Sunday Morning Sunshine… Harry Chapin. I hadn’t thought of either one in years, but here it is back, pouring through the window blinds, and into my ears. Too chilly for outdoor PickleBall this morning, but Kim caught some sun on the balcony a while ago and now he’s heading up to the workout room… and he’ll be riding his bicycle to a car show on the south edge of town this afternoon, masked and socially-distanced in the great outdoors. Thankfully he’ll never shed his Southern California DNA; whereas, my mornings mostly look like this and don’t measurably improve by the hour:
I’m trying not to slide off into feelings this weekend. We’ve kept a temporary lid on TV news and avoided the rest wherever possible… mostly. It does help. The Chiefs/Patriots game has been postponed, apparently due to COVID issues, so there goes the best long-play distraction on the schedule for today, dammit-cwap. So selfish of those guys not to risk their lives for my sanity.
There’s too much beauty around us to worry about it – Kim’s mums on the roof are loving fall and so are we. And today’s Matt’s birthday, so I’m celebrating with him in my heart and via cyberspace, and remembering Danny. ❤️
It’s so beautiful outside I can barely stand it – the air smells fresh, the sky looks real, the leaves are leaving, as they are wont to do. I’ve sat here at my computer all morning drinking coffee… reading… writing… absorbing. The world we semi-count on for equilibrium shifts beneath us every day and we’re off on another magic-carpet ride, hoping to avoid free-fall. This morning it’s POTUS, FLOTUS, assorted leaders and staff testing positive for COVID. Just another day in paradise.
Rita sent a Play Date invite, so after Kim brings lunch home from Cielito I’ll get my lazy butt outta here and go keep her company while she works. It’s harrrrd to get moving sometimes – it requires a nudge and the right incentive.
Day 105 – 10/03/2020
I went there, did that, and it made my day, as I knew it would. I’m not much help, but at least she isn’t working in a big space all by herself for ALL the hours with only sweet Dementia-Dog for company. Maybe the fresh air was too rich, maybe the stairs kicked my butt… whatever, I came home at 4:00 and died in my recliner for a couple of hours. Honest labor is rough on a person.
We got news and pics of a brand-new great-great-niece while we were hanging out yesterday. Her mama is our great-niece… her Oma is our niece… and her great-grandma, GiGi, is our SIL, younger than both of us by a ways. Life comes at ya’ fast and it does go on. Sweet. 💕
And now it’s Saturday, sunny, in the 50s. Kim made a batch of banana mini-loaves before I woke up and now he’s over in NoLaw, presumably having found at least a foursome for PickleBall. I’ve had a cup & a half of coffee… read a few things… looked at some posts. Feels like the world’s still turning so let’s do this, weekend. How about you surprise us in good ways by Monday… ?
🧡💛💚🤎💚💛🧡
See how you are, life? We ask, we get sometimes, and you’ve already brought more sunshine. Breakfast somehow tasted better this morning than any previous Saturday in memory, and now Kim’s out soaking up the Ds, sharing his tunes with the immediate neighborhood. I still have coffee, and I saw football on TV when I walked through the big room. I can hear it at a low buzz… so soothing… so reminiscent of a life we still knew just last fall. The less I know of world news between now and Monday morning, the happier I’ll be.
And now a couple of young guys are on our corner shooting cool skateboard footage. Mellow-Man on the balcony captured this mid-air shot and my brain adds the sounds and fall aromas…
This was last fall beneath the spreading oak tree… our friend Will, gently walking his longtime companion Zoey who didn’t make it to see another beautiful autumn at the HTL this year. Their loyalty and love for each other were impressive and we miss seeing them together.
The sky is clear-blue and cloudless today, starting out in the 30s, now 64º. Kim rode his bike over to NoLaw for PickleBall… and my lowball idea is to get one thing off my plate before evening – just pick something and do it. BIG EXCITEMENT: It’s a move-ahead day in my game, WOOT!! Progress happens in my life, just not out where anyone else can see it.
It feels all-the-way-fall outside… clean and bright, with the leaves popping off the color charts. I’m already thinking about hibernation and hoping that when we emerge from the cave next spring the world will be new again. It’s that kinda day…
It’s so weird that September’s ending when by rights it should still be spring. I sense a disturbance in the force today… everything’s just a little off-kilter, out of harmony. This season-change thing is not for amateurs.
We survived the first of three presidential debates last night but I’ve been worthless all day, which those two tequila shots played no part in, I’m sure. That would be a shame since they were the best part of the evening.
We stopped by to see Rita and she gifted us the best watermelon we’ve had all summer. Time spent with her elevates the flavor of any day so this one has turned out far better than I had a right to hope for when I woke up. I haven’t accomplished anything, but it helps that I keep my expectations low.
