elainegrey

Oh SUP.

I break the year up into seasons for goal setting. This spring is "getting a hold of myself" season.
( pow pow bullets )

Carrie seems terrified of towels. Unlike drought era California, we do have rain here and she has no choice but to get wet. Not sure how to solve this: manhandling her so that i can dry her doesn't seem likely to help. Must remember to have treats at hand. Maybe some treats while holding towels, etc.

Winteresque weather has returned. We're due some solid lows (22°F). The peony has emerged, and i think i need to keep it protected. It out grew the cover i had for it on the first day -- i need something else. Maybe a sheet or towel over an old tomato cage?

Christine gave me a game camera/camera trap for my birthday, and i think i have ruined it by leaving it in "aim" mode all day on the very first day. Eventually i need to call them for support. Not happy about the fuss.

This morning a near catastrophe occurred. My teapot's handle gave way: it is bamboo held on with wire hooks through the ceramic, one of which finally slipped through the loop. I had a heavy robe on, protecting me from a serious scald. I was able to have a controlled drop of the tea pot, right side up, on to the empty dog bed below, so there was still tea. The thought of that failure occurring at some other more vulnerable moment is daunting.

I can't remember if it was my Silver or Cadmium year resolution that was about habits, but i think that this year is going to be about habits again. I've dropped so many. Some drops may be just fine, but i think others need to come back.

( Goals Check-In )

It's Tuesday, so that means meeting with the new group we reorganized into at the beginning of ... July? yes... at 7 am. I didn't go to the Meeting's women's group last night (to discus the practice of simplicity) because i choose to come home at a reasonable hour and return to work-at-home after a walk and dinner. I'm afraid i let after dinner diversions stretch out, but the roughly 40 min walk was so good at helping me relieve stress.

I am still living very much in my head and not my body, as mental health benefits turn out to be incredibly motivating. Would i be able to motivate walking on my own? I don't know. The treading water in the pool exercise has been something i'll do alone, and i suspect i'll get back on the bike with its stationary support.

I didn't get as much evening work done as i would have liked, but the time spent crocheting while Christine practiced scales on the mandolin was very pleasant.

The meeting is starting. I realize i need to change my goal/plan check in day to something other than Tuesday.

This article http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/20may_loststripe/ points out another area where an amateur scientist can make contributions. I love knowing the value of community observation in the same way i love knowing that there's poetry readings down town on Mondays. It's a possibility there if i ever carve the time and passion out for it.

VIsiting Heavens Above, to see if i have a chance to see the IIS tonight (rain later in the week), i find out about the new "spy plane" http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/05/secret-space-plane-likely-an-orbiting-spy-not-a-bomber-report/ It passes over head on the 28th, magnitude 2.8. Another cheer for amateur observers, as the " plane has been found by the world-wide network of amateur satellite observers."

I am completely spoiled by the drought of past years: the rain on the forecast seems strange and unusual. We've had half an inch (at Moffett Field) this month. In 1997 there was 0.57" -- was that the El Nino year? No! in 1998, 8.57 inches:d May 4 1998 4 inches and May 3 1998 3.17 inches. Yow. (The hills get much more rain than Moffett during storms, so the high watershed gets filled quickly and then drains out to the bay.) Half an inch of rain for May seems completely normal over the longer term, but it is true that for the past four years we've not had more than a tenth of an inch. So, confirmed: i have been spoiled by the drought, this is normal weather.

--==∞==--

Yesterday was bright and beautiful, although the high was 62°. Not warm. Christine was recovering from a night of insomnia and i was living in my head. We ran a few errands: picked up See's candies for my grandfather's 93rd birthday and picked up Edward from the Mountain View vet we're using. My guestimate of the bill, from years of gold plated treatment in Los Altos, overshot by 50%. I nudged Christine that perhaps we should move all cat care to this slightly closer and much more affordable vet. She now trusts the vet and is ready to do so: YAY. We almost made five months without a vet bill.

So, Edward was bitten near the base of his tail, and has a drain for the abscessed wound. He's shaved there, which slightly overlaps the spot where the ringworm shaved area had mostly but not quite grown back. We're trying to keep him in the next four days. Fortunately he can't quite reach that part on his back, so we took the cone off. Staying in, i think, means eating kibble for diabetic cats instead of running off and commandeering Ms Merry's feeding station each morning. She's feeding the Gang of Orange Cats, which includes the semi-abandoned Marty, the adopted strays Edward and Luigi, and the prodigal longhair Franklin. Frankie, Marty, Luigi, and Eddie seem like the tough guy names they must use when making plans to whack lizards and mice, and when getting into fights that lead to abscesses.

Greycie Lou has renewed her indications that Edward is Not Welcome. However, she didn't seem to warm up to me for years, and i feed her. Bossy biscuits.

In the evening we took a walk to the post office and then to the grocery store. It was good to move and be out, if a tiny bit tiring. The days have gotten quite long, so the sun had not yet set when we got home.

--==∞==--

I'm not yet sure how i should spend today. I don't think i'm going to worship, but will join Friends for our continued discussion of the State of the Meeting. I don't want to be away from home for four hours or more. I need to do some care and feeding of some different responsibilities in preparation for yet another hectic week. I think i'll box up some more things from the bedroom in anticipation of the carpet cleaning. One thing that has caught my attention is a birthday gift for Christine that she picked out in September. I'd wrapped it subtly and put it in "my" corner.

