Fourth Phase, Judaism, Mussar

Finding love

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Thursday gratefuls: Amazon. Weights with neoprene. 48 ramen packages. Three light bulbs. One jar of protein powder. Being prepared. Weariness. Drugs. Of all kinds and all sorts. Visit to my medical oncologist tomorrow. Ley Septic. Furball Cleaning. Vince. US Mail. Mark in K.L.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Love

Kavannah: Perseverance

One brief shining: The downside of shopping with Amazon came along yesterday as the little photograph emailed to me with the cheery question-How was your delivery?- showed my package to be at a different door than mine, one with full glass and a bright orange streamer draped over its flower pot containing a now long dead leaf and stalk.

 

Mussar. From Monday night. Rabbi Jamie’s translation of Orchot Tzaddikim. From the chapter on love and hate:  “…by way of this gate of love, peace stands, a peace with everything And by way of this gate is silence and stillness, an openness to learn and perform good and worthy deeds.”

Each month we choose a practice for the middah we’ve studied. My practice this month is to notice when peace, silence, and stillness, an openness to learn and perform good and worthy deeds emerge in my daily life. Clues about love.

When I got home that Monday night, I walked into my home. Noticed silence. Stillness. Felt at peace. Oh. No wonder I like coming home, being home. It fills me with love. That was a surprise.

The next day I recalled the NYT’s article about the cosmologist who chose to study the cosmic void. The uncluttered apparent emptiness, silent and still. Oh. Studying the love that holds the Galaxies and Solar systems, the Nebulae, and Stars going nova.

Sat down to read Nexus that same day. Harari’s clear prose and interesting conclusions leading me on, eager to learn what he might say next. Love in the turning pages.

My brother and I talked over zoom. An opportunity to perform a mitzvah. Yet more love.

I speak with my zoomfriends. We see each other. Hear each other. Moments of mutual respect and love.

In just four days my practice has revealed love everywhere I go. In the still pause between breaths. In the silence of my back yard at night. The stillness of Orion, risen and visible in the cosmic void.

Even though I ache from it, I experienced love in the now regular resistant work I’ve taken up. Me performing a good and worthy deed for myself.

There is, too, the silent wisdom of my Lodgepole Companion. The massive, yet subtle presence of Black Mountain. The kind sadness in the still black eyes of the three Mule Deer Does and the young Buck who watched me walk out to the mailbox yesterday. Enjoy the food I said to them, breaking the silence.

I walk through the valley of love and I shall know peace, silence, stillness, an openness to learning, and the desire to perform good and worth deeds.

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Health, Politics

You know

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Wednesday gratefuls: Rubberized weights. Working out. Feeling it. Cold night. 10 degrees. Coloradified. Me. Paul. Robbinston, Me. Lobster Pots. New Brunswick. Canada. New Foundland. Wawa. Marathon. Sault St. Marie. Toronto. Stratford. Pukaskwa. Road signs with the crown.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Body weight workouts

Kavannah: Perseverance

One brief shining: Marked HEAVY the cardboard boxes containing my rubberized weights for in-the-house workouts sat just outside my front door and posed a conundrum for this muscle wasted senior citizen, staring down at them, laughing at the paradox of not being able to lift the tools he needed to be able to lift the tools.

 

No. They’re not still out there. I cowboyed up and lifted each box, one at a time, to the lip of the door then shoved them into the living room. Where they still sit. Knife in hand, I’ll open them, and carry the fifteen pounders one at a time, the ten and fives two at a time, downstairs.

Another chatbot created image. Just what I’ll look like in only a few short months. By Spring I’ll be able to kick sand in the face of all those beach bullies. Like Jack Lalanne promised in those ads in the back of the comics. Or, maybe not.

I’ll settle for being able to open cans and bags. Carry groceries with ease. Not feel like such a wet noodle.

 

Realized last night that I’ve arrived at inner peace. No regrets or worries bother me before my head hits the pillows. My to do list nags me, yes, but not in an OMG, I gotta get this done sorta way. Not to say that on occasion a moment of angst doesn’t squash me. Consider my last visit to the oncologist as an example.

I did have a summer and early fall time of perplexity about my cancer. Didn’t know what came next or how long I had to live. Let that gnaw on me for a while. Even then though I never lost sleep, chewed my fingernails.

Not sure how I got here. Darn it. I could write a self-help book otherwise. A key component I do know. Contemplating my own death. Accepting it. Embracing it as a necessary, even desired punctuation to life. Meditating on my own corpse. Yamantaka to thank for that.

