind enough to provide. I hope everyone on social media who reads the first installment will also read the second. The first makes one kind of statement, the second another.

From the article accompanying the quotes:

“The most interesting thing about the initial post is the sense of victimization coming from the original poster. It seems to say that having to pay attention to issues of justice and civil rights and being asked to acknowledge the ongoing impact of historical oppression and what role each of us might play in keeping others down somehow takes something away from them.

“Being asked to see and care about victims of injustice doesn’t make you a victim yourself. The logic there is so strange. And what does it mean to shove being gay down someone’s throat? Because of course it would be reasonable to push back against someone actually cramming something down your throat, but in this context ‘shove it down my throat’ usually means ‘did something publicly in my line of vision.’ Not the same thing.”

A commenter said: “I spend so much time surrounded by straight guys who talk about nothing except women’s bodies and sex, but my pride flag bumper sticker is apparently throwing my sexuality in people’s throats.”

See interpretation below…

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We want to believe that the divisions are many, but it’s really all one thing and nobody wants to deal with it down to a nubbin until it’s actually solved… how to survive together on a small planet.

Image by Judy Smith

Laissez le bon temp rouler…

20 Jun 2022 Leave a comment

Just as there are weeks that are a challenge from beginning to end, there occasionally comes a string of days outstanding enough to keep us in the game a while longer. Our week started on Saturday… Beatles’ Night at the winery from 4 to 9pm… nineteen acts, 3 songs each… hotter’n’ little blue blazes all day, but shady under the trees, with a wandering cool breeze for rescue. We packed the little rolling Coleman with cheese & crackers, watermelon, seltzer, sweat rags, and ice, and were undoubtedly among the happiest campers there. I mean, we do know most of the lyrics… and the updated renditions were really nice. I met a new friend, sitting back of us a little, who entertained herself and her husband by commenting on everything we did and tracking our wine consumption over the five hours we were there. Everyone brings us happiness… some when they show up, some when they leave. This morning I would define a good date as one where you can be outside, listen to nonstop music, buy and enjoy homegrown wine, eat parmesan French fries from the food truck plus the healthy stuff in the cooler, and step back into your teens for a few hours with the California musician who has no plans for growing up. By those standards, Saturday was the best date in memory, except that little sister was missing. Come to think of it though, I never DID take her on my dates with me, so…

We’re off to a great start, which will save my bacon, I can already see the writing on the wall. It’s on a card, to be honest, and it’s a date that never got entered into my phone. It’s my haircut appointment and my brain checked in with me just in time not to miss it, which is not only deeply disappointing when it happens, but a cardinal sin against my wonderful hairdresser. It’s never happened with this one. May it never happen.

So that’s two things. And Kim had a good Father’s Day, which included a terrific phone convo with his son Henry and a loving text from John… and he realized he’s within days of learning the outcome of his cancer diagnosis and treatment. We expect the numbers to be stellar. There simply are times like this, and we never know when they’re going to hit or how long they’ll last, so we hoard them a little… ammunition for later.

Since we’re on a roll, today was my 6-month post-op checkup with Dr. Carlson, during which I got straight A’s and so did he. The X-ray showed the metal cage is firmly ensconced in my back and nothing has shifted, I’m right where I’m supposed to be in the recovery process, and my next visit with him in six months will be my last unless something goes wrong further up my spine. I miss him already. He’s a bundle of gifts, talent, knowledge, and experience wrapped around a big heart and killer personality… and he’s returned my life to me. Since he’s a KU grad and comes here for all the B-ball games, he wants to meet us at one of the local breweries sometime, which will feel like Old Home Week if it happens.

People I love seem to be getting over various hurdles, recovering from illness, dealing well with endings and beginnings, so make a note: The middle of June 2022 was worth writing home about for the Smiths and the smith-adjacent. Betcha’ wish you could rub shoulders with us this week. You can. Bring tequila.

Image by Judy Smith

The trick is to keep moving…

17 Jun 2022 4 Comments

[A reblog from 2022]

This morning it struck me that ten years after following John’s suggestion to start a blog, I’m still here. You know the old question, “Where do you see yourself in five years… ten years?” If anyone has ever gotten that one totally right, I’d love to meet them. The past ten years have been packed with events, milestones, eruptions, and weirdness… who among us could have predicted COVID and its ongoing effects? And now someone I love is miserably ill with it for a second time, despite two shots, two boosters, and vigilance, so it’s never going away. We’re stuck in the circumstances of our own ignorance and inflexibility… twin curses of being human.

