Tag: SoCS

Writing

Water

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When I first saw the Stream of Consciousness prompt for today — water — I immediately thought about a quote that I had jotted in my journal a few days ago.

“Let us bless the humility of water
Always willing to take the shape
Of whatever otherness holds it.”
John O’Donohue

He also blessed

“The buoyancy of water,
Stronger than the deadening,
Downward drag of gravity”

I’ve always been a water person. Being in or near water is a happy place for me.

When I don’t feel well, I take a bath. One of the times I was in labor, I sat in jacuzzi to relax and almost didn’t make it out in time. Aches and pains seem to diminish in the shower.

I love to swim — for the exercise, the mental health, the solitude, the refreshingness of it.

I love to sit in the presence of water and hear the gentle lap of lake waves or the bigger crashes and rhythm of ocean surf.

I love to stand on a bridge and watch the water rush, flow, trickle — whatever that day brings — underneath. I love to drop a stick or a leaf or a flower in on one side, then watch it emerge on the other. Sometimes the object gets caught in an eddy and swirls in circles for a bit before moving on or under or off to the side.

Water supports me and yet offers resistance when I exercise in it.

If I could sing the praises of water, I would, but it would be a poor song in comparison to the song water sings itself. Murmurs, gurgles, steady streams, rain drops on windows or the roof.

Even the smell of rain is a wonder.

Blather

Questionable Plans

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What should I do today?

It’s gray out, or, I suppose, grey if I lived in Scotland, where I think it’s often gray/grey.

Is Canada gray or grey? Now there‘s an important question, right?

I mean, they do add those extra “u”s as in favour, colour, and honour. Is that their French influence?

But back to the question at hand — what to do today? The weather looks less than inviting which is where I was going with that other word that we won’t debate the spelling of right now.

It’s been such a long week work-wise. I kind of don’t want to use my brain for the indoor paperworky sort of work that needs to happen. Can I just veg out? Will people judge me if I do that?

A friend recommended a rom-com to me — Falling for Figaro — because it’s set in Scotland. They knew I love Scotland even though I’ve never been there. Even though the weather is often gr–, um, overcast.

I suppose I could snuggle up under a blanket with a bowl of popcorn and watch that movie.

Should I?

That’s really the question, you know.

Time is this commodity that we can’t put a price on. We can’t hold it. We can’t really save it. We can’t do anything but use it. I want to use it wisely because I know I’ve wasted so much in my life.

So, I ask you — What should I do today?

This is my response to Linda Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt: “start with a question.” Begin your post with the first question that comes to mind when you sit down to write your post.

What are you going to do today?

Life

Getting Old

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I almost titled this post “My Left Hip,” because, dang, my left hip is hurting today.

Oh, it’s been hurting for a while. I thought it had to do with my hip flexor, but when stretching and rest didn’t help, I got an x-ray.

The results came back and I had to look up half the terms — “diffuse osteopenia” — the predecessor to osteoporosis. At least it’s NOT osteoporosis, right? “Subchondral lucency in the left acetabulum” — this has something to do with osteoarthritis, I think?

In any event, I have to wait until mid-June to see someone in Orthopedics.

In the meantime, I keep moving. Sitting hurts. Standing up from sitting is THE WORST.

But standing and walking are fine. I actually feel better after a good walk.

So I tell myself throughout the day, “Get up and move.”

There are people in the “rest” camp. They say things like, “You must rest.”

Trust me, though — rest doesn’t help. Lying in bed — the ultimate rest, right? — can be painful. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and feel the pain radiating from my hip down my leg.

So I listen to my body and move as much as I can during the day.

Yesterday, however, I overdid. I won’t even tell you what I did, but it was strenuous and it was a mistake. My left hip is hurting today.

Seriously, who has time for this stuff?

Thank God for Advil.

This post was inspired by my left hip and Linda Hill’s “Stream of Consciousness Saturday” whose prompt today was “move.”

Life

I Thought I Knew

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Yesterday, when I went into work at 5 AM and entered the building, I thought I smelled something.

What’s that smell? I thought.

Smells niggle, don’t they — tickling some unreachable place in the brain.

Oh — I knew the smell, or at least thought that I did.

Cannabis.

I shook my head. I certainly was not going to be the one who turned in someone on the night cleaning crew, but sheesh, they should know better. What you do on your time is your business, but what you do when you’re on the clock — not so much.

It was about an hour later that one of my early morning co-workers came by to see me.

“Did you see that this morning?” he asked.

“What?” I replied, somewhat confused. I had seen nothing unusual on the way into work and we both drive the same route.

“Right by the side door,” he said, gesturing with his chin to the door he uses. I actually use a different door when I come in.

I shook my head. “I didn’t see anything,” I said.

“You must have smelled it then,” he said.

I shook my head again.

“That huge skunk?!” he said. “It had obviously just sprayed, but I was worried it might try to get me too! We were that close.” He indicated a spot about 5 yards away.

I shook my head now for a different reason. Do skunk and cannabis smell similar? A quick google search affirmed that they, indeed, DO smell somewhat alike.

I thought I knew what I was smelling.

Guess I was wrong.

