Right Now

Padded Thanksgiving with extra days since I was feeling agitated. Those PTO days feel so precious that I want to save them but feeling really agitated is a good reason to take time off from work. Of course, there's a limit to what PTO is able to solve...

Went to another community sound meditation last night and, toward the end, I thought That is so delightful. The sound healing therapist incorporated bells and a rain stick. Overall, I'm enjoying the sound meditations and I feel like I sleep better afterward.

As I was getting ready for Zumba this p.m., this woman said that I looked very familiar but we don't know each other. Still, she went on to talk about the 10 pounds that she had gained. While we waited for class to begin, I talked about my sweet tooth and she said Please, I have every tooth. About Zumba, I don't know what I'm doing to which I replied Don't make me laugh. 

Oh, you're going to laugh, she said. After class, she told me that she had escaped a carjacking and that she was moving out of the city because of that incident and the increase in gunfire. 

In other news, I fixed the Coconut Red Curry Vegetable Soup from the Minimalist Baker's cookbook and I loved it. Feeling like my cooking sessions with Gloria has made me a more adventurous cook.

Also, this rain stick with Tibetan bowls needs to be on my iPod right now.

Turning The Corner

Went to visit my brother along with three other relatives.  Feel like I'm getting much better at packing and knew, right off the bat, that I should be conservative since I was only spending two nights away from home.

Used an overnight bag with a packing cube inside. Still not sure if the cubes are space savers but I do like how you're able to better organize clothing.

Had dreams the two nights that I was away. The first one involved observing a father with his baby, in danger of drowning, in a swimming pool. The father managed to rescue himself but not the baby but I was able to. Once I had the baby in my arms, I wailed.

The next night I dreamed that there were two bad guys in a room and I was confident about taking out one with my weapon but not the other. I shot the one guy and that's where the dream ended. Maybe the latter dream stemmed from being on a military base or watching Covert Affairs or maybe, as Dream Moods suggests, the dream was about experiencing confrontation and feeling victimized...

One of my relatives showed up inebriated and I was definitely disappointed and holding my breath. My mother and her siblings occasionally bickered. My oldest nephew got a kick out of that saying Now I don't feel bad about getting into it with my brothers. Just as people are prone to feel like forever kids around their parents, I guess that it's true of siblings too.

At any rate, I enjoyed seeing my grand nieces who I hadn't seen in years. I was not prepared for them wanting to occupy electronic devices but I will say that the pictures that they took were interesting. I just hoped that they wouldn't drop my expensive iPod or someone else's phone.

Electronic Delight

Went to see my cousin yesterday and, this time, I wasn't surprised when I turned the corner and saw my aunt's house decorated with lights. It's bittersweet seeing the lights but not her.

Projected Lights

Looking for Marie Howe

About a decade ago,  I read a book of poetry about this woman dealing with the loss of her brother.

Knew that the brother had cancer.

Knew that there was a poem about the brother getting a needle stuck in his eye to prevent losing his sight and I remembered a line in one of the poems that read -- He had washed his last dish.

But I didn't know enough to find the book and I thought that I'd never see it again.

↔Fast Forward ↔

I really wanted to read a book about grief but I didn't necessarily want to read an Elizabeth Kubler Ross book or Kerry Egan's On Living. After searching on the internet, I spotted Kevin Young's anthology, The Art of Losing; it has been a great book to slowly read my way through and I didn't have to wait too long (page 69) before I came across a familiar poem, How Some of It Happened, by Marie Howe, the poet that I'd been looking for.

I immediately ordered her book from the library and when I got it, I remembered the maroon cover and everything.

I can't say enough about the Art of Losing. Poems that really hit me in the solar plexus, included:

Sharon Olds' The Race

Ruth Stone's Loss

Elizabeth Alexander's Autumn Passage

Coleman Barks' Luke and the Duct Tape

James Weldon Johnson's  Listen Lord: A Prayer

William Matthews' My Father's Body

Edward Hirsch's Cold Calls

Ted Kooser's Mourners

Ruth L. Schwartz's Letter from God

Jane Kenyon's Otherwise

Mary Oliver's When Death Comes

This book also made me remember other poems about death that really moved me -- like Lucille Clifton's poems about her father and husband; Gloria Wade-Gayles' poem about her mother and Cornelius Eady's book about his father's death.

I am a bit late to the Mary Oliver a game but when I first read her poem Wild Geese, it blew my mind and, I think, more than anything else -- the first line moves me unbelievably and I, occasionally, use it to really center myself.

Major

Diffused eucalyptus and lemon essential oils last night and slept decently but woke up with cotton mouth as the post-swimming congestion settled in at some point.

When I talked to one of the guys at the pool last night, he says that anytime he wears his silver ring in the pool, it turns a dark color and he's also noticed that the coins in the vending machine are kind of weird.

At any rate, I battled the congestion with a variety of essential oils and, now, the congestion is gone but I need to cut back on my indoor swimming...

When I went over to my aunt G.'s on Sunday, she gave me her paper. She gets the Illinois paper except for on Sunday when she, erroneously, gets the St. Louis Post Dispatch which she doesn't care for. So,what did I do this morning? I caught up on comic strips and I was drawn to the two below:

A major fire happened today and there's still a plume of smoke. I've been concerned about air quality which made me think about people in war-torn countries and bombs and rubble.

