Category: Quotidien

It has been the worst of weeks:

• I have been plagued by a constant sinus headache as a result of which I have not been sleeping
• Things that should have been done have not been done.
• Things I wanted to do have not been done.
• It seems like I am always running around with no time to really settle into anything.
• If I have to mop the floor one more time I'll scream.

It has been the best of weeks:

• Although I have been running around, I haven't done anything I didn't choose to or which I am not happy to be doing.
• A big project is really starting to take off.
• Snuggle Time
• Grandson Time
• Not being blinkered by focus I am more open to moments of beauty.

Bood week, bad week, or just a matter of perspective?

A little late.  

A bit Frazzled.

But here.

It has just been one of those weeks.  We all have them, weeks where we are busy, not really too busy, but where the mapping of our lives seems to far too open to incoherence.  You know the kind of week I mean. The week where you have appointments and obligations but they are not well spaced.  The kind of week where you have an hour or two here and there but no really effectively large blocks of time.  There is too much time between appointments but not enough time to accomplish whatever it is you wish to accomplish.  The kind of week where those big things pile up, and even some of the small things, because nothing seems to quite get finished. 

I pulled a muscle in my groin.  Walking has been painful and difficult but it is better today.  The good news is that my back has sufficienty recovered that I can skip a day or three of walking without stiffening up and becoming less mobile.  My equanimity however is another story. 

Perhaps this busy season is not the best time to have decided that it was time to assess and reorganize my house, my priorities, my time.  Or perhaps it is the best time, even though the process, with its constant interruptions is driving me batty.  Sometimes those moments of greatest activity are also the moments when I have the greatest ideas and insights as to where I want to be.  The process may take some time, but the benefits will be great. 

At any rate, this post is choppy.  It has been written in three brief bursts.  If I try to pull it together it will never be published.  So be it.  I cast it to the wind.

Next week will be a modified-break week.  There will be posts on Tuesday and Thursday.  Normal programming will resume on Monday, September 22nd. 

I need a new camera.  My Canon G9 has been lovely, and I enjoy using it, but it cannot be used with one of those remote thingys which would be useful as I start sewing and knitting and posting photos of said garments, possibly even on me.  The Canon's timer and I are not friends.  If anyone has any recommendations, they would be appreciated.

Friday night I went to bed with a plan for Saturday.  A busy weekend was scheduled and I, for one, like to have plans even though I realize that plans, like organizational charts, and neatly organized drawers, are really just the backdrop.  Planning can give you a background of consistency, can provide a structure when structure is needed, and can provide a level of security in an insecure world, but balance is also needed.  Adhering too strictly to a schedule can cause one to miss out on too much of what is valuable in life, while at the same time, not enough structure and planning can turn the best of intentions into chaos and stress.

Saturday I woke up and my plans went out the window, through no one's fault but my own.  The day turned out well anyway.  The plan had been:

• Start with an early morning walk (pre-dawn, beginning around 6:30 AM)
• Take items to be donated to Community Chest pickup (car had been pre-loaded)
• Farmer's market
• Meet son-in-law and grandson at Chess in the Park
• Grocery shopping
• Make Yogurt and Soup for the coming week
• Watch Baylor Game
• Wash and iron Chancel Fair Linen

Here's what actually happened.

• At 6:25 the heaven's opened and a brief downpour began.
• At 6:40 the rain was over.  I opened the door into humidity so heavy it felt like walking into a steam bath.  My glasses fogged over and I retreated indoors.  I fully planned to wait a few minutes and begin again.
• I started the first batch of yogurt.
• I decided that it was time to catalog and shelve the stack of books that was starting to fall over by my desk and I embarked on that project.  This required shifting books on the bookshelves, which of course required dusting as I went.
• At 9:45 I realized I needed to head out for the community chest pickup.
• Drop-off completed, I headed toward downtown and the Market Square farmer's market.
• Randomly decided to take Kingston Pike downtown from Northshore instead of getting on interstate.
• Realized, as I approached downtown, that I had forgotten about the game and I was surrounded by a sea of pedestrians dressed in various permutations of bright orange.  Traffic was slow but peaceful and calm. Rather than feeling stressed, I felt myself grow calm and mellow, having no choice but to go with the flow.
• Wondered why I hadn't heard from my family and realized I had left my phone at home.
• Decided not to get out of traffic, head north, away from game to retrieve phone, and then have to head back south, toward game-traffic again.  I also realized that as much as traffic on downtown streets was slow, back-up on the interstate was probably worse.
• Decided to be thankful for absentmindedness and not fret.
• Walked around downtown for a couple of hours, putting in my 3 miles while wandering around the farmer's market and surounding neighborhoods, making several trips to scope out Chess in the Park, and generally having a good time, but not running into my family, despite the fact that the crowds had already dissipated in the direction of the game.
• Went to the Food Coop.
• Decided not to do the grocery-store part of grocery shopping, and went home.
• Watched most of the Tennessee game while continuing to dust and reshelve books in the living room.
• Washed and ironed the large chancel fair linen.
• Stopped everything and sat down to read Finn Family Moomentroll before returning book to shelf.
• Declined an invitation to join son-in-law and grandson for Ethiopian, as I can't eat the standard wheat-teff injera, and the restaurant needs a few days notice to make the more traditional pure teff injera that I can eat.
• Decided not to make soup.
• Decided that jalapeno poppers and beer would be an appropriate game-night dinner.
• Discovered that I didn't have the right bacon, having declined to go to the grocery-store, so I made the poppers with awkwardly wrapped thick-cut Benton's bacon.  Also discovered that the bag of jalapenos from my CSA basket contained ony a couple of jalapenos, one serrano (which I set aside) a couple of baby poblanos and one unidentified chile which had a promising shape.  I made do.
• Watched the Baylor game and knitted.
• Discovered that baby poblano poppers are very very good, and that Benton's is worth the trouble, neither of which is surprising, really.
• Called it a day.

