1. Morning walks. It was another week of especially cold mornings and more snow on the ground. It most likely is the last of the negative temperatures but not necessarily the snow. One morning, Ringo and I walked a short section of trail we hadn’t walked before and it reminded me how much he loves exploring new places. I suspect part of his excitement was that a fox or something just as wild and stinky must have recently passed through.
Here are some pictures Eric took, on one of his icy walks with Ringo. We’d had freezing rain the night before and then that got covered with a layer of snow, so the trees were especially sparkly and when the sun hit them and they started to melt, it looked like it was snowing again.
2. Practice. Doing yoga at Red Sage, writing with my Friday morning sangha, and adding a few more tiny brass animals to my meditation shrine, two horses in memory of Eric’s mom and sister.
3. Being able to help my brother from 1200 miles away. Things are moving ahead for settling my mom in memory care. I thankfully was able to do a lot of the initial contacts and paperwork and such from here in Colorado. I’m a bit nervous that Mom may have advanced to the point they won’t accept her, and that we’ll have to start the whole process over, this time to find a skilled nursing placement or even hospice. In the meantime, Chris has been Mom’s primary and only caretaker — and as anyone who has cared for an adult sized loved one understands, when they are sick or injured or even dying, it’s A LOT of work simply to keep them safe and comfortable, clean and fed. May whatever is best for everyone involved in caring for my mom happen quickly and easily. And if you have any to spare, I’d take your good wishes for the same, kind and gentle reader.
They got snow in Oregon last week too (Chris’s grandkids)Us in DisneylandMom in a bit better days
4. Pilates. I finally found a place that had the teachers, classes, prices, and equipment I was looking for, and it’s less than 10 minutes away. I went to my first session last Sunday. It felt so good!
5. My tiny family, small house, little life. Everything else can feel heavy and hard, but THIS is always my soft place to land.
“If I lie on your feet, you haz to pet me.”
Bonus joy: KIND dipped clusters, tortilla chips, poetry and poets, libraries and librarians, ALT National Park Service, stickers (especially this one), true crime, comedy, listening to podcasts, watching TV, blue sky, hanging out with Chloe’ on Zoom, texting with Chris, looking at old texts from my mom and dad, the brief glimpses I get that things might be okay, my infrared heating pad, grocery shopping, being able to cook, school pictures of my dad when he was little (seriously, he was so cute), other people’s dogs and kids, streaming music, making myself mixtapes, people who shovel their sidewalks when it snows, naps, a warm shower, houseplants, popcorn, hugs in the kitchen, laughing with Eric, when Ringo sighs (sometimes it means he’s super comfortable and sometimes it means I’m annoying him), having an 11 year old dog who still acts like a punk teenager, the way Eric steps in to pick up my slack, when Chelsey texts to check up on me, sharing videos and memes with Kari and Shelly and Carrie, that banana bread Kerri gave us, walnuts, down blankets and pillows, soft merino wool shirts, reading in bed at night on my Kindle while Eric and Ringo sleep.
2. She’s Trying to Stay Ahead of Alzheimer’s, in a Race to the Death on The New York Times. (gift link) “In the Netherlands, doctors and dementia patients must negotiate a fine line: Assisted death for those without capacity is legal, but doctors won’t do it.”
3. Conversations @ the Salt Line Ep. 26: Robert Jones Jr. (video). “In this episode of Conversations @ the Salt Line host Wesley Dixon chats with author Robert Jones Jr. about his debut novel ‘The Prophets,’ which served as the first-year common reading for the students in the Vassar Class of 2028. With ‘The Prophets’ as the backdrop, Wesley and Robert discussed themes of humanizing complex individuals, navigating marginalized identities, and experiencing deep love.”
5. Nourishing Collective Resonance on The Wonder + The Haunting. “For many of us, the chronic ‘off’ feeling we experience in our modern culture is a collective experience that no formula, strategy, or intellectual reasoning can resolve. The ‘off’ feeling that haunts us is a sense-ual knowing that our lives are wonder-deficient. The ‘off’ feeling is our bodies sending us a message of discord rather than harmony—the further we get from our animal nature, the further we drift from a life of resonance.
6. Fatigue: The Modern Mind’s Silent Battle on The Gurdeep Magazine. “In our contemporary world, a new form of fatigue has emerged, specifically related to our interaction with digital technology—particularly phones, social media, internet browsing, and what’s commonly known as ‘doom scrolling.’ From my personal observations, I’ve noticed a distinct pattern: even when beginning with a clear, energized mind and an active body, engaging in prolonged scrolling sessions can rapidly lead to feelings of exhaustion. Even brief periods of 10 to 15 minutes can induce a noticeable sense of tiredness, suggesting that excessive screen time has become one of the primary contributors to modern-day fatigue.”
7. Earthlings and Broken Hearts on The Isolation Journals with Suleika Jaouad. “This layering of loves and losses and more loves has been a great teacher for me. It has taught me to accept the rhythm of our lives, which is all loves and all losses, all of the time. It has taught me to be proud of the intensity of my heartbreaks, because what is grief but a measure of love? The more deeply you love, the more deeply you grieve. I have come to believe our capacity for love is infinite, and like love, I believe our capacity for grief is infinite, if we accept it for what it is — as part of the rhythm of life.”
8. 100 Days of Creative Resistance, “a free email of encouragement, opposition, and commiseration — a reminder of why we write and create — from 100 iconoclastic contemporary voices on each of the first 100 days of the 47th president’s regime. The program begins January 20th, 2025, Inauguration Day. As the emails post, they are archived here.”
9. Re: The Super Bowl and Whiteness from Hugh Hollowell. “You have a choice: You can see this as an opportunity to learn new things, to see art outside your gaze, to develop in understanding of the world around you, or you can complain, whine, and whither into hatred.”
10. Please Promote Your Work In The Face Of Uninvited Nightmare from Chuck Wendig on Terrible Minds. “So, instead of some big thing about how writing is resistance and art is an act of optimism, blah blah blah, let’s just scrape away all that stuff and go right for the heart of the matter: We need the art. Shit is bad, and we need books, and music, and paintings. That’s it, it’s as simple as that. The times are hard, and art helps us through hard times.”
12. Five ways to be calm – and why it matters. “Is being calm about passivity and numbness, or is it a superpower that makes us strong? Lindsay Baker explores the ideas behind serenity, and ways that we can achieve it.”
14. The One Who Got Away on The New York Times. (gift link) “Lasting relationships require a particular kind of alchemy. There’s chemistry and commitment, sure, but also timing and luck. So this Valentine’s Day, The New York Times asked readers to share stories about ‘the one who got away.’ More than 1,000 people wrote in about the electric chance encounters and deep love that slipped through their fingers. Here are 20 of our favorites, which have been edited for length and clarity.”
23. How I Fight Back by Josie George on bimblings. “Long ago, I discovered that the antidote to despair and fear isn’t hope — no, not that unsteady thing, heartbreaking in its fragility — it’s gratitude. It’s saying thank you thank you thank you over and over again, to everything and everything, until the world becomes bathed in light again.”
Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray) 