Welcome to another weekend! I started to write this post a day early (Thursday) in case the winter snowfall/high winds during the night might take out the electric service. Instead, I lost a week, and it’s now February! We are in the midst of a cold snap, like -21 F with a forecast high for tomorrow of 32 F degrees above zero.
The past few weeks, I have been out of focus. I have not gotten many of my two poem challenges written on time, but I’ve caught up, pretty much. I have the new-to-me computer working, for the most part. It will be less awkward to move for Zoom meetings, it has a backlit keyboard, and the audio has more volume and quality, and microphones in the headset. The downer is that I still cannot type special characters, but must the character app.
I have continued to lose weight, after my early-January appointment with the diabetes educator. They would not be happy, if they knew.
I have my second Zoom meeting for my The Artist’s Way course, tomorrow morning, and a two-hour co-working session with Liz Danforth and friends just after lunch. A lot of sitting, since I have various stuffs I should be doing and not enough exercise, and I really am not hungry and do not remember to eat when I should.
A bright spot is that my sister in New England and I have started doing weekly phone calls. Feels so good to laugh with someone who knows our backgrounds.
Natalie is the host for our Weekend Coffee Share. You will find her post for this week here: Little Norway Park Benches.
Off to get caught up, now. Best wishes for your weekend!
For many years, while I was an copy/style editor and writer, I made a practice of setting aside the weeks containing the Christmas and New Year holidays as vacation days for myself. When I retired, I let that go. However, I found that I missed those unstructured weeks that were interrupted only by the Christmas family gathering in the town just across the river from ours.
Welcome to my blog! I have just made more hot tea and am fixing lunch—Greek yogurt with thawed mango chunks and blueberries. There’s a fresh batch of homemade coffee concentrate in the refrigerator. Help yourself or bring your own munchies and brew!
Another week almost finished up! I have been taking time off from things this week, again. I have been sleeping more, exercising, rereading some favorite novels, and making some progress on cleaning and redoing the books on the front-room shelves. In my room, I still have boxes of books and electronics that we hauled out of the basement, a few summers.ago, when we got water seepage from heavy rains. I am now ruthlessly tossing things. Also, I need to get some of the picture frames back on the walls and out of harm’s way. I have one (framed) embroidery sampler from the late 1800s that I need to unframe and send to a relative on the east coast; her first name is the same the girl, a direct ancestor, who embroidered the sampler. I think that it should not have been kept under glass. My sister will know what to do with it to preserve it without more damage.
My last Artist’s Way session (13-week course through the U of Wisconsin-Platteville with Prof. Sean Shannon) was last weekend. To maintain the framework somewhat, I decided to continue on my own by rereading Julia Cameron’s book It’s Never Too Late to Begin Again. I also have on hand Naomi Wakan’s Write Away (prompts for a healthy life). (I ordered two copies , which are available from a business near her home, and both were autographed, which I had not expected, but much appreciate.) Naomi’s book is much more utilitarian, coming from experience without extraneous sidetracks. I may intersperse the exercises. I may find that I want to stick with Naomi’s. I logged onto B&N’s site and found three more books (available only as paperbacks) that I can add to my library. They should be arriving two and three weeks from now.
My mother left many completed quilt tops in her fabric arts room when she died. One of my sisters-in-law took them, along with the many shelves of Mother’s materials stash, to put to use as she could for various and worthwhile projects. I hope that much of it is donated to charities, whether as quilt tops or finished quilts. Before they left with the items that fell to them to distribute, I chose two quilt tops, which my sister-in-law has quilted for me. Finally, in the midst of the pandemic, she and my brother made the long drive to bring them to me/us, this week. They felt that shipping was too uncertain to trust them to. My sister-in-law does exquisite quilting, finishing them almost as fine as Mother would have.