The tree below my window is standing there reminding me that life is freaking beautiful… and that’s quite enough in this moment. 🍂🍁
Rainy misty Sunday… no breeze… all the red orange yellow green leaves silently blessing the falling water. And now here comes the wind, swaying the color bands out there in the great forest of East Lawrence, rain pounding down in earnest. Perfect. And me here with a belly full of breakfast and great coffee, water running in the spa tub. Most of the time real happiness is closer than breathing.
Today is my mom’s birthday and she’d be 93 years old now. She was three weeks short of 20 when I was born and I sort of helped raise her I think, before all my competition started showing up. She died suddenly in 1995 when she was 67, so we’ve been missing her for a long time. My iMac either dumped or hid several folders full of family pics and I realize as I’m searching this morning that all the photos of Mother are gone except this one, her high school senior pic. Maybe that’s okay for now… I can’t picture her at 93, so celebrating her at 18 is sweet.
Welp, Diary, it’s just you and me today – Kim’s playing PickleBall and then he’ll be in Car Show Heaven for a few hours… after he makes the Saturday breakfast, of course, and not because his wife’s a needy wench, it’s part of the weekend.
I was surprised by my pretty toes this morning after looking at raggedy pigs for months on end. Staying viably human seems really important right now for not losing sight of me and not inviting an *Undesirable* label via my icky and useless elderliness. Takes a little effort, but it never hurts to look your best, wherever you’re going.
… wearing great lipstick and nail polish. 💋
Toemail…
Sometimes, like right now, I wonder about the ways other people are interfacing with the compounded challenges we wake up to every day. Has the inescapable reality of current events caused people to dig deeper for understanding, or are the majority still managing to avoid the inescapable, as humans are wont to do. It’s only curiosity, but it would be encouraging to know that most people are looking soberly at the world this morning.
It will all be… what it will all be, and there’s a payload of peace in accepting that. My head and heart have had me in fight mode since 2015 and now they’re tired. Not giving up, not giving in, just resting in the knowledge that I’ve been faithful to say what I know and the weight of the world doesn’t rest on my shoulders. We’re at the nexus… the things that happen now will come at warp speed and they’re entirely out of our hands save for one crucial item, our VOTE. Meanwhile, attitude is everything.
“Morning will come, it has no choice.”
― Marty Rubin
Something that brought its own kind of joy yesterday… and needs to be kept for whatever posterity follows… my Uncle Vic, who turned 91 this year and has spent a lot of his life delving into and recording our family genealogy, found his dad’s, my grandpa’s, military registration card online. Grandpa joined the Army at 17 and fought at the front in the European Theater before coming home to start a dynasty, so the call-up is surprising and amusing.
Grandpa was a 43-year-old self-employed electrician with an industrial-strength family by the time this showed up. My cousin Michael, Uncle Vic’s eldest, says: It’s a draft notice, even though 1) he’d already served, 2) he had 8 kids in school, and 3) he had a son in the Navy! Grandma said, “Nice try, but you’re staying home.”
My grandpa, WWI, 17 years old
My grandparents, their nine children, and first grandchild, around the time Grandpa got his midlife draft notice.
Reese DNA is marinated in service to country and all six of my uncles served in the military, three of them in Korea at the same time.
My Uncle Vic in Korea, about age 21. The other two brothers were 17 and 19.
Uncle Vicin January 2020, 90 years old, beating a grandson at cards.You don’ wanna mess wit da’ lions. Note the Reeses mug.
That was then… this is now. They survived the unthinkable, all of them… why should we not hope for the same grace?
Plans, they change. Hanging with Rita didn’t happen yesterday, but today worked out and even better. She scheduled pedi’s for this morning, and Kim met us for lunch in Cielito’s courtyard, which was all kinds o’ fun and therapeutic as always.
Some people read my mail, Rita reads my blog – same thing – so she knows how tied in knots I am. We don’t talk much about current events lately, what’s the point, but even if there wasn’t a gut-spilling blog for her to absorb, she’d know. When we couldn’t spend time together yesterday she texted me a shot of encouragement to disallow him-who-shall-not-be-named from taking up room in my head and stealing the joy out of my heart. And to remember that it’s my life and I can willfully choose to cut out the chatter. And that we already know how dire it is, so we have to live every day like it’s our final one – because it just could be. I think my work here is done: the last has become first, the baby sister has the words the big sister needs, and the world will obviously keep on turning.
Fall officially starts today, 2020 having caused us to sidestep spring and summer this trip around the sun. It’s beautiful – days in the 70s, low 80s, nights in the low 50s, and the leaves are responding accordingly. The tree across the street that burns from top down every year has burst into flame, and now the leaves in its center are turning. Eventually, they’ll all be down around the matching truck on the street and another autumn will enter the record books.