Sorry, night guys!

This is in response to Linda Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt: What’s that smell?

I haven’t done SoC writing in a while — too busy, too tired, life too full, all the excuses. When I read her prompt this week, though, I had just had my cannabis-skunk experience so I wrote it out.

Life · photography

Visiting British Columbia

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It even says it on their license plates, Beautiful British Columbia, as if our eyes are deceiving us. Yes, this is a beautiful place.

I had to fight the urge of pulling over on my drive up from Seattle to take some pictures. The mountains are breathtaking. The trees stand tall, erect, pointy and somehow brave.

It’s so very different from the Northeastern US, where the mountains are lovely, but older. The trees are also lovely, but more are deciduous; they seem to go with the flow of life instead of the unmoving strength of those giant pines.

Ah, I know, I’m probably way off base. The oaks and maples have deeper roots, right? And I’ve seen tall pines toppled with their root system, shallow and broad, turned on edge like a wall.

But this is my submission for Stream-of-Consciousness Saturday — a day late — and I’m not going to go back and correct what may need correction. When I saw that the prompt was “Photograph,” I thought, Yup, I’ve taken a few photographs over the past few days.

We’ve gone walking every day. Two days ago, my son and his wife wanted to take me to see some glorious vista — which I’m sure would have led to not a few photographs. However, we started up the logging road and it got steeper and steeper and steeper.

“Are we there yet?” I quipped two minutes into the hike.

Twenty minutes in, after a couple of rests, I asked them to guesstimate if we had gone a quarter of the way yet. He studied the map on his phone. “Umm…. maybe just under a quarter,” he said.

We turned back at my request. I walk A LOT, just not straight uphill.

Instead we walked along the Fraser River which was lovely. The only photograph from that walk was of an immature eagle who stared down on us as we passed.

Yesterday, we walked along the Vedder River, a river which changes its name to Chilliwack once it passes under a bridge, so I saw the Chilliwack River, too. In fact, I only photographed the Chilliwack.

Chilliwack River

But my favorite picture of the day was one I took immediately as we started on the path. It made me laugh — and it still makes me laugh.

I love when people have a sense of humor.

I really want to know who thought of the poop fairy.

In Beautiful British Columbia.

Blather · poetry

Customer Service

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Alternate title: Smile

Customer Service isn’t that hard
Some people think that
It’s easy to smile and say hello
I understand
Your complaints — I listen and say
I’ll see what I can do about
Your situation.You’re not alone
I’ve been there. I’ve been in
Pain. I still smile
Even though I’m feeling that
The weight of life is heavy. I smile
What else can I do when
All these things hurt.

A less than stellar reverse poem — but I really wanted to do the W3 Challenge for this week which was to write a reverse poem. A reverse poem is one read forwards and backwards, line by line.

My struggle this week has been dealing with this darn shingles pain.

“Listen to your body. It’s trying to tell you something,” a friend said to me. “You’re dealing with a lot of stress.”

She’s right. I know she’s right. But I don’t know how to fix it.

The thing is that there are aspects of my job that I love. I do love greeting people — by NAME — I can’t believe how many people’s names I know now.

They stop and tell me about their lives. I LOVE that. I really do. I think I could listen to people’s stories all day every day. I heard stories about Maine and Nova Scotia, about Ireland and surprising relatives there, about knee surgeries and hip surgeries from older people who are DETERMINED not to let this hold them back but continue to live life fully.

My problem is that I am experiencing this nagging pain in my side and back from the Shingles.

And I feel like a wimp.

I don’t want anyone to come close up and hear ME complain.

So you, here, my blog-readers from afar, get to hear about it. SO SORRY!

Really close up, I’m fairly miserable. And I’m making mistakes.

I made a mistake early in the week, and my supervisor said, “But I showed you how to do that.”

Yes, she had — the previous Friday afternoon, after a full week of work and pain, she showed me this thing, which I totally forgot by Monday.

Dang.

I don’t like when I make mistakes.

I finally called my Primary Care Provider this week. I told her about this pain and she prescribed something for it. I’ve actually had two full of nights of sleep since starting it. The pain has subsided to a dull ache and I’ll live with it.

Or I’ll figure out a way to de-stress.

Any suggestions?

family · poetry

Bruce the Spruce

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I asked myself, Is it possible to write a rhyming poem in stream-of-consciousness?

Hmm… First I chose a structure: a Cethramtu Rannaigechta Moire, an Irish poetic form that requires 3 syllable lines in quatrains. The second and fourth lines rhyme.

Then I opened a tab in Rhymezone and typed in “spruce” — the Stream-of-Consciousness Saturday prompt for this week.

Here goes:

Christmas tree
Little spruce
I hereby
Name you “Bruce”

Quite a name
For a tree
Many folks
Would agree

Bruce the Spruce
Tall and green
Sparkling lights
Lovely scene

You may come
See my tree
Or this pic


Or these three –

family · Life

Strawberry-Rhubarb Crisp

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Strawberry-rhubarb crisp for breakfast.

I can easily rationalize it. There’s oatmeal in the topping, fruit (strawberries) as a mainstay, and rhubarb — whatever food category that fits into — in there too. Surely it’s healthy, right?

