Category Archives: Third Phase

Aging, Faith and Spirituality, Health, Memories, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Science, Third Phase

One Year Ago

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Spring                                                                                   Maiden Moon

Had blood drawn yesterday for my third post surgery PSA. Right now they come every quarter, routine surveillance. The first two have showed .015 which is the clinical equivalent of none. Since the results have followed the best hoped for pattern, I’m experiencing no anxiety about them.

Today is my second annual physical with Dr. Lisa Gidday. This physical revisits a key moment from cancer season. The start of the season. It was last year at my first physical in Colorado when Dr. Gidday found a suspicious hardness in my prostate. I count cancer season as having begun with that physical on April 14th and ending in late September with my first follow up PSA.

It was a short time compared to my image of what cancer is typically like. It went: initial suspicion, see urologist who confirmed Gidday’s finding, biopsy, diagnosis, decision on treatment, surgery, recovery, first PSA after surgery. All this in six months.

There is the question of a cure. Does this mean I have no more prostate cancer? Did the end of cancer season mean the end of the cancer threat? No, it does not. Things look good, very good, but the clinical reality is that a few cancerous prostate cells could have escaped and are dormant right now. My gut says no, that is not the case. I feel rid of the traitorous bastards.

In fact, I feel very healthy right now. Yes, I have this damned knee, lower back and shoulder, but they’re nuisance level. Yes, I have chronic kidney disease, but it seems stable. In fact the numbers that gauge its severity actually improved in my last blood work done in October. Yes, I have insomnia, but it’s just one of those damned things.

My point here is that aging means an accumulation (for most of us) of chronic conditions. We can choose to focus on those as ongoing problems, become obsessive about them and drown ourselves in anxiety or we can recognize their inevitability and, if not embrace them, at least accept them with grace. Most of the time.

The anxiety is unnecessary. That is the point of Yama, the Tibetan deity. To worship Yama we envision our own death, see it coming, embrace its part in our story. When we can truly accept the reality of our own death, anxiety about what may deliver it to us becomes redundant. We may not know the particulars, but we do know the outcome of our life. It’s the same for all of us.

 

Colorado, GeekWorld, Jefferson County, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, The West, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Making Our Peace With Wildfires

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Spring                                                                              Maiden Moon

Figured out yesterday how to use Amazon’s Unlimited Photo cloud service. It comes free with Prime. Because I put so many images in my blog, I have an unusually large number filed away for future use. I began the uploading of the photos yesterday and the service is about 2/3’rds done this morning. It will finish sometime today.

Then, I sat down and learned how to use Dropbox. It’s free storage, about 2GB, is plenty for my novels, short stories, essays. I started copying files there yesterday, too. It will take a little time, but once I’m done, I’ll just have to update whatever current work I’m doing.

These two are in anticipation of a possible wildfire. No need to lose your work these days.

Today I’m going to work on putting together our emergency kit which will include the memory card which has the photographs of all our stuff. In there will also go insurance policies, titles, deed and manuals for various things since they will testify to exactly what we own. Our estate documents and our living wills. That sort of thing.

After a year of trying to put together an external sprinkler system, I’ve decided to not pursue it. Why? Well, for one thing nobody here builds the kind of simple system I want. I’ve investigated all the possible vendors in the state. That would mean I’d have to work with somebody who didn’t know what they were doing. Which would make two of us.

Perhaps even more to the point, I read an article by a wildfire expert who said that if you follow the firewise zone recommendations, which I am, that most houses will survive a fire. The deputy chief of the Elk Creek Fire district said that our house was well situated to survive a fire, in large part because we have a short, level driveway on a primary road, Black Mountain Drive. The perception of the fire department is important because during a fire they drive through the area and in essence do triage. These homes will be ok on their own. These can survive if we protect them. These homes will burn. You want to be in the first two categories. And we are no matter the sort of fire.