My fat spider in the window has retreated for the day, and I’m starting to think about mine, having eased into it with the best coffee in town, Kim’s. I have a date with Rita mid-morning to get back into her project with intent, so we’ll see where the day goes from there. Yesterday’s SI-joint injection is showing signs of having a good effect, which creates hope for accomplishing things, as people do when they get up in the morning.
Random thought because breakfast is supposed to happen about now: I’m tired of food – the thrill is gone. Reading has lost its luster, and now eating is just one more job to do. I wish comfort food wasn’t so thoroughly comforting – I could eat mac & cheese, potatoes, bacon, or Ramen noodles every day, or some of each, but the concept of protein versus carbs is a pain in the ass right now.
Which brings me to a new thought… do I hone in on the nitty-gritty of daily life under a COVID cloud in a bid to keep the heavier worries at bay? On first inspection it sounds like truth. Pretty sure I try to bury the real concerns under a shroud of silence and major on the minors instead. The things I can’t say to anybody, not even me, have to be choked back every day and squashed down into their hole with the lid slammed shut, so at least once a week I’m on the verge of jumping out of my skin and wreaking havoc in all directions.
Kim captured a similar interface from this morning’s sunrise – a liquid but fractured state, still on fire but starting the day with trepidation. Maybe Mr. Sol and I can pool our energies and make it to Wednesday…
It’s a morning for thinking thoughts and writing some of them down, just to touch base with me at week’s end. Kim’s playing PickleBall in NoLaw, then has PT out at Ortho’s new facility, so I’m without adult supervision for the next four hours. Oops…
Sitting here soaking up the quiet makes me think of the young professional couple who are moving to our building after experiencing life in one down the street with its noisy all-hours party vibe. I doubt they’ll regret their decision, based solely on the peaceful easy feeling here and the way we let each other be. It would be a steep challenge to achieve this atmosphere in a place where everybody’s renting and most are short-term.
We still have The Skies of Doom from all the fires, a sickly yellow tinge that portends no good, but the sun’s shining through and I just noticed something that made me smile. For about three years a spider has had a summer home on the outside of the big window next to my desk, first in the left-hand corner, then at some point moving to the right. It looks like a fat-bodied garden spider and it’s there at dawn every morning, then hides for the day and comes back out around dusk to prepare its web for dinner guests. The window-washers bring their crane-lift once a year and scrub the glass on all five floors, and for three years running they’ve removed my 8-legged resident’s condo, only to have it reappear the next morning in the same spot every time. The windows got a bath yesterday and my arachnid friend was on the J.O.B. when the sun came up this morning. Google says garden spiders have a lifespan of about a year, so I’m dealing with successive generations here. Wow, the loyalty! It’s all about location, location, location, baby. 😂
Early fall temps have settled in for a while, with daytime 70s and 50s overnight. It was cool on the balcony yesterday with a breeze going, so I came in and put on the socks Kim brought me from 3rd Planet, and kept layering until I was comfy again. It’s the unvarnished me, looking like my Grandma Wagner, feeling utterly Zen, and keeping the fun in funk. For posterity…
It finally happened. Not because energy welled up from within and burst through my fingertips, but because disgust overwhelmed my ennui at last. Yesterday I studied the smears, smudges, and assorted rubble in front of me until I found myself on my feet, transferring everything to another surface while I decontaminated my desk and surroundings. Today the clean expanse glows, and holds only one extraneous item – so far. My monitor is free of dust and spit-takes. The 3-layer cart next to me has been unloaded, sanitized, purged, and repopulated with nothing but the priority goods, based on need or the shot of Happy they deliver.
It’s cause to wonder what else could happen right under my nose. Will I wake up one morning to discover that the WTF Basket has been whittled down to a sentimental note and an invoice for the t-shirt I really am going to send back? Will the two bins containing The Dread Unsorted find their way into the light and be forced to give up their secrets? My carelessly-hoarded stockpile of duplicate photos, bad photos, totally unnecessary photos… the ever-accumulating email… my series of I Need To Clean That Out folders… will all of that magically come up missing some glad morning? Stranger things have happened.
Since progress and success are not without price, I paid for my random foray into the real world with sciatic pain off the charts, but in my own masochistic way it was worth it. Might see what else I can get into… not sure if it’ll be instigated by ambition, boredom, being grossed out, or all of the above, but anything that moves the story forward is acceptable currency.
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Welcome to my weekly blog on life's happiness. We are all human and we all deserve to smile. Click a blog title or scroll down. Thanks for stopping by.
Creative humour, satire and other bad ideas by Ross Murray, an author living in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, Canada. Is it truth or fiction? Only his hairdresser knows for sure.
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