BOXING DAY 2023

It’s a beautiful sunny Boxing Day afternoon. All is calm. All is bright. It’s 5℃ out and 6.2℃ in the greenhouse. I’ve seeded a small tray of lettuce greens in anticipation of our present weather trend of warm temperatures and no snow.

I’m deeply immersed in reading A Thousand Acres. Did you know it won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1992? It was hard to tear myself away to write this post. I’m on a streak of showing up now every day for a week. I don’t want to break the cycle and end up in a slump before January. I’m practicing discipline and succeeding.

I’m not doing as well rehabbing the fasciitis in my foot. It is a very slow process. It is very discouraging since I am faithfully doing the exercises every day. I’m learning patience and forbearance. I have to remember that Rome was not built in a day. And I have been careless and abusive with my feet since summer. So now I have to put in the time to heal it. I have numerous resources on treatment besides YouTube. One thing for sure is there are no quick fixes.

There are no quick solutions to lose some of the holiday fat either. It’s another slow and discouraging process. It keeps coming back again and again like a bad penny. But that’s something we can talk about tomorrow. I have to get back to my book. It’s calling me and I have to get up and move.

SO THIS IS CHRISTMAS

December 23, 2018  3:37 pm

We had some sun today. It was a nice relief from the grey and dark. Now the sunlight is weak and watery like tepid tea. It gives me an insipid melancholia. Is there another kind? I should really stop talking about my moods but that’s what’s foremost on my kinds’ minds. It’s what we brood on as if we could or hope to hatch it into joy. Joy to the world and Falalalala.

Don’t take me too seriously though. I am not despairing or crying into my soup. Not yet anyways. I’ve baked up a storm the last few days – bread, cookies, cinnamon buns and Sheba’s doggy biscuits. Today I’m stitching up a couple more motifs on my tablecloth. Busy hands are happy hands. I’ve had my troubled times but I’ve never at a stage I’m wringing them.

December 25, 2018 10:47 am

John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s lyrics are running through my head this morning

And so this is Christmas
And what have we done?
Another year over
And a new one just begun

And so this is Christmas
I hope you have fun
The near and the dear one
The old and the young

Yes, this is Christmas and what have I done? I think I’ve found the peace I needed. I’m feeling it for today at least. I had to let go of the ‘wanting, working on, fixing, making things right, doing the right thing’ mentally. I had to let go of everything and just be as best as I could. It has been a hard lesson for me. It’s difficult to learn that I’m not that powerful or that I have a say in everything.  It’s wonderful to let go of all that assumed responsibility, all that weight. I’m feeling almost as light as a feather today.

December 26, 2018 @2:15 pm

So this is Boxing Day. Lunch is over and I’m feeling ever so lazy. I thought I have a whole bunch of good words to impart but what I really want to do is just nap. I will struggle here a bit. Then it’s time to feed Sheba and go for our walk. Not really looking forward to it but we must. It’s like cleaning that oven this morning after the day of spatchcocked turkey. It was a mess! Opening the oven door, I want to slam it shut again. BUT – the impossible to clean was possible. A lot of elbow grease and persistence. It’s almost sparkling clean, racks and all.

That is what I have to remember. The whole picture is really ugly till you break it into do-able little segments. I wondered afterwards how I did it. Another thing to remember is don’t think, just do it. And it will be done. AND the turkey turned out moist, delicious with crunchy skin. Worth it!

 

 

DO ONE THING

P1040734

They say that a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.  He, who coined that phrase is such a wise man.  Everything begins with a single action.

It is Boxing Day.  How did I get here?  It has been a tough week, what with battling the flu and other mayhems.  You could say that we hacked our way through everything.  Even Sheba got sick….threw up four times yesterday.  Yuck!  Poor baby!

But, at long last, I think I’m going to make it….thanks to my leftover stash of drugs from my overseas trip last winter.  Christmas morning at 3 am found me up, googling ciprofloxacin and doxycycline – which one to take.  Now I know we’re not suppose to self medicate but I was distraught from coughing and worried about the funny noises coming from my chest.

I think I’ve turned the corner but life does not looking easy.  Everything looks messier and dirtier.  Sheba’s hair seem to be everywhere.  What to do and where to start?  And so that is where I am at.  I tell myself:  Just do one thing.  At least it will be something done.

My one thing was chasing down Sheba and brushing her out, ridding at least some of her hair.  And it is a reminder that there cannot be perfection here.  There will be less hair.  That is the way life is.