ECFD LOGO

Also, I decided to make my peace with losing our house and garage. After I finish the fire mitigation work, taking down trees and making sure we have a our zone free of combustibles around the house, I’m going to rely on luck and the Elk Creek Fire Protection District. Should that not prove enough and we lose everything except our lives and the lives of our dogs, we’ll build again. What could be safer than an area that’s already burned out?

It felt freeing to come to this decision. Both Kate and I agreed that losing our stuff would be very, very far from a cataclysm. We could rebuild an energy efficient house suited to our needs.

All part of settling in.

 

Family, Third Phase, Travel

Going Away

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Imbolc                                                                   Maiden Moon

I’m in pre-big trip mode. My sibs, Mary and Mark, have made international travel something like grabbing the Greyhound from Chicago to New York City, but I’ve done far less, so each time I go there seems to be a lot to consider. Here are a few.

What to pack? Always, less is more, but still even the less has content. Less of what should I take? Solved one problem by having Seoah find me a place to rent a tux or a suit. Still. The plan right now is to take what can fit in the big red suitcase and one carryon. The big red suitcase we bought for the Latin America cruise. There are some packing tips that I have saved and a checklist of necessities I made several years ago and update from time to time.

How to get money? In olden days cash or traveler’s checks. Now there are options. A debit card for a cash draw each day gets a good exchange rate and eliminates the need for protecting a large stash. A credit card is useful for bigger expenses: hotel bills, fancy meals, tuxedo rentals. One site I read recommended keeping one one-hundred dollar bill somewhere apart from everything else. Think I will.

(the wedding will be in Gwangju, near the southern tip of Korea.)

Jet lag. Easier going east to west than the reverse, but still a factor. Melanin. Change sleep patterns in advance. Get sunlight as soon as possible in Korea. Helps the inner clock reset.

Illness, even death. Aging adds another frisson to international travel. Have to get up and walk during the long flight to avoid deep vein thrombosis, not to mention oiling up the creaky joints both of us have. A supply of medications. Travel insurance. In the past I would avoid this, but repatriation of a corpse is expensive and, well, death happens.

Emergency preparedness for home. We live in a fire-prone habitat, so it’s not impossible that our home could burn down while we’re gone. Unlikely, yes, but not impossible. So, we need to gather the documents necessary for modern life, including photos of all of our stuff. Once they’re in one portable file holder we’ll ask Holly and Eduardo to keep them for us.

The car. I know about the park and ride services in the Twin Cities, but not here yet. We have, once again, positioned ourselves in the furthest point away from the airport while still nominally in the broad Denver metro. Far cheaper to park near the airport, but those sites have to be found.

And of course, as Donald Rumsfeld famously said, there is, too, the unknown unknown.

 

Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase

The Goddess

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Imbolc                                                                               New Maiden Moon

The goddess has moved back into her maiden form, having left the crone behind at Imbolc. She will remain a maid until Beltane when the earth becomes fecund. We are once again in the time of new beginnings, the temperate zones of mother earth readying themselves for a new growing season. This is a time to consider pruning those branches of your life that have died or no longer have the sort of energy you want to encourage.

While the antiquity of the triple goddess concept may be questioned, its archetypal power has moved it into a central position among contemporary pagans. Related both to the seasons of the year and the phases of the moon, the shifting from maiden to mother to crone offers us a regular opportunity to examine our life as a cyclical phenomenon of innocence, achievement and the gathering of wisdom.

 

 

Art and Culture, Memories, Third Phase

Bananas!

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Imbolc                                                                           Valentine Moon

Going to sleep. Staying asleep. The first is easier than the second for me. Kate, a survivor of medical school residency, has some ideas that she’s shared with me. Paying attention to my breathing was one. This meshes, of course, with meditation and a gestalt psychology approach, experiencing all the sensations of your body. I’d never applied it trying to sleep and it does help.

The monkey mind is strong though. After a while my mind grabs onto the words I’m using to pay attention to my breathing, begins to run somewhere with them. Look. A banana! Even so, breathing helps even if not all the time.

