Just past 6 a.m. and 32F outside. We're just recovering from the storm that is now moving through the rest of the country, dumping snow and rain. The clouds were so very beautiful.
And we had fleeting but beautiful sunsets.
I measure and track habits that (I hope) will improve my overall health and fitness, and I track "symptoms" of medical conditions that I am treating on my own. Hopefully as the habits become more stable the symptoms will become less frequent. That's the plan anyway. So I rely on my measuring tools.
What I realized today is that some of these measurements are dependent on where in the house I am tracking them! Sounds are going to be louder in a small, low-ceilinged room than a large one. Hadn't considered this effect, but it shouldn't come as a surprise; blood pressure and weight both fluctuate throughout the day.
But I'm bummed anyway. Thought I had stopped snoring completely, or so saith my app, but as soon as I moved back into the tiny, warm back bedroom (with its shed roof), I'm registering some mild rumbles again. They must have been there all along but dissipated into the larger space of the big bedroom. So losing 13 pounds didn't really make all the difference I'd thought it had.
Sometimes I want to throw all this data in the air and say, forget it. I'm getting older. I won't live forever in this body, but I will in my spirit. So my attention ought to be more on my character than my weight and blood pressure. I ought to be tracking how many times per day I overcome selfishness, and how many times I can uplift people, or show them love and support. Measuring my spiritual progress is love-based, whereas measuring my physical progress is fear-based.
Unfortunately at the moment I feel overdrawn in both accounts. So I downloaded an app called "Daily Guidance from your Angels" since I could use some. My card for this morning is "Reward Yourself". Oh, really? I just bought the app, isn't that a reward? But the fact is that I am preoccupied with meeting the wants and needs of my loved ones, to the degree that I've had to get one of those "mom planners" since I'm driving my "kids" places now. I have to coordinate their medical appointments and take them shopping for things they need. And they don't play well together, so I have to take them separately.
Being loving and supportive is its own reward. But a rest would be nice, so I'll spend some time today planning a mini-retreat for next year. Sometimes just planning to do something fun creates a feeling of rejuvenation.
The past two mornings have found me tumbling out of bed to race outside with my camera.
Standing out in the middle of the road in my bathrobe and slippered feet, bed-heat shimmering off me like smoke, burning clouds to the east and a still fat moon hanging in the blue-dusty western heavens, I felt whole and realized. I began to understand what my husband tells me about having lived for 80 years: that your soul can be filled and complete. That you can reach a point where you feel ready to face the biggest adventure of anyone's life.
In my case it is probably not that adventure. It is probably more like what we might consider a test. But this morning I felt utterly capable of meeting whatever is required of me.
Perhaps it has something to do with finally having cleared off my desk and settled on a much larger planner (who was I kidding with that little thing). It might also have something to do with finally sorting through my reading pile to cleave to the most important.
Currently that is Biocentrism by Robert Lanza. I am trying to wrap my mind around his mind-blowing ideas and if I succeed, I'll review the book here in a later post.
Just turned down an invitation to a wonderful, even magical Thanksgiving party. Last year I attended that (annual) party on my own while my husband was staying with our ill friend, who had her massive stroke the following day. I could not bring myself to attend that same party this year (am I that superstitious?).
Last week someone gave me a little plaque to put on my bulletin board. It reads "I'm too busy to be organized." I thought that was funny because the truth is that I'm too organized to be busy.
Oh busy happens, but it happens when I plan for it.
But today, I'm planning to stay in bed. Yes. All day. And drink another great hot toddy sometime before dark.
All I've done for the past few weeks is run around accomplishing things that won't matter at all by this time next year. Much of what I've done has just ensured that I'll be occupied in the future with ever more low priority activities. That's how I've planned to be busy. And this is where it gets me: Quavery, shaky, right on the edge of debilitation.
It's time to put on the brakes, climb back in bed with a sketchbook, and let myself sense the larger currents flowing through our lives. I don't have a wealth of decades left in this incarnation. Every choice requires a crystal clarity.