My paganism plays a role, too. The Great Wheel turns. The growing season ends, then the fallow time, finally the Winter Solstice and the long dark night. Death as part of the natural cycle.

Judaism does not emphasize life after death. Though it considers the possibility. Some kabbalists believe in reincarnation. I’m willing to be surprised. Joanne said, “You know you have to give up heaven and hell!” Never believed in it anyhow. Three story universe. Yesterday’s notion.

 

Just a moment: Oh. Well. Linda McMahon. WWF exec. With the necessary qualifying sleaze and scandals. For Education Secretary. A Cabinet department red tie guy has promised to gut. Foxes. Hen houses. Scorpions riding frogs. You know.

 

 

Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Health, Judaism, Mussar, Politics

Tears and Laughter

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Tuesday gratefuls: Susan. Ralph Waldo Emerson. Her house. Beautiful. Jamie. Rich. Elephant Company. Tara. Marilyn. Ron. MVP. Going to bed late. Dreams of travel. lodging. As some pundit observed, long tie guy has flooded the zone with too many bad picks all at once. Orion, my buddy. The Mountain Night Sky.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Habeas Corpus for Elephants

Kavannah: Perseverance

One brief shining: We sat in Eames chairs around a large Camelot table, a spotlight outside revealing a beautiful outcropping of Rock, 15 foot glass windows, the east facing wall, showing the glittering lights of Denver, down the hill and far away, while we talked about anavah and sinah: love and hate, trying to find purchase in our lives for growing both as soul traits, character traits.

 

Every once in a while, like last night at Susan Marcus’s architect designed home, I feel blessed, blissed to sit with people smarter than me as we try to figure out how to lead our lives in a soul-full manner. How we can we express the essence of ourselves as sacred beings, using the medieval practice of mussar as a guide.

In those conversations we move from our lives into learning, from learning back into our lives. We struggle with the usual things: parents, children, marriage, existential angst while trying to place them within the context of developing our ability to practice humility, enthusiasm, love, hate (or repulsion), our ability to let the light of our own divinity shine unobstructed. Not easy work, but done with love and compassion. Confidentiality. Honesty.

A lot of laughter, occasional tears. Befuddlement is common. And, admitted. Gotta say I love being a Jew and part of Congregation Beth Evergreen.

Also, food. Last night butternut squash soup, chicken wings, cowboy caviar, a fancy salad, hummus, carrots, and for those who drink, a red wine labeled, 7 Deadly Sins.

 

Just a moment: Harder than I thought it would be. Getting back into working out. Deciding this time to privilege weight training, resistance work over cardio. My heart rate has remained excellent, but my muscles have given way even more to that old devil, sarcopenia. Where once I opened jars and bags with practiced ease, I now often have to resort to tricks and accessories. Not acceptable. And remediable.

Plan to make sure my resistance routine is solid, making gains. Then, I’ll add back in the cardio on my treadmill. Self-care, it’s not just a river in Egypt. Oh, wait…

 

In spite of myself l find a habit gained during 45’s reign of error returning. Opening the New York Times to see what he’s done now. Who’s he appointed? Why? Of course the why question has no answer. Whim. Some strange political calculus. An indecipherable conclusion based on misinformation.

When the revolutionaries take over the government, they usually turn out to be same as the old boss. Since this is a revolution based at root on greed and fear, it may stretch things farther than any of us hope, certainly more than we want, but the U.S.A. has and will recover. That is my Seed-Keeper faith and one I will help make happen.

 

Asia, Family, Health, Politics, Shadow Mountain

Could Get Ugly

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Monday gratefuls: Ancient Brothers and chesed. Coffee. Coffee mugs. From the Gunflint Trail. From Kate and mine’s 25th anniversary. With Dogs. From the Polar Express. World’s Greatest Grandpa. Southern Poverty Law Project. Memories in ceramics.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Another wakin’ up mornin’

Kavannah: Perseverance

One brief shining: Turn on the coffee grinder with dark roast beans, fill the coffee pot with filtered water, tighten the lid on the pot, separate out one filter for the coffee basket, measure two-thirds of a cup of ground beans, place the basket in its holder, pour the water into the reservoir, close the lid. Minutes later. Ahhh.

 

Morning rituals like making coffee. Saying the Shema. Touching the mezuzah. Breakfast. Reading the news or a morning book. Waiting a half an hour before exercise. Get my day off to a good start. The golden hours from waking up, around 6 these days, until 2 or 3. A life.

