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“When you know better, do better”

Apr8

Freeze damage report: not all was lost. Most of the tulips still bloomed, and the lilacs look good. Some iris leaves turned yellow at their tips, the crabapple blossoms all shriveled except for the twigs I had brought inside, and it looks like almost all the tiny apricots froze dead. I’m not optimistic about a peach harvest.

But the cherry tree is just waking up. This was taken Easter Sunday, and today blossoms are starting to open. If they can survive next week I may have a nice cherry harvest. In kitchen news, I tried an instagram recipe in which grated fresh parmesan is whisked with hot pasta water and butter to make a creamy sauce for the pasta, but mine turned into a bowl of string cheese and water. It still tasted good but was kind of hard to eat. Another insta-fail, why do I keep trusting those reels? Or maybe I did something wrong, it’s possible.

I was grateful to my Neighbors yesterday for Wrensitting while I went to my new dentist in Montrose for the day. Dr. Bloss is on the Board of the International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology (IAOMT), a global network of dentists, health professionals, and scientists who research the biocompatibility of dental products, including the risks of mercury fillings, root canals, and jawbone osteonecrosis. I’m grateful for her professional care, and that we have this incredible resource in the region. I’m also grateful that she and her assistant got on board with my photographic documentation of the adventure.

I’d been contemplating removal of my mercury fillings off and on for years, but let myself be lulled into complacency by the prevailing attitude of US dentists and the FDA. Mercury amalgams were outlawed by the EU last year, and are scheduled to be banned by WHO by 2030. After the dentastrophe I experienced last summer, in which two molars with mercury amalgam were ground down for crowns with great cheerfulness, no mention of the mercury, and zero safety protocol, exposing me and the dentist and assistant to significant mercury vapor, I decided to get rid of the rest of it once and for all properly. This is what that looked like:

Dr. Bloss and her team use extensive protocols created by IAOMT, including full protective gear for themselves and for the patient as well. That’s me under her green hands, with one tooth isolated behind a rubber dental dam. There was a small suction device under the dam, a large vacuum over us, and highly specialized tools to suction the amalgam out as she ground it. My nose was covered with an oxygen mask and the rest of my face protected as well. I was given a vitamin C and charcoal rinse and drink before and after the procedure. I felt safe. In contrast, during the grinding by the dentist last year, I felt really uncomfortable inhaling and swallowing tooth dust even without realizing it was full of elemental mercury. This is what mercury amalgam removal done wrong looked like last summer:

Ten months later, I still have big ugly feelings about what happened last summer, but I’ve come a long way in letting it go now that the discomfort has largely dissipated. I wish I’d known better back then, but as Maya Angelou said, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”

I stopped at Afton’s on the way home for some garden center therapy, and treated myself to this beautiful magic carpet spirea, with its russet spring leaves emerging. I wanted an accent shrub for this full-sun spot where rinsing the birdbath every day gives extra water. A couple varieties of blue mist spirea are doing well in other parts of the garden, but I was entranced with the prospect of pink flowers and dramatically changing foliage through the seasons. I also picked up a few more colorful perennials that I’ll find joy in planting over the next couple of weeks. I remember a time when I thought planting flowers was wasteful; that was before I understood the importance of gardening for pollinators. Now that I know better, I do better, gladly and gratefully.

Year of Birthday Cakes

Jan25
I saw the first mini irises popped up in the dry dirt on January 21, the earliest ever I think.

I want to be a helper. I am certainly grateful these days for the reminder to look for the helpers, when the wounds are so heavy. The contrast between the monks walking for peace across the south and the ICE thugs besieging Minneapolis is staggering.

Bird Buddy caught this lovely northern flicker Friday morning, just as the lightest snow began to fall.

The helpers, the good people with big hearts, are showing up in many thousands along the trail of the Walk for Peace monks; and the helpers generating compassion in action are showing up in the many thousands in the Twin Cities. It’s helpful to keep these many thousands of good-hearted Americans in mind.

By bedtime when I went to shut off the generator the snow was deep and heavy, weighing down birch limbs and wild rose stems almost to the ground.

My heart breaks for the VA nurse murdered yesterday and the mother murdered two weeks ago, and the two-year-old girl and the five-year-old boy and the fourth-grader and and and… I mean just imagine it for a second and it can’t help but break your heart (if you have one): a tiny child with no sense of what’s happening or why suddenly ripped away by strangers from all they know, and shipped to who knows where.

This morning the sun came out.