Early

Accidental Picture

Went to the pool after a two week hiatus. I was horribly congested after I went last time. Plus, the water is usually chilly and I just wasn't feeling it last week with the cooler temperatures.

Got to the pool around 6:50 p.m. and the lifeguard approached me. The hours had changed and I was about 30 minutes early, ugh.

This guy who often comes to the pool told me that he did the same thing last week and he went on to tell me that he had to swim in a hurry as he usually drops his wife off at the thrift store then picks her up when he's finished swimming. He went on to tell me that they both lost a lot of weight years ago and couldn't afford to keep buying clothes and that's when they first started shopping at thrift stores. I told him that I have a friend ( the 'Fugee) who has the patience to shop at such stores.

Another guy who I last saw in May is back at the pool and he told me that he had lost 28 pounds over the summer. He wasn't a heavy guy to begin with but I guess he was heavier than he wanted to be.

His secret? He cut his lunch in half and now he cuts a subway sandwich into five parts and eats it for dinner. Yes, he's on the "Jared Diet." When I asked him about breakfast, he said that he sleeps in late and has never been much of a breakfast person.

It's kind of funny that neither one of these guys has talked to me about weight before and that was tonight's topic.

Outside the Box

Banner in the Therapy Room

A massage therapist that I used to go to on a regular basis but hadn't been to in six months reached out to me to let me know that she is moving. When I first saw the email subject, I thought she was moving to another location and not out of state.

She is one of the first therapists that I found when I first got into massage therapy. After communicating with her about the move, I immediately booked an appointment and thought about all the times that I didn't go because I couldn't find a slot or day to my liking. Ugh, sometimes you just have to think outside the box and be flexible.

At any rate, I was so touched that she reached out because I would have been crushed had she left town without me getting the chance to say goodbye.

I really enjoyed and benefited from my massage and energy therapy sessions with her. She is warm, professional and serious about her craft. Part of me wants to regret the infrequency of my visits but the other part of me wants to lean into the grateful part -- that I got a chance to see her once more.

This morning I was reading a local publication called The Healthy Planet and I really like this issue's Holy Mole cartoon. Massage definitely makes me feel more appreciative and alive. 

Also, the fall foliage has been a welcome and beautiful distraction. I've had my camera out for the last two days...

Human Nature

Got a nastygram a.k.a an email from the resident bully at work. Well, I wasn't the only one who got it. It was addressed to me, two of my other colleagues and two people who are above us.

This nasty person sat next to me at the holiday party last year and said If they had a heart attack, most of the people in the room would walk over them. If you know that you are perceived this way, why not try to change your behavior?

There is a part of my brain that thinks that if this person were on fire, I wouldn't spit on them and the other part of me knows that I would help this nasty person out -- if they were on fire.  On some level, I feel that this person is unhappy and miserable but that doesn't excuse the behavior.

Many of the grams that I share with people who are not on Instagram, look like the this one:

But there is this part of me that is done with this person and I'm tired of being civil and there is a gram for this part of me to -- How human of me.

An Inconvenient Weekend

I have been waiting for cold weather to appear so that it would, at the very least, kill the grass but, no, it didn't happen and I had to pull the lawnmower out as well as collect more bur acorns.

Saturday was a blur and I found myself grocery shopping around 8:00 p.m. I also find myself dreading grocery shopping nowadays.

The extra hour was nice and since I knew that I'd be meeting my cousin for a walk, I charged my camera and took that opportunity to move pictures to external storage so that I could delete pictures. The memory card holds a little over a 1,000 thousand pictures and I kept getting a message that it was full.

With my iPod backing up to Google Photos and uploading stuff to Shutterfly, it's hard to remember what I've uploaded sometimes but I will say that it was nice going through a lot of the pictures, including the ones from my trip to Bosnia and Croatia. I would like to make a photo book of that trip but I have mixed emotions about adding to existing clutter. 

My cousin and I went walking over in East St. Louis, IL. It's a cool little park that falls off my radar. This very funny and nice man was at the top of the overlook with his daughter and he pointed out the webcam that I hadn't noticed before.

It was fun to go back and take snapshots of webcam footage.

Snapshots of Webcam

Because the weather was so nice, I took another walk then came back home to start cooking. Needed to go back to the store for two items because I forgot to get peas and carrots and squash last night.

Thought that I might get to take a short walk with the 'Fugee but after raking leaves and picking up more acorns, I ran out of steam and time.

Walk II

Needs

Went back to the yoga studio that I used to go to on s regular basis -- hadn't been in almost three months and, of course, I chose Halloween to go so there ended up being two of us in class but it ended up being quite lovely.

The teacher dressed up as a cat and had a playlist that included Jackson's Thriller, Nina Simone's I Put A Spell on You and Nancy Sinatra's Bang Bang which kept me thinking of Kill Bill which was, I guess, appropriate for Halloween.

Yoga was brought to my workplace today -- a restorative class. A few of us having been talking about a relaxation group and we've been talking about possibly chipping in to have a yoga teacher come on-site.

Walked into the conference room and heard the soft music and it was instantly relaxing and the class was super sweet.

Went to Zumba tonight and, at one point, left out of the room because the music was way too loud. The teacher doesn't normally play the music at that level. Apparently, my exit was dramatic because my former coworker, Katie, asked me if I was okay as did another woman that I'm familiar with.

As we exited the locker room, I told Katie that I was probably overly sensitive right now. Seriously, I just need to hibernate.