Everynow and then my own worries and insecurities tickle my fancy, especially when circumstances allow me to see their universality.

Wednesday is garbage collection day in my part of Knoxville.  This past week we had a holiday on Monday, and, since there was no garbage pickup on that day, everyone's garbage pickup was pushed back a day.  I think this is pretty typical, although perhaps the specifics may vary.  In Hyde Park there were six holidays a year that there was no garbage pickup and they corresponded to the major holidays:  New Years Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day, and Christmas Day.  In Knoxville there are also six holidays on which there is no garbage pickup but Memorial Day has been switched out for Martin Luther King day.  This confused me when I moved here, because in my all-too-human way, I assumed my previous neighborhood's garbage collection schedule was standard.  

Tuesday night, I knew, at least in my head, that I did not have to put out my garbage.  But I went outside and looked up and down the street before going to bed, just to be sure.  Most of my neighbors put their garbage out between 6 and 7 the night before garbage collection.  The curb was clear.  But I couldn't settle down so I got on the internet and checked the garbage collection schedule, just to be certain.  Yes, indeed, garbage collection would be delayed until Thursday. I was finally able to relax and go to sleep.

Wednesday morning I took my early morning walk around the neighborhood at 6:30.  I saw maybe one garbage can.  Habits are hard to break after all; look at how much I fretted over this very same issue. Then at 7:30 I left for an early morning  exercise class I wanted to try.  Still only one garbage can.

When I came home, close to 9:30.  I drove into my neighborhood and was greeted with the sight of garbage cans lined up by the side of the road at every house.  Part of me was saying "there's no garbage collection today" and another part of me was saying "oh no! I didn't put my garbage can out! Perhaps I got my holidays confused".  Relief.  My can was out also, the person who helps me with cleaning had put it out. And then, I couldn't help but laugh, mostly at myself.  I could see what happened.  We all "know" that there is no garbage pickup, but we all worry that we will be wrong.  We are a neighborhood that is predominantly highly educated, predominantly successful in the ways of the world, and yet we all worry that we are the odd person out, that our neighbors know something we don't.

I could imagine the process in my head. Someone saw their neighbor's can out and thought "I forgot my garbage can" and put theirs out.  Then the next person did the same.  At some point there were enough cans out that everyone put their can out, whether they thought about it or not, because no one wants to be the one person in the neighborhood who was wrong, because thinking "they" know something "we" don't is our default setting.  And I probably would have dragged my can out myself, just so that my house would not stand out in the crowd.  The first thing I did when I got in the house was to recheck the waste management website, just to be sure there would be no garbage collection. Then I left the can out at the curb until the next morning anyway.  I chose to blend in.

The whole situtation makes me smile.  The process will probably be repeated following the next Monday holiday.  And that too makes me smile, not in laughter, but in compassion.  We humans, filled as we as we are with doubts and insecurities, and occasionally just unthinking moments of lemming-like behavior, we are so much more alike than we are different.  How can one not be filled with compassion?

I couple of weeks ago I decided to up my walking schedule.  I had been walking twice a day, relatively short walks of a half a mile to a mile and a half, occasionally on a particularly busy day, taking ony one walk.  It was apparent that one short walk was not enough, and days I didn't get both walks in I would be stiff.  I decided to take one longer walk each day and see how that went.  The first two days I walked 2 1/2 miles around my neighborhood, which has some pretty steep hills.  Then I worked out a 3 mile loop in my neighborhood, and planned a couple of alternatives for days I didn't have time in the morning, or found myself elsewhere.  