Speaking of which… the effects of ignorant inflexible human behavior are on display every few days now in the 1/6 hearings, showing us how deeply entrenched kakistocracy has become. Just as during Watergate, it’s demoralizing to hear and read the things said and done by people who were elected to work for the good of all. The money they’ve made off with. The laws they’ve broken. The lives they’ve destroyed. Apparently it’s necessary, every fifty years or so, to hold up a mirror so Miss American Pie can see if she’s done yet. The assessment from here is that she’s on life support, hemorrhaging, her coffers raided, and she’s being stripped for parts by the worst of the worst. It’s an uphill climb for people of goodwill who want her healthy and happy. More of an Everest, really.

Where we find ourselves…

**Truth can shock us upon first hearing.**

I have yet to meet the elephant I won’t discuss. As Kim likes to say, “I ain’t skeered,” and there’s very little that has the power to back me off of issues I care about. In this third trimester of living, it feels like there’s less to lose by simply being me. If what I say here or outside my door drives you crazy, makes you want to hurt me, beat me, make me write bad checks… that’s a you problem. For me, a diary with accountability has been just the ticket for getting through the past ten years of intense stress and change, and I owe a deep debt of gratitude to John for his discernment and wise advice. Also apologies for embarrassing him on the regular, but he did ask for it, when you think it out…

This is all coming from an old girl who cares far less about far more things than she used to… and far more about the things that actually matter.

Meanwhile, it’s hot. Damn hot.

Image by Judy Smith

The arc… bends…

15 Jun 2022 Leave a comment

We’ve made it to HumpDay of yet another engaging week in the life of the USA and smaller environs, including my hideout. After just short of a year’s fast from televised news, I’ve been compelled to tune in to the 1/6 hearings because although history does repeat itself, it happens only once in the flesh. Before I tuned out of news-watching, I was an MSNBC girl, mostly by process of elimination, the same process that took place Monday morning before the start of the second hearing. I was early by fifteen minutes, so I clicked the remote, looking for a spot to land. Tried C-SPAN first, three ancient talking heads droning on as to what the imminent proceedings might portend. Looked at CNN, chose not to stick with the panel in place. Stopped by the networks, ABC, NBC, CBS, moved on. They were all still ensconced in the bubble and squeak of their Hello-America-How-Are-You morning fare, instantly reminding me that there’s a too-casual way of addressing world news. So I settled in with my old friends at MSNBC, remarking to Kim, now home from PickleBall, on the changes since we’d last seen the gang. Nearly everyone looked younger, shinier, more rested, which speaks to the reduced political angst they’re tasked with tracking every day, and it’s clear that things are changing for the better, even when we can’t see it happening. So that’s encouraging, as is the fact that no one can stop the truth. It comes out.

A footnote from the first morning’s hearing…

I watched most of the Watergate hearings in 1973 on a little black & white TV while my 3-year-old played and napped, and the names and shenanigans are still vivid. Shenanigans is precisely what they were, as opposed to the sedition that was being fomented by the Trump administration. In fact, by comparison there is no comparison. The recent series “Gaslit” provided a good look back at the quaint and silly misdeeds of the Nixon administration, and a timely contrast with the treasonous crimes of Trump’s. I can’t wait for the remainder of the current hearings. I assume they’re mostly preaching to the choir, but even the choir likes a good schematic.

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So yeah, if you’re goin’ back in, might as well dive deep.

All things considered… Russia’s war against Ukraine, racial and political unrest in the US, gun violence off the charts, economic uncertainty [I could do this all day]… our inability to accept each other will end us more efficiently than any of the above. I wish we could get it together, but with age comes realism. I get along with Kim as seamlessly as any experience of my lifetime, but words are as tricky for us as for all other humans and we can mistake each other’s meaning in a heartbeat. In light of that reality, why do we harbor the fiction that the world can learn to get along? It’s an impossible assignment… and yet, what else is even worth fighting for?

The week is not over. Finish strong.