The sun coming out helped my heart yesterday. I remember the wisdom of the teachers that when I get mired in sadness because of anyone’s suffering I’m helping no one. I only help if I let that sadness morph into compassion and take action to alleviate the suffering of others. You can do it too. Call your congresspeople every day, show up in the streets if you’re able, write letters to editors, talk with friends and family, share reliable news sources with them if they’re blinded by propaganda from the regime. Do something to support the resistance: action is the antidote to anxiety. The stakes have never been higher.

Also, or if it’s all you can manage, do some random act of kindness for a neighbor, or a friend, or a stranger. And also: take care of your own nervous system. Everyone has their own unique capacities in each moment, each day. I took the weekend off, mostly, from screen time, from news, and still it was hard to relax. There’s this dreadful undercurrent, against which happiness, joy, and gratefulness become acts of resistance. So I spent the weekend in the kitchen, mostly, baking for friends and neighbors in gratefulness for their kindness.

Watching as much GBBO as I do, I got to feeling that there are too many great cakes and not enough birthdays. It’s time to step up my cake game, and anything you want to get good at requires practice. So I decided that I’d try to bake a birthday cake for everyone in my found family here this year. Clearly I can’t ship them to Portland, Florida, Santa Cruz, Virginia, Alabama, etc., but if I can drive it I aspire to bake it.

Today was devoted to a Bake Off worthy birthday cake for Neighbor Mary. The challenge I set myself was creative fillings, so I made white chocolate ganache and piped it around the bottom layer because that’s what the bakers on the show do. I don’t know why. I covered the first layer with ginger jam and a thin layer of the ganache.

Atop the second layer I smoothed the last of the raspberry and hibiscus jam, sorry there wasn’t more of it but committed to it once I started. I didn’t want to mix it with any other jam and get judged for sloppy flavors. (Does Paul Hollywood say sloppy flavors? I don’t think so.) I didn’t have a time limit and two kitchen icons waiting to judge me, but I can’t say that it wasn’t a bit stressful. But the fun kind of stress, where you’re stretching your capacities in your growth zone, like on the show.

I did have a deadline and some important distractions throughout the day. I was glad I had paced the elements, baking in the morning so it could cool completely, making the ganache before lunch so it had time to cool enough to whip, and starting assembly immediately after my family zoom so I could deliver before dark.

I covered the whole cake with chocolate cream cheese buttercream. Please recall that piping was not the challenge. Piping does challenge me, and I easily loaded the piping bag with a trick I saw on Instagram from Blue Cottage Bakery, so I gave myself a pat on the back for that step in the right direction. I scribbled the remaining ganache on top, plunked the cake in a Chewy delivery box, ripped the snow cover off the windshield dislodging six inches of frozen snow, and drove around the block just after sunset.

Neighbor Mary was thrilled. Her delight and joy was the icing on the cake for me. I begged her to wait for her birthday tomorrow to cut it, but she wanted to send me home with my tithe tonight so she cut a sliver for herself as well. (That’s my tithe above, and her sliver below. Obviously, I need to taste test all the birthday cakes so I can judge for myself.)

As she tasted and swooned over the various components, I told her what they were. I waited til the end to tell her what kind of cake it was. I wanted to capture her reaction for all time. “It’s a chocolate mayonnaise cake,” I said, camera ready.

“Yay mayonnaise!!!”
If you were wondering about the first cake picture, in the mixing bowl, now you know: white sugar, brown sugar, and lots of mayonnaise.
Obligatory Wren picture to share the joy: So often when I get up from the couch during TV time, to fuel the fire or refill my water glass or feed the cat, a line from ‘Cecelia’ sings to mind: “…when I come back to bed someone’s taken my place.”
And just to give Topaz equal time: it’s a little blurry because she’s always looking around, but for one remarkably rare moment yesterday she sat on my lap.

Joyful Surprises

Nov2

Related to gratitude and grief, joy is an essential quality to cultivate for mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing. Big joy had come for a friend who dropped by the other day, and I shared her excitement experiencing empathetic joy, a felt sense of happiness in her joy. I made sure to notice how my joy for her great happiness felt in my body, and savor the tingles and my big smile, and her big smile: Savoring a good feeling for twenty seconds cultivates neural pathways and stimulates beneficial neurochemicals. That empathetic joy came on top of my pure joy at her surprise visit. We walked to the canyon, which gave Wren joy, and took a dose of forest medicine hugging an ancient juniper.