 

In Nexus Harari points to stories as those things that can connect us, many, many of us, in a shared enterprise: family, state, nation, passenger on spaceship Earth. Becoming human. I agree with him. Even family, which we take as a given, easy to define and know depends on the kinship story that our cultures teach us. In the U.S. we have pared down the family through our emphasis on individualism. The nuclear family tends to be the hub until the kids get older, then even family can narrow further to a couple or a single person. All held together by increasingly thin cords of memory and affection.

Ruth on her own at UC-Boulder. Gabe and Jen. Me on Shadow Mountain. My son and Seoah and Murdoch in Korea. Mary in Southeast Asia. Kate and Jon dead.

This frays the old patterns of families caring for their aged memories. This is a crisis, too, even in traditional societies like China and Japan where birth rates have plummeted, marriage is suspect, and adult children there often want the kind of freedom American culture offers. Especially mobility and choosing their own partners.

I’m lucky in that Kate left me enough money to sustain my life on my own. That I have good, close friends here and far away. I can manage. But my circumstances are not shared by many, perhaps not most of my age peers. Culture changes more slowly than jobs do. Than desire and ability to live a life of your own making does.

Again, my family. Mary and Mark in Asia and Saudi Arabia for much of their adult lives. Me in Minnesota, then the Rockies. Far from the Sycamores on the Wabash. Far from Madison County. Alexandria. As my analyst Jon Desteian put it: an atomized family.

All this now put in the alembic of an unserious man and his many hatreds, his colleagues yearning to reshape reality in an even more atomized direction, hoping to dismantle the New Deal, strip away the thin gruel offered by Medicare, Social Security.

Could get ugly.

 

 

Art and Culture, Asia, Family, Fourth Phase, Friends, Great Wheel, Judaism, Korea, Mountains, Shadow Mountain

Herme’s Journey

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Sunday gratefuls: Tom’s safe trip. My son, Seoah, and Murdoch coming January. Then, a trip to Korea in May. Followed by the Jang family visit here in late summer. Snow. Whippets. Irish Wolfhounds. German Wirehairs. Akitas. Breeds I love. Asia. Korea. Malaysia. Australia. Thailand. Cambodia. Saudi Arabia.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Leftist politics

Kavannah: Perserverance

One brief shining: A Mountain retreat, a home on granite, gneiss, and schist, raised above sea level by 8,800 feet, overlooking Black Mountain with its ski runs, Lodgepoles and Aspen colonies, in the Arapaho National Forest and drained by Maxwell Creek to the north and North Turkey Creek to the south, home to my day-to-day life in these middle years of the 2020’s.

 

On a lighter note today. Current TV favorites: Tracker, Sealteam, Fire Country. Reading anew Nexus by Harari. Also, Emily Wilson’s translation of the Iliad. Best movie I watched recently: hmm. None come to mind. Oh, Late Night with the Devil. Weird. I can no longer understand dialogue in movie theaters so I have to watch what’s available on streaming services with closed captions. Favorite meal last week, filet mignon with Tom at Evoke 1923 last Friday.

Herme’s Journey. Still on this path. I’ve finished another reading of Ovid. Also, the Odyssey. Am in the fourth book of the Iliad. I’m reading the parsha of the week most weeks along with commentaries. Also books that challenge me like Nexus. Keeping mental knives sharp.

My commitment to regular times with family and friends has increased. I zoom, breakfast, lunch, and on the rare occasion eat dinner with them. Also expanding my circle of friends, not by much, but adding Veronica for example.

The lunar calendar of Judaism meshes well with my pagan sensibilities and my focus on the Great Wheel. Trying to integrate the two in meaningful ways. An ongoing project.

Am working on a new meditative practice, focusing on a work of art for ten minutes or more, then reading art historical material about it. An NYT idea.

And more. All this is to stimulate, reinforce my lifelong journey. See what bubbles up.

 

Just a moment: Talked with my son and Seoah yesterday. There is a sweetness, a visceral joy in seeing them, hearing them. My heart lifts and my sense of well-being, already good, increases. Murdoch hears my voice, but does nothing. Nothing to smell here, so meh.

That sense of well-being. I’ve noticed Luke and Jamie initiate hugs when we see each other. There’s something about that that fills my soul, too. Ron and Rich. Tom. Ruth, Gabe. I hope the others feel the same way about my participation. Hugs are a way of claiming intimacy and saying yes to it.