A second idea involves counting. You know, sheep. Backwards from a thousand. That sort of thing. My own take on this is to repeat 1,2,3,4 and 5,6,7,8 over and over. Now, by the time I get to 4, I get a yawn. But the monkey is still active, still hunting for the banana that sneaks around this dulling.

So, the third idea. Go to your happy place. Oddly, this was harder than I imagined it would be. Where was my happy place? As I’ve written before, happiness is not my goal, rather flourishing (eudaimonia). So that idyllic spot where trees and sunlight and grass come together to create a place of rest and contentment? Doesn’t work for me.

Took a while but eventually I hit on the Minneapolis Institute of Art (not Mia). At the MIA there was a sweet spot of intellectual and emotional and social stimulation. I felt good there. Stimulated and stimulating. Giving and receiving. So during my counting I now go on regular journeys to the MIA. I was there so long as a volunteer, 12 years, that I remember the building and its contents, as they were four years ago anyhow, very well.

It’s taken me a while to get the monkey to let go of art history-lots of bananas!-and allow me to just be in the presence of the art qua art. That’s not to say that art history doesn’t inform me even in this attempt to go to sleep; it does, but I don’t follow those thoughts anymore, at least not while trying to sleep. Next post: a tour from these trips.

 

 

Aging, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Retirement, Third Phase

Sabbath

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Imbolc                                                                          Valentine Moon

Sunday’s occupy a different reality. Time slows down. Ambition flees. A good thing. In spite of my now long absence from the Christian faith the notion of a Sabbath, lifted from Judaism, has always appealed to me.  A seventh day when God rests. And us, too.

The notion of a divine creator soothing the chaos before speaking the world into being has faded from my belief system. The idea, however, of a time for setting aside work, domestic and otherwise for a reflective day every week still makes sense to me.

The sabbath can be seen as a form of radical hospitality for the self, a day when shaping our lives to the demands of others gives way. On a sabbath we could read, view art, listen to music, cook, play games, visit family.  The third phase of life, after we have set aside work and at home parenting, can be a sabbath phase, much like the last of the four Hindu life stages.

Something to consider.

 

 

Asia, GeekWorld, Great Work, Health, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Saturday

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Imbolc                                                                             Valentine Moon

 

Not used to being the slow one, but in our tai chi class, now in its 6th week of 8, I am. It’s ok though. I need repetition and once I get it, I’ll have it, so speed of learning is not so important here as quality over time. Physically co-ordinated things have never been my shining moment.

The weather has been warm and in mid-winter on the eastern slopes that means chinooks. Warm = windy at this time of year. Still learning the weather patterns. It has made for outstanding electricity production. Yesterday’s output is below.

Feb 19 2016

 

Third Phase

Excellent

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Imbolc                                                                             Valentine

Take full account of the excellencies which you possess, and in gratitude remember how you would hanker after them, if you had them not.

Marcus Aurelius

Family, Holidays, Third Phase

Birthday Meal

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Imbolc                                                                               Valentine Moon

Val2300You know the scene in the movie where the wife comes home and a trail of rose petals lead to the bedroom? This was the table at Twin Forks last night when I sat down for my birthday meal with Kate.

Somebody (and I know who) had gotten there earlier in the day and collaborated with the owner of the restaurant. It was a surprise. And touching.

Val1300There was more, too. Two beautiful cards and a vase of calla lilies that sits above the screen on which I’m writing this right now. I also got a box of crayons. Sounds silly, maybe, but I bought adult coloring books for us in December. Now we can get going on them. Something to soothe us while Vega is recovering from surgery.

We ordered off the Valentine’s Day special menu. Kate got prime rib, the yabba dabba do* cut. We weren’t expecting quite what she got. Barney Rubble and Fred would have been proud.

An intimate, romantic dinner for my birthday, which happens to fall on everyone’s love holiday. Perfect.

 

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