Rainbows can be elusive. They can shimmer into being with a turn of the road, and then vanish. The currents are like that, too. Like fish flashing in the stream, a quick glimpse may be all we find.
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Nothing's actually wrong. But I'm feeling depressed. The narcotic of planning is wearing off. Once I settled on a calendar and list system, I was done with that part.
Reality is that the older my husband and mother get, the more time they require from me. Since they are diametrically opposed in temperament, they don't voluntarily spend any time together, which spreads me even thinner. Then, the fact is that I will need to work full time to improve my pension before retirement, but I don't see how I can take that time out of my life and still do everything else necessary.
I dreamed of a young boy left to die of exposure and woke realizing everything I've left out in the cold - everything that gets short shrift because I'm spreading myself too thin.
I don't spend enough time caring for my husband, my mother or our pets. I don't spend enough time caring for my own health, or doing what I should to secure my old age pension. I'm a writer and have two short stories scheduled for publication in 2014, but I'm not writing them. I haven't meditated or prayed or read devotional works in weeks. My part time job is becoming more and more demanding, and my schedule is expanding into former non-working hours.
Even my time-saving once a month shopping system has failed with Mom here. She has to go every week, as she did when she lived in the city and could get around with public transportation.
Spreading myself too thin means I may be attending a bit to everything but not doing a good job at any of it.
I haven't washed my car since…September. Yes, September.
But the sunset last night took my breath away. I stopped the car on my way home from work and took photographs:
Perhaps such a glorious symbol of something ending is fitting because like it or not I will need to make some big changes very soon.
Will need to let that idea marinate.
My husband is on board with the concept of ruthless simplicity. He's decided to scale back on a major home improvement project and might even sell his beloved boat. We've also decided to cancel a big trip we had planned for next year. The knife is slashing already, but not at the core issues I need to resolve.
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For many, many years of my life, November brought trouble. For the astrologically minded, November brings my solar opposition (Scorpio Sun opposed Taurus Sun). I had a miscarriage, relationships ended, there were emergency surgeries, thefts. For most of my young adult years, November was not pretty. February wasn't much fun either.
Then as I became a 'mature adult' (ha ha), I decided that I was feeding into this mentally and creating the energy environment that would allow such things to happen, so if I wanted relief, I needed to change my beliefs. It was hard to do with all that evidence to the contrary, but I meditated and affirmed and in fact, November and February have been quiet, even pleasant months, for the past decade.
Didn't know if this was the result of my energy work, or if maturity alone meant I no longer needed such dramatics in my life. I'd begun looking forward to fall and winter. They've become my favorite time of year!
But last year the trouble raged back in a nonstop November-March reign of terror. A very close friend died. My husband had been staying with her during an illness (severe, crippling back pain) that seemed completely unrelated to the stroke that destroyed her brain the day after Thanksgiving, and killed her two weeks later. None of us saw that coming, not her doctors, not her friends.
She was single and childless, which left us dealing with the chaos of her large estate, to help an out of state trustee (a friend from her high school years) who could not leave her own work to do the job. The estate saleswoman turned out to be a thief, vanishing with all the proceeds. It was the perfect toxic end to a massively stressful 5 month long nightmare.
But by April, the estate was finally settled - we were done making those grueling weekly trips - and we could theoretically return to normal life again. But of course we didn't. It's just about now - almost a year later - that we are feeling more like ourselves again.
And it's November again.
I no longer believe that November troubles derives from the energetics of my Solar Opposition. Winter is harder on older people, and our friend was a decade older than I am, as are most of my friends and loved ones. The friends I have who are younger than I am are fighting their own critical health battles. Most of us have lived the major portion of our lives already and are looking at shorter and shorter horizons.
I used to think that it was very nerdy to carry a planner and focus so much on organization of paperwork and household affairs. But my beliefs have been put to the test and now I know that my planner is, next to my water bottle and wallet, the most important thing I carry in my bag. Having the information I need with me creates a feeling of peaceful competency that has helped me through the major surgeries of my husband and mother over the past 4 years and now through the death of our close friend. And it will help me create legal and medical bulwarks against the storms that are sure to come again.
