What To Do

1.  brush the 3 rabbits, 2 cats and dog
2.  clean the bathrooms
3.  vacuum for dust bunnies
4.  read scriptures
5.  physical therapy
6.  check email
7.  check calendar for coming appointments
8.  work on school with Nate
9.  work with photos
10. eat
11. water plants
12. remember to take meds
13. finish cleaning out clothes closet
14. prep foot care for Brent
15. sweep porch
16. play with Brent, the kids, the pets
17. love Brent
18. pray
19. sleep
20. study for my classes
21. remember to smile
22. remember to sit up straight
23. remember who I am
24. look around me
25. prep house to paint
26. look for kitchen table with drop leaves
27. do laundry
28. clean up
29. cook dinner
30. love Brent better

The House is Piling Up Around Me

While I was putting some things we wanted to sell onto Craig's List, Brent was cleaning the living room.  I saw, out of the corner of my eye, him come and go--bringing stuff in and putting it down.  After about half an hour I look up and I find that I am surrounded by piles of papers and piles of books and piles of notebooks.  When I catch his eye--he smiles at me and tells me that he has brought me all the things that I needed to look at and put them all in one place for me.

!

I think that I will try to find something else to put on Craig's List.

Another Day Better in January 2013

Finally able to sleep.

Brent is asleep at last.  It has been a long day.  We went to see the doctor and they took the 42 staples out of his left knee and put 24 steri-strips in their place.  The swelling around his knee is coming down . . . most of it is congealed blood.  Last week the surgical assistant we saw tried to pull some of it off, but the mass was too thick to get anything out.  His legs have always been muscular and lean--now the left one has a huge, red, angry knot in the middle of it.  It reminds me of a boll in the trunk of an ancient oak tree.  

ERRANT SOCKS THAT WAUNDER IN HOPELESS LONELINESS and Osteropeniua 1200 Calcium 2000 Vitamin D

Blue Moon in Utah

On Wednesday night, I was asked to provide a short spiritual thought before the RS Enrichment meeting.  I talked about my "manic" button shoes . . . and how the difficult things we overcome are not left behind us, but woven into who we are and what we are now capable of doing and feeling.  I read a short excerpt from a letter I wrote to my sister Susan, but never sent:

           It seems like I only call you when I need something.  When I saw that I'd missed your call, I immediately thought how wonderful the time I got to spend with Martha and you in Minnesota.  I so enjoyed putting together the photos for your long, empty wall.  When I look up at the night sky here, I recall your overwhelming--stunning--midnight masterpiece . . . no lights but those provided by the planets and stars.  Your students (then and now) are fortunate to be exposed to your keen instruction.
           I asked Meg and Lauren last year if five years ago they could have imagined what their life would be like today.  Meg had just been married then--now she hs two children and a husband who loves her.  She makes bread almost every day and takes "bunny (shaped) buns" to friends who are feeling overwhelmed.  Meg told me she could not have thought she would be so happy.  I visited and  her apartment is cluttered with five small construction (in Jon's words--kon-stuck-sun) trucks I just brought for him, soft toys that Kate has chewed and drooled over as she cuts her first teeth . . . and errant socks that waunder in hopeless loneliness:  forever separated from the mates that the dryer ate.  There is a soft, quiet feeling that everything is in its proper time and place.

I heard on the radio, the next evening, a bit of a radio show that I'd never heard of before:  A Way With Words, described as a lively hour-long public radio show about language, on the air since 1998 [with a]uthor Martha Barnette and dictionary editor Grant Barrett.  One of the comments that stuck in my mind was a closing assertion that a real writer needn't be compelled to produce 50 novels or a continual stream of poetry.  Some need only to know that they have written a splendid, inexplicable sentence.  Poe once said that the best sentence he ever wrote was the first in his story "The Fall of the House of Usher."  Of course, there is always Snoopy's "It was a dark and stormy night . . ."

I think that one of the best things that I've written is the phrase contained above:  . . . errant socks that waunder in hopeless loneliness:  forever separated from the mates that the dryer ate.

To end this entry:  the results of my first bone scan came back this morning:  Osteropeniua--the beginning stage of osteoporosis.   It snuck up on me--I didn't even know that anything was wrong.  Creaky joints, yes, but not that.  I wonder if this is what it is like to discover that you have cancer.

I hope I never find out.