For the past two weeks I've taken a walk of at least 3 miles every day.  Although the first four or five days I was constantly exhausted, I noticed immediately that my walking was improving and that I moved better overall.  I also stopped freezing up and getting stiff in the evenings which meant that I fell asleep more easily and slept better. Although I can't say that I necessarily want to take a 3 mile walk every day, especially on those days that my schedule does not permit an early morning walk, I walk anyway.  I have not yet progressed to a point where I can skip walks, although that will probably come in time, as I continue to improve.

The difference between 2 1/2 miles and 3+ is significant, at least for me.  I'm not built for speed and I've always been a bit of a slow starter.  But I have stamina.  The first two miles of a walk are a struggle.  They are still a struggle even though the walking is much easier.  But somewhere along the 2 1/2 mile point I undergo somekind of mental shift and it gets easier.  It is not that I am less tired.  It is not that any aching muscles or pains go away; they don't.  Something happens at 2 1/2 miles that makes me stop struggling against my aches and pains and integrate them better, almost as if I become my pain, and that allows me to move beyond it.  At 2 1/2 miles I am ready to push through.  And the benefits of pushing through, in terms of focus, mobility, and energy, are significant.

My usual circuit ends at 3 miles back at my front door.  If I want to change the length of the walk, I have to make that decision somewhere around the 1 1/2 – 2  mile point, right when I least feel like adding to my slog.  If I am not walking from home at 6 AM however, there are more options.  A couple of my evening walks have extended past the 4 mile point, not because I was trying to walk further, but simply because I forgot to stop. I do think this is a good sign.  2 weeks is not quite enough that walking is a habit yet.  If I stopped I'd have to start all over, but it is a good start.

The next step is writing.  I've climbed out of the boat.  I'm in the water.  I'm going to blog every weekday at least for now, until I have my groove back, until something changes that makes that impossible, and who knows when or if such a change will occur.    I don't really have a plan for what I will write.  If I write, and I walk, and I get through my days and meet my obligations that will be enough.  There are many other things I want to explore, many creative outlets I wish to resume, but there is no rush.  

I tend to be the type of person who throws myself into things, following whatever captures my attention, until I hit a wall.  This time, I'm going to try going step by step.  I might still crash, but hopefully I won't burn. 

I am learning to walk again.  At least that is what it feels like today, at this particular moment.

I walked before.  But those immediately post-surgical steps were small mincing steps, the steps of someone who was still frozen in place, who could not move normally, the steps of the immediately post-surgical me.  The first three days there was no question of normal gait, there was just tentative stiff movement and a body decidedly tilted to the right.

Now I am no longer frozen, and my legs want to stride forth in some semblance of a normalcy.  And yet, to my surprise I'm not quite sure how.  It is like all movement is precariously balanced on one tiny point and the tiniest mistake can bring it all crashing down.  I know this is, to some extent, true.  My back has been fused fromT1 to L4 since I was 15.  That leaves only L4-5 and L5-S1 for balance, for movement.   What happened to bring me to this point was probably gradual, a long series of misdeeds, and now here I am, balancing on this tiny fulcrum, this L5-S1 disk, so critical to protect and yet so necessary.

I must find my center, and relearn how to move deliberately, seamlessly, contracting and attempting to align muscles that only grudgingly deign to cooperate.  I call up lessons from Pilates, from Yoga, but my muscles are not yet strong enough, are not yet fluid enough,  and the delicate balance of this dance called walking proves elusive.  I think I am doing well only to let my mind wander away from the task at hand, for my body to make some minute miscalculation on a tiny intra-muscular level,  and I am frantically trying to figure out how to extricate myself from potential collapse.

I remind myself that balance, be it emotional, intellectual, or physical, is not learned in grand gestures but in small steps. Very very small steps.   

The view from here.

Sitting at my desk, piled up with papers and stuff I have managed to avoid for two months.  Generally I have no aversion to piles, but this mess is a bit out of control.  At this point however, even a messy desk is a happy desk and I am glad to be here.

I am up and about, moving around the house slowly.  I am able to sit, and to stand and walk.  Bending over is not so good.  I am probably best sitting with standing being second.  it strikes me as one of those somewhat quirky twists of fate, that after two months of being flat on my back and unable to sit or stand, I am now able to sit and stand to my hearts content but I cannot get comfortable lying down.  

I am sure this will not last for two months, although 72 hours post surgery is probably still too soon for comfort.  In the meantime I am tired but happy and will write more after I have caught up on sleep.