Mother’s Quilts
The four of us enjoyed supper together at the local Denny’s Restaurant. It was interesting, being out and around people talking and enjoying one another’s company. I had missed fried eggs with hash browns and bacon. Something I do not make for myself. (That would be the potatoes, which I do not keep in the house. I do, however, have a frozen veggie pasta meal in the freezer. The stuff with the cheese sauce.) We three oldest siblings have gotten together on Zoom a few times, these past two years, but being together in one place is something we have not done for a very long time, other than the parents’ funerals, the winter of 2016-17.
when leaves fall they give themselves back to earth to rise again transfigured into flowers clothed in butterflies and dreams
Although I have been writing some poems in December, I am not focusing on writing. I very much enjoyed joining with other participants during February 2021 for the February National Haiku Writing Month (NaHaiWriMo). I plan to write more haiku, tanka, and other (in English) Japanese poetic forms during January, leading up to the poem-a-day activities in February 2022. My reading has been mostly rereading favorite books. I found a number of them lost among the volumes that had accumulated on the front-room bookshelves. Found a favorite ebook that I had thought lost; a science fiction book by my friend Melisa Michaels, now deceased. Had a good cry. Missing her a lot. I am happy that she and her husband bought property and lived for a while in the same state we do, so we were able to get together more than once during that all too brief time.
Time has passed so quickly, and I must tend to the Scamper dogs and start in on the laundry, once Al is out of the shower. I am grateful that you have stopped by for a while.
If you visit the blog (link below) of Natalie the Explorer, you will find her weekly Weekend Coffee Share post and a Links app with links to the other Weekend Coffee Share participants. Enjoy! Natalie is taking a two-week break from the Weekend Coffee Share feature on her blog, and so the next will be on 7 January 2022.
Running quite late, tonight, but there’s still half a pot of English Breakfast tea and some rice crackers. if it’s not too late in your day, the apples are in the bowl on top of the fridge.
The weather has been variable, but we finally got our first winter storm. Semis going off the highway, traffic accidents, sirens and emergency vehicles. ::sigh:: We are pretty much out of that, however, since the other of us caught a chest cold that keeps getting worse. (Finally got some Nyquil, this evening. Coughing from the bedroom at the other end of the house is quieter and more infrequent…finally!) i caught a cold, also, but it has not lasted as long. Still trying to catch up on housework and laundry. Also, we now have running water for the shower for the time being, and the toilet has completely new innards. Yesterday I took my first shower since last Saturday.
I have been trying to catch up on sleep. The bruising has eased a lot after my fall downstairs, end of September. The air quality has still been iffy, but I haven’t had to use the nebulizer for a couple days, now.
On Tuesday, we attended a funeral visitation. The husband of a couple who have been neighbors since the late seventies died on the fourth of bone cancer. A long and gradually debilitating progression. Recalled to mind my mother’s funeral in November of 2016. Wrote a poem in remembrance.
My poem-a-day project has been going well. I have written some extra poems, in case more unfortunate events eat up my writing time as the month progresses. I am having much fun trying out new Japanese poetic forms that I have been learning about on the Writer’s Digest website. Quite happy that I added that structure to the poem-a-day process, this time around.
It’s almost one in the morning, so I had better close this and get some sleep. My Artist’s Way class starts at ten o’clock, and I have much to accomplish before then.
Thanks for stopping in. I look forward to visiting more over the course of the weekend.
Best wishes!
Lizl
P.S, Natalie the Explorer, our host for Weekend Coffee Share, has written another interesting blog post. That and the inLinkz (?) app can be found here. “Fall Cycling and Hiking.”
Too tired to proofread, tonight. Maybe tomorrow, though. ::sigh::
I am still juggling the words that started arranging themselves as fragments and then gradually took another turn or two…or four…or round-about. Since that fall, the final Saturday of September, I had been eating aspirin and taking it easy. These past days, however, there’s been little to no pain, and I can mostly do, again, what I could do before the fall. Run to play with the Scampers in the back yard. Lift and carry, roughhouse with Thaddeus. Is good.
“Turn to Look”
Do not cower when would-be tyrants demand revenge or scorn. Nether hate nor violence will restore the richness of the land.
Let blooms and breeze and birdsong replace the threads of doom. Nourish and protect the waters and the earth, the creatures who should not suffer as we do.
Each finds their own way when we see creation through new eyes. There are the promises of change… change and healing hurt.