The view from the tree hug

The next day several more joyful surprises came my way. I dedicated myself to fully experiencing them all, opening my heart and my mind. The first was three volunteers who came from North Fork Senior Connections to help with yarden work for an hour, and we got so much done. All were seniors themselves, and from the larger neighborhood surrounding our small town. The program sent a dozen volunteers out into the community to lend hands to five seniors who had requested assistance. I had actually asked for help more than a year ago when I could barely move, but this was the first time they called and though I’m pretty capable by now, I can still use an extra hand with some chores. I baked a big batch of molasses ginger cookies to thank them.

While they did some of the more physical projects, I bent over and pulled a frost-killed sweet potato vine out of the patio planter and dropped my jaw when two fat little sweet potatoes came out with it. After sharing that surprise with Garden Buddy, who had persuaded me to try rooting and growing one two summers ago just for the beauty of the vine, I dug gently into the planter and discovered a handful more small tubers. Not a huge crop, but enough for a few meals, and a strong motivation to try a whole bed of them next year. Amazingly, the grasshoppers didn’t fancy the leaves.

After the helpers went merrily on up the road to another yard, I dug the last potatoes, the red potatoes I had protected under straw mulch until I could set up to save them in sand. The quantity and size of these tubers was another joyful surprise. The grasshoppers had hammered the foliage to the point that the plants never bloomed, and I was not expecting much when I dug my hands down into the cold dirt. I savored that activity so much I can still feel the cold in my finger bones and the rough dry soil in my cracked fingertips.

I love these wire baskets I bought online which no longer appear to be available. The garden hose made quick work of washing all the tubers outside, in the basket, and then they air dried before I brought them in the house.

While I waited for the potatoes to dry, I cut back the dead dahlias and salvias that had filled some of the garden pots, and was met with this delightful surprise of small orange flowers. The plant had died back in summer heat but emerged again a month ago, and was secretly blooming beneath the big red salvia. A honeybee was sipping from it but fled to a snapdragon when I pulled out my camera.

While the potatoes continued to dry outside I washed myself off and dressed to go to a patio party down the road. A friend invited me as her plus one and came to pick me up. It was at the home of a newish neighbor whom I’d been meaning to take a plate of cookies to for a couple of years but… being a reclusive hermit, I hadn’t gotten to yet. I had saved enough cookies to bring him some, and found I was warmly welcomed. Another gathering of neighbors I mostly didn’t know! I listened, and laughed, shared a few baking tips, and met another knitter. I was grateful the party was outside, the weather was beautiful, and the company easy and engaging. The host had asked that guests bring something for his compost pile, which struck me as both creative and courageous. I took a bucket full of the dead annuals I had trimmed in the morning, so that even if something sprouts from my offering it will be a lovely flower and not a weed.

Once home, I packed the red potatoes in play sand in a cardboard box. I still have two bags of the gold potatoes in the fridge I need to cook and eat or freeze in the next couple of weeks. They are more delicate, and probably wouldn’t keep well, but I’m optimistic about these hardy red potatoes. I spread a layer of sand, covered it with potatoes, poured in another layer of sand… and made a three layer sand and potato lasagna, which I then closed and tucked under a chair in the mudroom where it will stay cold but not freezing (I hope) so I can eat homegrown potatoes through the winter. Maybe when it gets real cold I’ll have to bring the box with whatever’s left into the pantry. We’ll know more later. One potato at a time.

And the last joyful surprise is the fragrant orchid that hadn’t bloomed for a couple of years, for so long I had forgotten it’s fragrant. It’s been in this hanger near my desk for more than a week, I’ve walked past it dozens of times a day, when suddenly one midday an exquisite perfume stopped me mid stride. I inhaled deeply, exhaled completely, and breathed deep again. I savored this intoxicating scent for more than twenty seconds, until my scent buds acclimated and could hold no more. It continues to release its sweet aroma a for an hour or two in the middle of the day, and then goes quiet. Each time I pass during one of those fleeting floral exhalations is another joyful surprise that captivates me for several lingering breaths.

National Abusive Relationship

Oct1

I was just heading out for sunset last night when a friend from Australia called seeking help with a podcast software we both use. After I got her squared away with it, she wanted to chat so I took her out with me. The technical connection was murky, but the personal connection was delightful. We talked about the moral decay of civilization, the polycrises, the lorikeets in her birdbath, and some of our exes, and we laughed a lot. Sometimes it’s all you can do.

Prior to the broken lying man I dated briefly a few years ago, my previous relationship was with — well, another broken man — who, when I said I valued kindness above all, spit out “Kindness? I don’t even know what you mean by kindness.”