Image by Judy Smith

Always with the questions…

10 Jun 2022 6 Comments

So many questions… so much time… so few answers. The days are long, and rife with opportunities to think, which has never intimidated me but there’s so much more to think about now. I had grandparents who told me stories to which I listened like my life depended on it… and there have been times it has. They were all born in the 1800s except for one grandmother, the kid in the crowd, and they experienced a lot of things so we wouldn’t have to, such as life without A/C, motor vehicles, or consumer-protection laws. They knew things… and it’s taking me this long to catch up. My attentive listening lacked meat on its bones… life experiences to flesh out the facts simmering in my subconscious. Those necessary learning opportunities did come along, bit by bit, as they will, providing what feels like a unique perspective but is instead universal, I’m pretty sure.

Let’s do a quick checklist and see where we are, just out of curiosity. Raise your hand, nod your head, blink twice, say a rosary, whatever’s most affirming, for each thing you identify with as I blurt it out:

Planet Earth seems to be out of control
because it always was
but this feels excessive. Like disastrously crazy off the wall.
Is that why I feel sad and tired all the time? Do you feel sad and tired a lot?
Do you wonder when [if] this sensation of living in a state of limbo will end?
Do you miss the Before time when we knew less about our neighbors and family members?
And that was a good thing?
Do you think about your life and wonder what it’s all meant? Or is the point, as someone said yesterday, simply to live?
Were there things said to you by older people that seemed clear enough at the time… but you didn’t actually have a clue? And if you consider yourself to be “getting older” now, are some of those things becoming starkly real? Do you feel the parameters shifting?

One of my grandmas told me when she was in her 80s that her life had become very lonely. Our family spent as much time with her as we could, but I know we didn’t touch that existential loneliness that assails the human spirit. She’d outlived all of her German cousins and most of her friends… no one shared a past history with her… all her reference points were changing. As her granddaughter, consumed with my own life, I couldn’t begin to reach in and touch that sense of unease, alienation… solitude. But I do get it now.

A dear friend the other day was relating a dream whose meaning was too-easily discerned, and I said to him “There is no lonelier proposition than human existence, even with someone we nearly worship living right beside us.” Our minds and spirits take us to far places where no one can accompany us, and we wrestle with each of those worlds alone. The truth that “we are born alone, we die alone” becomes clearer as we go along… nobody can really tag along on those two trips, nor during much of the in-between. As Uncle Walter Cronkite might say, “That’s just the way it is.”

As the physical healing proceeds, I’ve been coming up with ways to feel not productive but useful, big difference. It’s still in the “I could” stage, but the ideas themselves build a sense of hope, which we can’t live without. And it helps keep the big shaggy hound from the door… the one that creeps in, sits on your chest in the dark, stares you down, and beats you with the awareness of your own empty solitude. So… what are you looking at this morning that seems insurmountable? Or merely annoying beyond words? What one thing could you change that would start to make a difference? Go get another cup of coffee, think about the question(s), write down whatever goes through your mind, reread it over the next few days… see what happens. Lemme know. Please.

Existential loneliness has been momentarily banished this morning by sunshine after rain, a peaceful house, and a breakfast of cheesy scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast. It’s the little things. Make your weekend restful, healing, and fun.

Image by Judy Smith

June showers bring…

06 Jun 2022 3 Comments

Thursday it didn’t rain, so Rita and I spent a couple of hours walking where mud isn’t much of a factor… stopping by pretty little lakes… watching goose couples cruise with their fuzzy tan goslings in tow… catching up after her recent trip to the MiniApple. Friday it didn’t rain, so I walked a circuit of several city blocks while Kim played at SPL. Saturday it started raining midmorning and kept it up until evening so I stayed in and observed. Sunday it rained… chalk up a lazy weekend for this girl. It’s Monday… new week… and the day started with rain. Guess what, chicky, it’s spring and spring gonna rain, just get out there. So I walked to the river and watched it roar, which set my clock for the day, and now the plan is to trek between showers for the rest of the week. You’re allowed to keep me accountable…

The Mighty KAW

A few pearls from the past week…

And on that note… stop by Comments and say hello. 😊

Image by Judy Smith

Sunrise… sunset…

30 May 2022 Leave a comment

There’s everything to be said for second chances. We don’t all get one in every situation. In fact, the greater the need for a second shot, the less likely we’ll be afforded one. They’re handed out like candy when we’re little, so someone should warn us early on that life doesn’t continue in that vein and that we should think, first of all, and then wait to act on an idea until we’re pretty sure it’s a good one.