Better Than Me

Geiger Tree Flower and Penny

It happened today--one of those events that you remember all of your life.  Remembered, not because it was a commonly pivotal thing (birth, graduation, marriage, death), but because it revealed something about yourself to you.  It stands out in my memory like the first firework in a 4th of July night.

I was driving to class.  Not really a class class--a survey of native Florida plants.  It is a semester of field trips and wandering treks through nearby parks and reserves.  Dr. George Rogers teaches to identify the plants and trees we find.  It is a delightful experience each week--if you get there in time to start down the trail with everyone.

And I was late.  There was road work and both lanes were merging into one--left into right lane.  And I was late.   I pulled into the right lane.  And I was late.  A red Honda drove past me--intent on skipping ahead in line.  I sped up.  I was late.  I started to get angry.  The Honda tried to jockey in front of me.  I sped up . . . but the car in front of me started to slow.  It continued to slow down--until there was a space in front of it big enough for the red car to slip in.

I was still late, but I was also ashamed of myself.

The guy driving the car in front of me did what I should have done.  One driver let me in . . . maybe he was late, too.

Next time I will be the one to slow down.

I will remember and I will be better than I was.

One Week in DC

Brent is doing better--although he still can't sleep for long, even with the meds the doctors have prescribed.  He tore the left quadricep muscle off of the top of the patella--and shredded some of the side ligaments as well.  Apparently he is one of about three every year that the doctor repairs . . . kind of a celebrity in orthopaedic surgery circles.  It will be a few months before he is able to return to work. 

It is the vacation of a lifetime--the opportunity to dash from Florida to DC and wait while the doctors reattach muscle and ligament and bone together--and then to spend three (to four) weeks in a nice hotel room waiting until Brent can be released to fly home.  Apparently the danger of blood clots is too great before that time.

I just finished exercising in the hotel gym and have an appointment at 1pm for a therapeutic massage to assuage the damage of sleeping in a hotel bed while waking up at intervals to help Brent get back into bed.  I am the lucky one, though.  The meds give Brent nightmares--continually weird ones--while my bad dreams are always of him and the pain he's in.  I take continuity any time--even for bad dreams.  At least I always know where I am when I wake up.

The good part?  I get to spend time with Brent and I get to take care of him.  I could not ask for a more pleasant proximity.

Asters and Mountains in Florida

For the last really long time, I have spent all of my productive time either having fixed, taking care of the fixed, visiting a doctor who did the fixing . . . my back, my hands, or my right foot.

Time for a new . . . OK, not NEW . . . but much better thing to write about.  My daughter Lauren is living with Brent and me for the time being, and when I got to accompany her to where she trains dogs, I found a bunch of asters growing in a field out back of the main buildings.  I remembered that my favorite professor, Dr. George Rogers (Department Chair of Horticulture, Palm Beach State College), mentioned that he was gathering materials to use in an article he needed to write on Asters.  So . . . when I found the wild, yellow flowers I pulled them up and took them with me.

I felt a twinge of guilt, but there were other bunches along the fence--and they are not an endangered bit of flora . . . so I didn't try to work with the bright afternoon light.

I like the first photo best.  Lauren let me use her little CoolPix camera and I snapped some shots when we were stopped at various lights--the car wiggled too much for a clear picture.  These look much better after I fiddled with them--but the originals were pretty good to begin with.  

At the end of the class on Monday (Native Florida Grasses, Sedges and Junaceae), we were coming around the last turn before the parking lot and Dr. Rogers pointed out something I'd never noticed before.  In Florida, there is a distinctive shape made when a group of slash pines grow naturally.  He called it the "dome".  I took a photo--with just my iPad2 camera.  It was a beautiful sight--and the landscape was charming.

 
It reminds me of mountain ranges that are made when volcanoes or immense ground upheavals grow old and are worn down by centuries of rain and wind. . . . and they say that Florida has no mountains.  It is close enough for me.

Up north and out west, there is snow and cold and cold and snow.  Right now it is about 75 degrees F outside and lovely weather for walks and bike rides.  It rains and then the sun comes out--or I wake to thunder and the reassuring thrum of rain on the roof and ground.  I remember that I do not have to worry about watering the new peach or mango trees and fall back to sleep feeling that I've already gotten something important taken care of for the coming day--kind of like when you are doing laundry:  even if I'm eating lunch, as long as the washer and dryer are going, I'm getting things done.