Will not know for some time what the most abhorrent of adventures will look like, feel like. Cabinet picks? An unserious man taking an unserious approach to the job in the whole world that has the most economic and military power.

Committed to the seeds of decency, honesty, love for the other. Still and always.

 

Colorado, Dogs, Family, Friends, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, The Move, The West

The Doggie Drive

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Samain and the Full Moon of Growing Darkness

Shabbat gratefuls: Tom. Conversation with him. His kindness. The Truth. A CBD ointment for aching joints, pain. Worked on my trigger fingers. Happy Camper. Evoke 1923. Mt. Rosalie covered in Snow. 13,575′. Long tie guy and his in your face appointments.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Friendship

Kavannah: Perserverance

One brief shining: Sitting at the table where I found my pearl, in what is no longer the long time Bistro now the Evoke 1923, Rebecca took our orders, delivered a tasty filet mignon tartare, a beet salad, and our entrees: duck for Tom and filet mignon for me while we struggled to hear, especially after the piano player started up, two old guys trying to parse the future of A.I. largely overwhelmed by the clink of silverware on porcelain, happy chatter from the table of six, the limits of hearing aids reached and exceeded.

 

It’s nearing 10 years since the long doggie drive of December 2014. Tom and I together with Rigel, Vega, and Kepler on I-90, then I-76, finally 285 to Shadow Mountain. 15 hours or so of conversation, attention to dogs and the eventual end of the Great Plains where they wash up against the hogbacks of a precursor Mountain Range to the Rockies. That was the first phase of the actual move, Kate arriving later with Gertie and that van we had packed in Andover.

On the Winter Solstice of that year our moving van came and promptly got stuck in a ditch. Eduardo and friends pulled it out. Snow fell and the temperatures hovered around zero. Not willing to try again the van driver took the whole load off Shadow Mountain to a more level spot, rented two u-haul trucks and shuttled the whole truckload from some spot on Hwy. 73. This lasted far into the night with dogs and movers crossing and intersecting.

From that day until the day she died Kate said she felt like she was on vacation living up here. Six and a half years of vacation. A good retirement for her. Glad she didn’t see the MAGmA overflow decency and justice. She would have been angry and disappointed.

Over the course of those years I’ve become Harari, a man of the mountains, now wedded to this place through location and intense experiences. Many, many memories. Some difficult, sure, but also many more intimate, fun, bound up with the wild nature of this place, with Judaism, Kate’s final gift to me.

Mountains. If I have my way-Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise-I’ll live out my final days here, too.

 

Just a moment: A life lived from, say mid-20th century to the first quarter or so of the 21st, has already passed, as few lives ever do, from one millennium to the next, the second to the third. We’ve also seen what may be the end of a political era begun under FDR. I’d call it whiplash, but the change has been more gradual than the crack of a whip. A new world is being born, but despite long tie guy’s next fast-food adventure on Pennsylvania Avenue, neither he nor his minions will define it.

This new world will emerge from the tension between the mindless governance of, as Kamala Harris rightly said, an unserious man, and cultures political, artistic, and economic which my generation assumed to be stable. Oh, my.

 

Art and Culture, Fourth Phase, Politics

Seed-Keepers

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Friday gratefuls: Tom. Mussar. Rabbi Jamie. Luke. Ginny. Rick. Great Sol. A blue Colorado Sky. The West. The Rocky Mountains. No Bike Park. The Mountain Meadow remains. Colorado. Livin’ in a Blue State. Mark. Mary. Diane. Riley. Richard. Cut Throat Cafe. Happy Camper.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Eagle at Tom and Roxann’s

Kavannah: Friendship

One brief shining: Why did you put on what you’re wearing today, Mindy asked, and we went around the room, learning one wanted to cover her stomach, another takes a shower on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays so she had on what she had on Wednesday, another wore brown jeans and a green t-shirt to look like a tree, and when it came to me I said, I bought a pair of Keens, a lot of white socks, a bunch of jeans, and several plaid flannel shirts so I don’t have to think about it.