When I came to a semi-conscious conclusion a few years ago that life as I’d known it was ending, in terms of physical capabilities, I failed to consider the major ramifications of shutting down. Not that I had a real choice… when pain rules, you do what it says, and it took me to some dark places before Dr. Carlson put a stop to it for me. But going to ground and closing the door in your third trimester of life is a serious undertaking which requires equally serious effort to reverse.

Change is underway. This morning, like an actual person, I drove across town again on a valid license to check on a friend, stopped at Einstein’s for a bagel, paid for it with my updated credit card whose pin number I know, parked Kim’s truck back in its spot without destroying anything anywhere, and I feel slightly reborn. It’s like someone raised a curtain and there was the world, big as life and twice as natural. It’s ridiculous… at almost 75 it feels in lots of ways like I’m just getting started.

I hope the central message floats to the top of all the I/me/we, and lights up in neon: DON’T QUIT!! Whatever’s stopping you from living your life… physically, mentally, spiritually… don’t give in to it unless that’s the only choice available, which was coming true for me until six months ago. If there’s any chance to maintain a vital life of your own… do it. It takes great energy to come back, and the time consumed is staggering. But step by step… slowly we turn… and life goes on.

There are Memorial Day observances around town today, and something big going on in South Park for kids, but things were pretty quiet this morning after Busker weekend. One block of 8th street is still closed, with booths in place, so it ain’t over ’til it’s over. Feels like a Sunday…

Image by Judy Smith

The celebrations of life…

28 May 2022 2 Comments

This weekend is Busker Fest in Lawrence America, a 4-day street-performer extravaganza that includes various sound-stages close to downtown, music everywhere, art parades, food booths, merch booths, contests, feats of derring-do, delights for the kiddos, Farmers Market, and untold other good stuff. It started the year before we moved here, and that’s probably the only one we’ve missed. What we love most is knowing it’s happening and that families are having a great time… we watch the steady stream of walkers heading from East Lawrence to Mass Street, and grin big… the underlying vibe here is a healing one. When I’m out driving or walking there isn’t a heavy sense that half the people around me hate what I love, or that I’m a minnow who somehow slipped into the piranha tank. Other than the occasional pygmy shark, there’s been no real threat detected most days.

Turns out early morning on a Saturday is a great time to drive across town, who knew? I had an errand at 7:30 and since everything around downtown is blocked off for the festival, I took different routes there and back, soaking up the cool morning air. There were people out everywhere but very little traffic, and I was truly in Free State Kansas. Tiny piece of unsolicited advice from The Big Sister… never shut down and give up on living, it’s hard to ramp it all up again and put things back where they belong. Pain started shutting things down shortly after we moved here… I stopped talking on the phone due to hearing loss… I lost energy for being social due to both of the above… and a senior neurosurgeon told me there was no way to stop the nerve pain in my body. Things… they happen. My driver’s license was expired for six months, which didn’t matter that much since I was never behind the wheel anyway, but another six and I’d have had to retake all the tests and jump through a few other hoops. There are small mercies…

Life returns, to bodies and to societies, although it’s sadly true that both usually have to hit rock bottom before coming back.

**I’m grateful to the special people who’ve gotten me this far… and with a legal driver’s license even!**

******

Image by Judy Smith

Streaming Kansas…

24 May 2022 Leave a comment

It started raining sometime after midnight and has paused only momentarily since. Down in the parking lot there’s a small truck with a large green canoe lashed over top of it, which is reassuring as we may have need of it by Thursday. All this spring rain is wonderful and will benefit everything… as it simultaneously adds to the general lethargy. I haven’t yet tested the outer limits of my capacity for the Magnolia Network, even on mute, but it’s only a matter of time… perhaps this is the day I quietly go mad and Kim comes home to a mere whisper of the person formerly known as his wife. Anything could transpire as the chill rain pelts against windows that were just this morning professionally washed via power-lift, despite the obvious liquidity of the surroundings at the time. Don’t ask, I am mos def not in charge here. I’m very glad for that fact, and you should be, too.