I think the down time gave me too much space for thinking in that span that did allow for any doing of consequence. I made changes that may be significant for myself and others as time goes on. And planned other things needing doing.
I continue to lose myself in thought. And thoughts that are not written down may be forgotten. One forgets what one had determined, what needs to be accomplished. The gaps between decision and action can grow too long.
I need a record, a prodding for myself to do what should be done. Even as I myself change, the externals still need to be undertaken in proper time and order. I lose myself in thought and sometimes forget that thinking about something does not translate itself into reality on its own.
Enough! I have to decant the latest Toddy Coffee concentrate, now, or I will have no coffee for tomorrow’s breakfast.
Later!
P.S. Toddy Coffee diluted with whole milk rather than water is my breakfast.
It is quite early…a quarter of an hour before one a.m. This has been a scattered day. Naps and yard work and the usual Thursday routines: Meeting for Worship for Healing just after lunch, the weekday lunchtime write-in (a Patreon perk), and going through the photographs, which I take each morning while the Scampers are eating their breakfasts.
Thank you for stopping in, today! I’ve gotten a late start, here, reading some more of the book that I fell asleep over, last night, and then sleeping in, this morning. Yesterday, Thursday, we had dental appointments in the morning. We enjoyed nice rides through farming country, there and back. It’s good to see the corn at a good height and some green in the pastures and ditches. We’re still playing “hide-and-seek” with the rain clouds. We did make it back home in time for me to join Thursday’s Meeting for Worship, while Al headed to the cafe for the day’s special. (Swedish meatballs?)
Wednesday last week, I wrote a poem during the online poetry workshop. This week, I took time to rework it a bit. I’ve come to enjoy writing to acrostics prompts during the past year or so, workshops, mostly, but I’ve liked them in previous challenges and poetry-writing activities also.
Resilience
remembering at the far end of eternity — shadowed by images of what came before looking for lost pathways in a web of visions enmeshed in beauty naming those who came here, then vanished again ethereal … dissolving … gone
fading colors butterfly dust on dew stuff of dreams
I enjoyed getting out, mornings, to take photographs. On the sixth, there was rain when I got up, and so I had fun taking photos of raindrops on flowers, grass, and metal fencing. I did cut out much of my regular online activity again this week, and (aside from staying up late to read, one night) found myself waking up with the alarm and for the most part getting a full eight to nine hours of sleep.
Over the past week, I have continued to play with my new WordPress blog. Late this week, I deleted everything, and started over from the beginning. I think I know what I want to do with it and how to go about doing what I want. And pretty much knowing how to do it. I expect to use Categories and tags methodically, according to how I want posts grouped, and how to group individual posts together in multiple configurations. Sort of everything together, but organized. “Groupable?”
Looking at Natalie’s photograph of the Gooderham “Flatiron” Building in Toronto, I recalled seeing a flatiron building also, when in Manhattan for a long weekend, not too far from my hotel, but in the opposite direction from Central Park. Our Weekend Coffee Share host Natalie’s blog for this week is here: 5 Things To See at Berczy Park. Lovely blog post! Don’t miss it!
I am continuing my pattern, I think, for at least the rest of this month, of minimal participation in general. Doing whatever comes to hand or to mind and relaxing into the flow of life. But not so often.
Thank you for stopping in! I look forward to visiting as I am able during the rest of the weekend.
I have been sorting through my digital and paper files, this spring, as part of our plan to evaluate, sort, and organize/toss what has been accumulating since my health hit a bad spot and I had to put aside my freelance writing, editing, and photo art activities.
I have started typing the poems from the mid-fifties through the end of the nineties that I want to keep. Basically, so that they will be available for me to read and possibly also for friends and family to choose from as keepsakes. In case I become incapacitated or die before I can go back to make up a chapbook or two of my favorites to give to extended family in remembrance. Many of the poems that I love the most are not those that have been published or reprinted. I want to read and remember and put safely aside the poems that have so much meaning to me. Those that I want to keep close to hand.
So many people…so much love…so many now gone. I want to remember.
The Moments Between 