 

BTW: I asked chatbotgtp to create An American themed image of a group called the Seed-Keepers whose role is to honor the spirit of liberal America. Anti-racist, anti-misogynist, and anti-homophobic. I’m more interested in the Seed-Keeper theme than anything else

Seed Keepers, Chatbotgt at my request

Seed-Keepers. Who among you might become a Seed-Keeper? If you take on this role, expect it to last at least four years, perhaps longer. You can be a solitary Seed-Keeper, dedicated to remembering and speaking who we are as a country and as a people when not driven by fear and demagoguery. One of our Seeds, there are so many, lies in our history. Perhaps you will be the one who goes back to the beginning of our nation and learns in even more depth how we came to be. Warts and all. 3/5ths clause and fugitive slave clause and white, propertied men as voters, the electoral college and all. Enslavement, too. Jim Crow. The Indian Wars. Yet, too, the Civil War. Checks and balances. Federalism. The Federalist Papers. How we became a city on a hill attracting new citizens from afar.

Or, you might choose to have a Seed-Keeper group. Perhaps one interested in the American Renaissance (as I am) when American thinkers and artists began to tease out the distinctive features of living on this amazing land. Reading together the works of Emerson, Thoreau, Parker, Whitman, Poe, Melville, Hawthorne, Mary Fuller. Frederick Douglas, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Jacobs, Emily Dickinson, Louisa May Alcott, Harriet Beecher Stowe. Not to ignore either painters and sculptors like Mary Cassatt, Bierstadt, Henry Tanner, Church.

Seed-Keepers #2

What might you do as a Seed-Keeper? You might gather those close to you for story evenings, perhaps around the fireplace to discuss questions like what does it mean to be an American? What has it meant? What does it mean in a time dominated by reactionaries and autocrats? You might write essays, letters to the editor about how the other half of the 2024 electorate sees things.

You might locate yourself in the work of a state Humanities council and help them introduce American Seeds through their speakers and book groups.

I’m sure you have more and better ideas than these. A Seed-Keepers primary role is to hold the liberal to radical ideas that make America a nation in which all want to live and to pass those ideas along to family, friends, and others in a digestible manner.

I’m gonna keep spinning up this idea, see if it can gain traction. No where near done with it.

Garden, Great Work, Politics, US History

A Victory Garden

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Thursday gratefuls: Tara. Arjean. Tom. Diane. Paul. Workouts. Diet. Conifer Cafe. Aspen Perks. Primo’s. Dandelion. Parkside. Wild Flower. Bread Lounge. Breakfast. Still an important meal out for me. Mussar. Veronica. Mineral Water. 8,800 feet. Mountains.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Visits

Kavannah: Perseverance Netzach  נֵצַח tenacity, grit; literally “to last”

One brief shining: Above the fold and a dagger to the heart, Matt Gaetz for Attorney General and Republicans take the House, wish I’d built that bunker oh so long ago, a Rip Van Winkle place where I could lie down in a futuristic pod, go gently to sleep, and wake up when this is all over, but no, being a Seed-Keeper is more important than ever.

 

The waning years of my fourth phase have climate change and a MAGAnified country. Not what I wanted for Christmas or Hanukah. So let’s look again at the Seed Keeper idea. I finished the novel which inspired this thought. Recalled after reading the acknowledgments (what an odd word, I just realized) that Kate and I had lived a Seed-Keeper life. We used only heirloom Seeds from the Seed Saver’s Exchange, planted our Orchard in the permaculture way, kept Bees, gathered Wild Grapes and Morels from our land. Loved all our Wild Neighbors and all our Dogs. It is a beautiful way to live.

I no longer have the oomph or the desire to resist what’s coming. I will write about it, will talk about it, sure, how could I not? But my focus will be on loving and supporting those younger than me. Helping them remember why loving the neighbor still makes sense. Why no one left behind should not be a slogan only for the military. Why equality before the law remains an essential American value. Why a nation of laws dedicated to the lives of all its citizens has not vanished as an ideal. A nation of laws that guide us toward love, justice, and compassion. Why those values are not only worth dying for, they’re also worth living for.

These are the three sisters of our country: the Corn, Beans, and Squash out of which a new nation dedicated to old propositions can grow. You and I are the Soil to mound and out of which the strong Corn stalk can push toward the Sky, the Bean Tendrils can clasp that strong stalk for support, while the bountiful Squash with its huge leaves grow over the Ground.

We will plant a Victory garden.

 

 

Politics, US History

When it began

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Samain and the Moon of Growing Darkness

Wednesday gratefuls: Being able to type. See a blue Sky and Great Sol lighting up my Lodgepole companion. Take care of myself. Tom. Diane. Brother Mark. Trash day. Cold night. Toyota. Snow tires. All weather. Tara. Marilyn and Irv. Differential/AWD fluids replaced.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Cold chicken

Kavannah: Compassion

One brief shining: Marilyn and Irv sat across the table at the Blue Sky Cafe, one of Marilyn’s old haunts when she worked nearby for the Jefferson County school system, menus opened, we ordered coffee, and I laughed at one of the menu items, a specialty coffee named The Flying Elvis.