Being happy in the rain really isn’t that heavy an assignment for a reclusive Pollyanna, and I thank my friend-cousin for this reminder…

We don’t understand until we get there, but all the “wise” things older people have said to us about life? Those people were being brutally honest, and the process only becomes more honest and more brutal as it plays out. It’s all real, and mostly based on our own choices.

**This too is our choice… to trust enough not to give up on humanity nor ourselves, and to refuse to lose the things that matter.**

The “love unconditionally” part is the kicker and we all know it. Gud luck to us.

Image by Judy Smith

Take me home, country roads…

10 May 2022 2 Comments

Word on the street has always been that you can’t go home again, and that seems like a wise release-mechanism… you can leave but you can never really return, you have to keep moving forward. In that light, there are places I’ll be okay not ever seeing again, along with the people who determined the atmosphere there. But for about five hours yesterday evening, Rita and I slipped back “home” and it was good stuff. We were with childhood friends… sisters… in a peace-filled house, enjoying beautiful appetizers and wine, talking nonstop, and the first time I thought of the clock it was 6:30… the next, almost 8:30! We picked up where we left off the last time we were together, some seven or eight years ago, and even though we all grew up in and around the same tiny Kansas town, the conversation was far more about life as it is now than about people we thought we knew then, and vice versa. Small towns… where people know or surmise everything you do and say, and consider it their life’s duty to help regulate same. By accepted standards of the times we grew up in, we’re country girls gone wild… tomorrow one sister will fly home to her partner and her wide-ranging interests, and the other will leave for meetings in three different countries. A third sister will keep pursuing goals that have little to do with former dreams and instead are all about the here and now. And the fourth will continue to observe and learn, grateful for another shot at life in a healthy body, and hatching ideas for the immediate future.

We were so busy being together none of us thought to take pictures, which is fine because even a SMART phone couldn’t have captured the essence. Sweet, easy, real, loving… and the kind of acceptance that heals. One of those relationships where you say endlessly “We HAVE to catch up!” and then one day the stars align and it happens… and it’s always worth the wait.

Surrounded by cheap knock-offs of everything in life, it’s reaffirming to see that some things truly never change because they’re the real deal. What solace and joy in this present era.

Image by Judy Smith

The longest day…

05 May 2022 2 Comments

Life is too short and sometimes too long. It zips past while it drags by, minute by minute… and four days of chill overcast this deep into spring is three too many. The hue outside my windows is brand-new-wet-spring-psycho-neon-green, though, and who’s actually complaining? We’re swiftly losing East Lawrence to the forest, so goodbye church spire… yellow house… construction project… apartment complexes… see you in the fall. Feels cozy and benign, but sunshine will truly be lovely when it gets here.

A string of warm sunny days would ease the newsfeed angst just a bit. Every day brings its load of creeping disaster, and the gloomy skies make it all just a tad much. The fact that I don’t watch TV coverage anymore keeps it at a workable distance, but the following is true…

“In all our searching, the only thing we’ve found that makes the emptiness bearable is each other.”

~ Carl Sagan

… so it takes the company of other humans to help process and deal with all of it. I’m a social creature only in small doses so my outside input comes primarily from people on social media whose vibe connects with mine, people I’d never meet any other way who make life better on a daily basis. My sense of human decency threatens every day to extract me from Twitter, but my heart keeps me there among chosen connections. Facebook can be a trial too, but my longterm relationships there mean it would likely require an all-out fascist takeover of the platform for me to leave it. We all need people we can talk to, and Kim shouldn’t have to fill that role for me 24 hours a day, uncomplaining buddy that he is, so I’ll keep hanging out on the internet because it’s preferable to either prison or a padded cell.

******

Kids, I got this far, writing as therapy, and decided I didn’t have anything to say. OMG, has there been a longer day in recent memory?? It’s 3:30pm and feels like 6!

******

So that’s how yesterday was. Just one of those days. Hints of sun this morning, but chilly and breezy… with more rain predicted this afternoon. The sense of limbo that settled in during the pandemic goes on and on and I’m always quietly braced for some other shoe to drop, so I need to get outside with my walking poles and exorcise my demons. Just have to hang in through today and then it looks like this…

Turns out I really DIDN’T have anything to say, but I think I’ve found the problem…

******

Please enjoy it all, rain or sun, and make it work for you.

Image by Judy Smith

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