From today’s vantage point, I can see that this came from his brokenness. But he hadn’t said it in a sad way, he had dismissed my foremost core value with contempt. I should have dumped him that minute, instead of sticking around for another three years of emotional abuse.

Four decades of research by the Gottman Institute reveals that the primary destructive force in any relationship is contempt; and further, that being the recipient of contempt in a relationship is a good predictor of—this is wild—infectious disease.

Crazy Panela Mexican cheese that you can simply slice and FRY! So I put the last of the beans in a tortilla, added a fried circle of Panela…

Sadly, I’ve been in a number of emotionally abusive relationships. This likely accounts for my now being happily single for so long; and, it also gives me firm ground from which to point out that the American people are in an abusive relationship with their president.

… a fried egg, roasted green chiles…

The lying, meanness, belittling, controlling, gaslighting and contempt I’ve experienced with past partners have parallels in everything this president does. America is in a national abusive relationship with its President. America, he won’t give it up: It’s up to you to extricate yourself from it. It’s not easy to admit how thoroughly you’ve been fooled, how completely you’ve allowed your values to be undermined to the point that you’re willing to hurt yourself and your loved ones just to keep him happy.

… a few corn chips for crunch and a splash of salsa, and fold the whole thing up like a Taco Bell crunchwrap.

I’m retraumatized every time I hear about the president’s performative cruelty, because I see it for what it is. So I’m retraumatized daily, and have to be careful how much of my attention budget I spend on the brilliant satires and shocked screeds that others are writing about his mental collapse, the brittle reports of each bite his regime takes out of the Constitution, the flagrant corruption of the Supreme Court, the complicity of legacy media and the oligarchy, and that’s just the tip of the shitshow.

After years of trying, I’m finally able to feel compassion for those who naively believed his lies, who felt a want, a lack, a need in their lives that they believed he and only he could fulfill. I imagine that some who voted for him weren’t voting based on hatred, mysogyny, and white supremacy, but on their very real needs: economic needs, a sense of security, a feeling of safety or belonging… and so they chose to believe the lies, despite some inner ick that tried to warn them.

I empathize with their longing for someone with seeming strength and certainty to make everything okay, and I understand the sense of betrayal they are starting to experience. I wish that they may find true relief from their suffering. It won’t come from piling more anger, hatred, cruelty and violence on top of what’s already being done in their name. May they come to see reality clearly, forgive themselves for their delusions, and walk away from this abusive relationship before it completely destroys their lives.

Humor for Sanity

Sep9

Over the past few days I’ve been appreciating political satire as medicine for mental stability. The Borowitz Report shared a series of great artworks redrawn for these hard times, of which this last was my favorite.

I became familiar with a grassroots nonprofit from North Carolina, American Muckrakers, when they took on ‘not-my’ western Colorado representative Lauren Boebert during her first term. Their motto is “holding terrible politicians and people accountable since 2021.” Their efforts, I believe, helped drive her out of CD3 where she would likely have lost reelection, but drove her into CD4 where she won in 2024. CD3 didn’t fare much better last November, with Jeff un-Hurd hurting his constituents from the get go by casting the swing vote that pushed the Big Bad Bill over the edge. As congress debates the must-pass budget bill this month, we can all let our senators know that we oppose it.

We should have definitely blended the tomato butter in the food processor instead of just mashing it with a fork, which would have emulsified it. The next day it was a little particulate, but still delicious on steamed sweet corn-off-the-cob.

Meanwhile, another under-the-radar threat looming is the regime’s plan with the delusional Dr. Oz to require more pre-authorizations for Medicare patients, and to have AI be the decider about who gets what procedures, regardless of doctor’s orders. Indivisible has a petition that explains the dire implications of this AI Death Panel (remember who coined that phrase, death panel?).

More leftovers: the last tomato pesto tart topped with our new favorite omelette and more pesto. Chef José Andres calls it “the best omelette in the history of mankind” and reveals the secret: one egg, one big spoon mayonnaise, whisk it, microwave for 30-40 seconds.

So old people won’t be able to get the treatments they need to thrive or even to survive, and meanwhile Florida has decided it has too many children, as Alexandra Petri points out in this lucid satirical essay in The Atlantic about the state’s elimination of all vaccine mandates.

