rethinking

A DANGLING CONVERSATION

It’s a beautiful, sunny, -19℃ warm day. A perfect day for our daily ski if I wasn’t so tired. It’s hard to give up the endorphin high but common sense was really knocking hard. Even my sewing for the100dayproject is exhausting. I also get a high from building my log cabins each day. I get great satisfaction from seeing how it builds up from 2 little squares into a 9 inch square. It is the same and different high I get from making a round on my skis and seeing my improved time. And so it is if I can write another daily post. A sense of accomplishment/creation and living up to commitments.

I can pull back a little. I can take a lesson from my log cabin sewing. Not all logs are of equal length. I can ski less laps on days when I am tired. I can write shorter blogs on those days. I had participated in Friday Fictioneers in the past where the goal is to write a story of 100 words. It was fun and it helped my writing. It makes you get to the point without a waste of useless words. I might think about it again since I write mostly for the pleasure of words. I love the flow and beauty of them. I’m thinking of Simon and Garfunkel’s Dangling Conversation as I write this. This is what I hope to create with my writing.

It is a big but worthwhile wish to create beauty. I don’t have to create big. I don’t need a masterpiece to be happy. Just a touch, a wisp, a suggestion that my writing has touched or help someone makes me deliciously happy. I’m rethinking what is content and what my goals are.

SHIT HAPPENS

It is March. We’ve left cold, cold February behind. The days are longer. The temperature is more moderate. The snow piles in the back alleys are slowly going down, revealing a lot of dog poo left behind by dog owners not looking after their shit. I see it on sidewalks as well. It does make me wonder and shake my head. I DO the responsible thing and pick up but I have been attacked more than a few times without probable cause. Not only that, I got yelled at once for making sure I got every piece that Sheba left, bagged and put in the garbage. The trouble was, I had put it in HER garbage bin in the back alley.

I was so surprised to hear this loud tapping as I was putting the doggy bag into the garbage. I felt like a deer in headlight. I looked up to see this woman in her window gesturing wildly at me and the bag fell out of my hand into HER garbage bin. She rushed to the door and flung it open. Her porky face was all red. “You don’t put your dog’s mess into my garbage!” She yelled. I was mesmerized, still a deer in headlights. Wow! It was like watching a movie. She got so upset that I was so careful kicking the snow to find all Sheba’s shit to bag and put into the garbage. It was February, the coldest February in the last 80 years. It will be frozen within minutes. What was the worry? Her bin was in the alley, city property.

I wonder if my emotions had been frozen by the temperature. I was unusally calm. I smiled at her, apologized and promised never to do it again. It left me with such a good feeling because I am normally a very reactive person. Maybe I have learned to tame and curb my reactiveness after all these long years. I still have that tape playing in my head, the loud tap, tapping on the window like a woodpecker’s. I see her chunky body in the door frame, her flushed fleshy face and her anger. All that because I had picked up and bagged my dog’s shit and put it in the garbage bin.

I wonder if I’ve myself  behaved similarly. The answer is probably yes. How silly and trivial anything is, is all in the eye of the beholder and reactor. But I did swear after that incident, that I would be a little more discerning about the shit I lose my temper and sanity to. Some shit is just not worthy to lose my gasket and health over. I am sure I lose bits and pieces of myself when I do that. I am going to stop reacting and retaliating. I’m going to rethink and respond instead. I know I will fail some days. Then I will try to forgive myself. I’m learning about self care and the ADHD in me as well.

 

IF I HAD MY DRUTHERS – Day 165-166 in a year of…

Day 165-166, January 8, 2017 @2:15 pm

img_8943If I had my druthers, I would be napping right now instead of sitting here, painfully tapping out my words one by one. If I had my druthers, I wouldn’t have made another batch of yogurt, experimented with a tracing technique from my oneline art class. I wouldn’t have sorted my knitting baskets. They would still be overflowing with yarn tangled into each other, knitting needles, measuring tape and what have you. If I had my druthers, nothing would get done. Life would be a f***ing mess.

These difficult cold days of January, I’m trying to change my thinking towards the ‘hardness’ of life. I try not to think and just do it. Sometimes it takes an extra cup of tea/coffee, a glass of wine, extra time…whatever it takes. Today I’m employing mindfulness. I don’t try to understand the why of things. Some things/questions have no answers. Do you find it hard to bend over and pick up something dropped on the floor? I do. I drather walk around it even though it takes the same amount of time and energy? How ridiculous is that? I don’t try to figure it out. Instead I stand there, however long it takes to bend over, and pick it up. Now I have to go and get that extra cup of coffee. It’s what’s called a delaying tactic. It’s okay. I allow myself that.

img_8944I’m back with my coffee. On the way I saw a coil of dental floss on the floor. I bent down, picked it up and put it in the trash. It was not painful. Hallelujah!

It’s almost time to walk the dog. She’s been fussing for the last half hour. If I had my druthers, I would nap.