The truth is my appetite has been off. My whole everything has been off. When my son’s girlfriend made peanut butter blossoms — those peanut butter cookies with a Hershey’s kiss pressed in the top — I politely declined. Oh, I eventually ate a few, trust me — later. They are hard to resist. But I didn’t woof down six at a time which I might have done had things been different.

Last weekend, or maybe it was last Friday, I started feeling achy. My back hurt. I thought I had slept on it wrong. It was my left scapula, and it was weird. Not the ordinary I-slept-on-something-wrong feeling.

Before the crack of dawn on Tuesday morning, I left for a flight to Roanoke. I was picking up one of my daughters from school. As I was getting dressed, I noticed a small rash just below my left breast. That’s weird, I thought.

Got to Roanoke. Got the rental car. Got together with my daughter, but I was exhausted. I left her mid-afternoon to go nap in my hotel room. The rash had grown, too, and was itchy-painful.

Maybe you can see where I’m going with this.

It was either Tuesday night or Wednesday morning that it hit me that I had shingles. No, I hadn’t gotten the vaccine.

I contacted my primary care provider, but, as it turns out, they can’t do a tele-health visit with me if I’m out of state at the time. Ridiculous, right?

Initially, shingles was (were?) just annoying. “I don’t have time for this,” I said more than once to more than one person. I mean, it’s the holidays. Sheesh.

But, by Thursday, I felt like excrement. You know what I mean, right? I did a tele-health appointment, was prescribed an antiviral, and stayed in my room all day. Mostly.

The next day, same thing.

My appetite has been way off with this.

Last night, my son’s girlfriend was making strawberry-rhubarb crisp. “Do you want some?” they both asked.

I politely declined. I didn’t like strawberry-rhubarb crisp on a good day. My mom used to make it and it was not my favorite.

However, this morning when I went down for coffee, there was the baked crisp on the counter. I could see the oatmeal in the topping. Breakfast food, for sure.

I dished out a small bowl, and it was, literally, just what the doctor ordered. (She’s a doctor.)

It was so good that I went back for more.

Maybe rhubarb has healing qualities.

One can always hope, right?

Life

The Color of Peace

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“What are you struggling with?” my friend/spiritual director asked me.

I didn’t have to think hard on that one. “Peace,” I said. “It’s always hard to find peace this time of year.”

She nodded knowingly, then asked, “What does peace look like?”

I stared at the candle’s flame and the assortment of little knick-knacks she had placed on the table. I thought and thought, but couldn’t come up with an answer. One of the things that I love about her is that she allows silence.

What does peace look like? I rolled the words around and around in my head.

She interrupted the silence with another question. “What color is peace?” she asked.

Immediately, I went to watery colors, my absolute favorite. Water is my go-to. For me, water is place that allows me to be supported, and held, and still move and exercise and be me.

What color is peace?

I thought of a night not long ago when I had gone for a walk with a friend. We had walked and walked in the cemetery. Now, there’s a peaceful place for you.

As the sun set, and the temperature dropped, we walked down toward the lake to a bench that overlooked the water.

The water was dark and still, with a crescent moon reflecting on it.

Occasional ripples appeared from who-knows-what. The tiny breath of a breeze? A fish beneath the surface who didn’t know winter was approaching? A night bird I hadn’t noticed?

Suddenly, I knew exactly what color peace is — it’s the color of a moonlight lake. Dark and light at the same time. Calm and rippled at the same time. A friend next to me. Crisp air around me.

Is that a color?

To me it is.

Moon photo reflecting on the road — but not from that night and certainly not the same as the moon reflecting on water:

This is in response to Linda Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Prompt: “To me“

Blather · fiction

Feeling Uncreative ~ or ~ How would you finish this story?

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Sometimes the creative juices flow and sometimes they don’t. Am I right?

The Stream of Consciousness prompt for this week is create and, doggone-it, I am struggling to create.

I wrote myself into a hole with my first stab at the Unicorn Challenge. I’ll put my half-written attempt at the bottom here in case anyone has ideas on how to finish it. For those who aren’t familiar with the Unicorn Challenge, it involves a photo prompt and 250 word (or less) story. That’s it.

But seriously, I wrote myself into a tight spot. What do you think would happen next? You only have 125 words to finish the story.

Create that!

Here’s the unfinished story:

“oh god… Oh God…. OH GOD!!! Please let this damn thing work!”

He frantically flipped the receiver lever up and down on the phone. “HELLO?! HELLO?!… DAMN!”

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “Think, think,” he muttered. “9-1-1 is US… 9-9-9?!” He punched the buttons.

“What is your emergency?” A woman’s voice came through the receiver.

“MY WIFE IS HAVING A BABY!”

“Okay,” she replied calmly. “What is your location?”

“I DON’T KNOW!! I LOST THE CELL SIGNAL! I TOOK A WRONG TURN! I DON’T KNOW WHERE I AM!!”

“Where is your wife right now?”

“SHE’S IN THE CAR!”

As if on cue, a loud moan crescendoed into scream from the car. He dropped the receiver, leaving it dangling in the phone box.