 

Stevinson’s Toyota. Snow tires. AWD. Reading Seed Keepers. Hiding from the ubiquitous television screen. Background noise. Marilyn and Irv picked me up and took me out to breakfast. A nice break from the normal routine of the waiter. I did have an hour plus of reading. A good, sad, hopeful book.

Not ignoring the fact that Stephen Miller will be deputy chief of staff. Or, that Uncle Elon has already got his talons in. Paying attention, not absorbed. Looking at the Democrat’s analysis of what went wrong.

I know when it began. 1974. General Motors began shuttering its supply chain factories like Delco Remy and Guide Lamp, two near my home town that employed most of the people in Alexandria. Foreign cars began to dominate the US market. I drove one, a VW Beetle, the old kind, not the spiffy newer one.

Working class guys began to lose their jobs en masse. Many white, many of color. Flooding unemployment rolls, creating a glut of persons vying for the few remaining jobs, those often paying a half or a third of their old jobs. No health care. No pensions.

Proud homeowners drew the drapes in their homes and left in the middle of the night, another property for the bank. Scroll forward ten years and plywood covered storefronts, those homes had no paint, front doors hung crooked, roofs began to leak.

The Democrats forgot their core working class constituency. Let them drift into McJobs, the bottle, confused anger. Creative destruction. Ha. My friends from high school, their parents. Only a handful of us went onto college, untouched by the grim hand of a capitalist economy chewing through another generation of workers.

And the Democrats. Where were they? A shifted focus. Not bad in and of itself. Continuing the Civil Rights era successes, focused on African-American realities, on women’s rights, later on the rights of LGBT folk. Important work, sure. And pretty successful.

But we took our eyes off the folks who put us in office, the working class. Eventually working class whites drifted and/or were prompted into believing their continuing plight was the fault not of cold capitalistic calculations, but of the somehow evil machinations of African-Americans, immigrants, others.

And who had the Democratic parties focus: others. Including persons with sexual preferences outside the experience and compass of most working class folks.

Let me be clear. Championing the rights and fortunes of the other is a critical and necessary political act. But in the perception of the former base of liberal politics, union represented working class folks, they were the enemy.

Perhaps a difficult circle to square, but we didn’t even try.

Friends, Health, Writing

oh my

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Samain and the moon of growing darkness

Tuesday gratefuls: self-care. Dictating. Wind. Knives. Apples. Dressing the wound. Remembering Kate. Blood red. Cloth tape

Sparks of joy and awe: taking care of myself

Intention: compassion

One brief shining: that honeycrisp apple sat on the cutting board, seven pieces cut, on the eighth piece my hand slipped and I sliced my give them hell finger, lots of blood a bit of confusion got it to stop bleeding and congratulated myself on good self-care.

 

 

With a clumsy bandage on my give them hell finger I’m trying out dictation on word to produce this post. It’s pretty good, but I find it too slow. I I can talk ohh um well I’ll leave that in to show you the fat that I’m on a learning curve with this method of writing. If it can even be called writing.

I can talk faster than I type, but the program cannot go as fast as I talk and and produce legible text. Even so, it’s better than putting blood on the keyboard.

Started back with exercising yesterday morning. Harder than I imagined it would be, but I’m going to keep at it. Started reading seat keepers, no, seed keepers. Recommended by Paul. No lying OK we’ll keep that in too just to show you the curve has not reached far off the bottom of the graph.

This morning I’m having my winter tires put on about 25 inches of snow too late. Also having my differential lubrication refreshed. Marilyn and nerve no herb no IRV right lower case. Still learning. Can’t tell whether it’s my voice or the program, probably a bit of both.

Marilyn and I RV backspace backspace backspace oh oh. Ohh my. Verb. No. Leaning in to the microphone. Erve. Well, that’s as close as we’re gonna get.

They are picking me up at stevenson’s Toyota and taking me out to breakfast. It will be a long morning for Ruby. Now see the program correctly capitalized my maroon Toyota Rav 4. No line ohh.

This is borderline painful. I’m going to take seed keepers with me so I’ll have something to read. I imagine I will be in the very familiar customer lounge at Stevensons for some time.

I’m going to stop now. Hope this doesn’t have to be my means of communicating with you for very long.