“Their hands are too small. Sometimes they are sticky, and no one knows why. They say they’re eating their dinner, but you can see that they are just pushing it around on their plate. They come up to you on the sidewalk and tell you their whole life story for 10 minutes, wearing face paint from a birthday party three days ago. Some afternoons they announce that they are sharks, but they are obviously not sharks. They do this over and over again.”

A sweet surprise through the kitchen window, ID’d from this photo by iNaturalist as a green-tailed towhee.

The biggest threat to American public health is without doubt the delusional Health and Human Services secretary. His anti-science anti-vax platform is the first step to killing more children across America, but all this makes sense if the GOP goal is actually to decimate the population of the country.

Bucky is growing big and strong, and stopped by the pond for a drink this afternoon. Wren ran down to say hello and he gave her a sage nod.

Old people, poor people, children, everyone really, will suffer much more, and many of us are already suffering from the ramifications of Project 2025, which is what’s really at the heart of this campaign of cruelty, this great undoing of America’s carefully built societal infrastructure.

The tragic strawberries are finally getting a few flowers to fruition despite ongoing grasshopper predation, and we reaped a few this morning. Wren got three, and I got three.

Setting aside all the insanity “out there” for awhile this evening, it was lovely to zoom with friends from coast to coast in a Grateful Gathering where we talked about pilgrimage as a metaphor for life, with gratefulness as a guiding light.

And then it was lovely to step out into the glorious light of a clear autumn evening and stroll til the sun set, grateful for another day.

Small Successes

Aug20

I read about this awhile ago but only got desperate enough to try it yesterday. I wrapped my head in plastic wrap and smeared peanut butter all over my forehead. It wasn’t some headache cure or skin treatment, it was a ploy.

Wren screams when I try to trim her nails, because one time three years ago I cut one too close. She’ll quietly let the vet do it if I’m out of sight, but with Dr. Vincent gone it’s too expensive and too far to drive as often as she needs it. So I hung her up in her cozy front-pack, donned reading glasses, set a small lid of styptic powder nearby just in case (but I was ever so careful), and stood where she could reach my forehead with her tongue. There was just enough peanut butter on there to keep her distracted long enough for me to clip all her front nails with nary a peep out of her. And it made me laugh, so it was a win all around.

Another small success was a perfect loaf of sourdough, and though this is the usual outcome, it’s been awhile since I baked one. I’m grateful for small domestic successes.

Good Neighbors

Aug18
I’m grateful the little bonsai rose is recovering from its grasshopper defoliation.
One day the froglets will grow big enough to eat this grasshopper, but for now there’s a curious equanimity in their encounter. May I bring the same attitude to neighbors who are so different from me.

The froglets are very good neighbors even though their neighborhood is getting crowded. I have to walk ever so carefully, even ten feet from the pond on the flagstone, to be sure I don’t step on one. They’re literally underfoot! They are tiny, and fragile, and not 100% coordinated yet, so their jumps can be feeble and a little wonky; and also, they don’t really understand about giant feet yet, that they need to get out of the way of shadows.

I keep intending to set some coins out around the edge of the pond for scale to show exactly how tiny they are. But for now I’ll just use a cat: the frog above is the same frog as the one below, on the pond edge, just to the left of the furry hip of Topaz.

You can see several stages of metamorphosis in this image, if you look closely at each tadpole and froglet.
(the next morning)

The best cheese sandwich of the weekend was warmed Brie, sliced homegrown cabbage and red onion, mayonnaise, and organic grape jelly on of course homemade sourdough.

It was a lovely weekend, with ample outside time and the barest hint of pre-fall in the air, a slight cessation of the brutal heat and a minute rise in humidity. Wildfires in this part of the state (the nation, the continent) are rapidly getting contained with a little help from the weather and a lot of effort by brave men and women who are good neighbors to all of us. Whether they left homes nearby me to fight these fires or left homes in another state, right now they are my neighbors. The littles and I enjoyed another stunning sunset with our good neighbors to the west, who came to say hello over the fence and lingered for awhile in companionable silence before going home for dinner.

Speaking of neighbors, many people aren’t aware of the shooting at the CDC a week ago last Friday; it wasn’t a mass casualty event so it didn’t generate sensational television coverage. “Only” one person was killed, a police officer. But it was a mass trauma event, for hundreds of CDC staff and their families, and thousands of people who work in public health. Our neighbors. A foremost epidemiologist, Katelynn Jetelina, discussed the attack and its ramifications for public health workers, the regime’s non-response, and how average Americans can demonstrate support for healthcare workers in this essential, and increasingly stressful and traumatizing, field of public service. It’s forty minutes of lucid and moving discussion. Many of my neighbors work in healthcare, a lot of them in our rural hospital system which is on the chopping block with upcoming cuts to Medicaid. Are any of your neighbors healthcare professionals? How can you show them some appreciation?

Speaking of good neighbors, I was grateful this morning to be invited onto a press call about the destruction of the Social Security Administration. My contribution followed former SSA chair Martin O’Malley’s chilling assessment of the regime’s efforts to demolish social security. You can watch the press conference here if you’d like to hear just how badly the regime has already damaged “the only agency in America that runs a 2.6 trillion dollar surplus,” and also hear a couple of regular folks talk about what social security means for them and their neighbors.

Can’t we all be good neighbors to each other? Planet Earth is our only neighborhood, for all of us, human and non-human alike.

This evening, I only counted a dozen tadpoles left in the water. I know there are more I didn’t see, but I saw just as many froglets in one square foot at the edge of the pond. I’m not fond of the algae, but the froglets are, so I’m not about to scoop it out. It’s an essential part of their neighborhood, which is all they have and all they know.

More Froglets!

Aug11

I’m grateful that there were plenty of windows of opportunity to visit the pond over the weekend. A massive wildfire northwest of here about eighty crow miles covers much of the state in smoke depending on which way the wind blows. When it blows from the south these days, we have good air; when it blows from the north, as it’s been doing the past several nights, the air quality shoots up over 110 and many of us have to stay inside. I’m grateful it’s not worse: friends from Chicago to Syracuse have been experiencing the worst air in the world on occasion over the past couple of weeks, due to even more massive wildfires in Canada. So when I get a window of clean air I make the most of it, and visit the pond.

Despite jaw and tooth pain as my mouth settles around new crowns and attendant complications, I’ve “gotta eat sometimes,” as the dentist kindly reminded me. So I’ve enjoyed eating homemade brown sugar-cinnamon poptarts for breakfast the past few days. Amy recommended the recipe and since that was always my favorite flavor poptart growing up I had to try it. Pretty good for a first effort, and not that hard to make. Not perfect, either, so I’ll have to make them again.

After breakfast, or sometimes before, I visit the pond, where fewer and fewer tadpoles swim and more and more froglets crowd the edges. They’re in the rushes, on the lily pads, among the flagstones, under the flagstones, out in the grasses. This evening I took a quick look and had to step very carefully to avoid stepping on some: little froglets everywhere! They’re so tiny they get a little tangled in the grass stems when they startle and try to hop to the pond for safety. Wren could catch and eat them easier than she does the grasshoppers, but she’s been very responsive to my admonishments to leave it.

Above, four froglets cluster at the edge, and a nearly-turned tadpole rests in the warm shallow just above the tiny snail on the brick. In the detail below you can see a fifth froglet’s leg peeking out below the brick, underwater.

At the slow north end, where algae has collected, I couldn’t count the gathered froglets, and kept getting closer, and closer.

I hadn’t thought about what the soles of a froglet’s feet look like and it kind of surprised me to see the little bumps. I think these are the toes beginning to develop, but that’s just an educated guess. After seeing how far they’ve ventured from the pond already and how fragile and vulnerable they are, I may need to use my next window to lay out some branches and build a few rock piles; I certainly won’t be mowing again this year.

After a weekend of adventures and work and smoke and play, Wren and I both rest.

Another Sunset

Aug5

I was grateful to get into the dentist today to check out increasing pain in my teeth since the crown a few weeks ago. All kinds of nightmare scenarios were going through my mind, but not with the pernicious insistence of pre-mindfulness days. The dentist was reassuring, diagnosed it as a “bite problem” and ground down both crowns to resolve it. They said my teeth were bruised. What? I was grateful to learn something new: teeth are held in place by ligaments, and ligaments can get inflamed for all sorts of reasons, including not quite perfect crowns. Fingers crossed that’s all it is. We’ll know more later.

I’m grateful for making it through to another glorious sunset. West, light smoke floated below the clouds. To the northwest the wildfire smoke seemed to float above the clouds, though really, I think, it was just closer.

Creative Energy

Jul23

I’m grateful for the simple, productive pleasure of knitting. I’ve just started the right front panel of the dream sweater. Allowing the flow of creative energy releases agitation and grounds me in this moment. Whether it’s with knitting needles or a camera, writing or in the kitchen cooking, focusing my attention on creating something or capturing a fleeting image calms thoughts and eclipses ego. Wren was grateful that I took her to the canyon this evening.