I just reread the journal entries from around Christine's birthday: another week of visitors doing planning at work -- but we also saw a movie and a concert. So we did have a low key celebration. I'm reminded of my colleague retiring, and recognize that i had a lot of issues around that.

Ok, let me get some planning going: ( Read more... )

I am somewhat obtuse when it comes to ordinal and cardinal numbers of time. OK, i am 2010-1968=42 years old. So i seem to be numbering my years with the cardinal number of years lived (Molybdenum has 42 protons), not the ordinal number (43rd year), except for a few places where i've done that. But i can correct those. ... corrected.

Last week i skipped doing the goals check in because i was over-engaged with work. I skipped the care check in similarly. I've already started thinking ahead to next period, to Beltane, instead. I suppose this is part of the same reaction that makes me want to go to bed early: let me just give up and start afresh.

Oh, curses. Someone at the meeting took a book group book that was left in the library and made a check out card for it (did they completely accession it? Unknown!) and loaned it out. Not the meeting library's book!I hope i've addressed this situation in a reasonable way: whoever made the check out card was probably a past member of the committee not a current one, and i think they crossed a boundary by doing that. But they thought they were being helpful.

( The details )

Note 1: the batteries on the iPod speaker run out quickly. I rather dislike how it seems to be working at bed time and fails in the morning. The chanting before i wake is extremely helpful. But not this morning.

Note 2: I did dream a great deal this morning. No narrative i can put my finger on. A sense of secrecy. A faculty office in some near abandoned wing of a woods surrounded building, with a derelict access as if from a highway, and an associate hawk's roost. The faculty member and i crash in his office for the night. Is he my dissertation advisor? Past advisor? Undercurrent of sexual tension, but the urgency of the secret work overrides personal interests. That's the only fragment i kept -- probably because i was trying to work out if the faculty member was someone i knew (my real advisor?!) or just an archetype. Also, hawk! There was other movement about in an east coast hardwood landscape -- late autumn, cold, damp, and gray -- and pulling things up out of boggy water.

Note 3: Yesterday evening i rebelled against what i "should" do. I had a tension headache by the end of the workday, again, and had a tiny bit of (near undrinkable) wine when i got home as a slight relaxant. Self medication, yes, and a walk would have been wiser. I helped fold the laundry Christine had started. (Part of why walk was out -- the timing to be at the dryer.) I did have a call from my Mom, and i listened to all the ways she frames herself in failure and overwhelm. It's just her chit chat, her small talk, and i think i manage not to do it myself except for here in this space. I don't know how to tell stories of my day to day life easily without lapsing into the narrative of overwhelm, though. I tried telling her about the digital paper dolls.

Note 4: the care committee i'm on will convene at my home today at 3:30. If you could hold me and the three others in the Light (or however you may frame care and love), i'd appreciate it. In particular, the issues are around diminishment with age and chronic illness, and despair.

Now, to rush through my goals, a day late!

( the usual )

Do i freak out this time every year? I really don't know. I don't think i freaked out last year. Yesterday was random tears and dread as i left for work and a call to Christine to pull myself out of a little spinny thought place in early afternoon. I did walk a mile on the treadmill down stairs but i also bought a candy bar. I'm sure i should stop with the chips and candy. I managed to get focussed around 4:50, so i stayed until 7.
( writing my way through dread )

Healthwise, i really ought to write and ask about the vitamin D. Wait, no, i need to get the Evening Primrose/Borage oil back into my system -- i ran out some time back and it's possible that too is correlated with the psoriasis return. First that, then the D.
( Goal review )

This morning i dreamt about being enslaved. It's been some hours since i woke, and i wish some of the details and emotional impact had faded, but i realize they haven't. I don't want to record or connect with the dream at all, though, just as i don't want to recall or connect with a dream some days ago about torture. It's odd for me to have emotionally intense dreams. I'm not sure i want to know what my unconsciousness is doing in the playground of human cruelties.

I've called TIAA-CREF to find out whether i'm forced to "take a disbursement." The letter says, "Now that the Plan has terminated, your interest in the [group, individual] contract is deemed to be distributed to you on a tax-deferred basis." The guy said the plan doesn't force me to take a disbursement. I'm trying to figure out if i can trust the guy's reading, or if i need to hire someone else to read the plan documents. Could i use the Employee Assistance Plan legal help for this? (A free-to-me thirty minute consultation.) First, get the plan documents and see if there's anything in English.

Yesterday i made a few Oversight calls and attended the reading group where we've begun reading _Plain Living: A Quaker Path_ to Simplicity by Catherine Whitmire. She writes in her introduction about her annual attempt to simplify her life with a "management by objectives" practice. While the annual practice seems very similar, i think i might be somewhat different than her discarded complications. I was a little challenged, though.

More challenged, though, i am by what i'm sensing as a Meeting frustration with My Way not being respected and Other People going on too much about Their Way. I want to wap people with a great big compassionate listening stick. However, "Stop it, you're doing it wrong," is rarely the right message. Last one woman reacted against a strongly theistic* phrase in the book. She shared her belief, which weakly theistic bordering on deistic. Having already considered this problem of listening beyond the words to the truth, i found this a teachable moment: i shared how i recognized that there are many ways we can explain how (in this case) listening to an "inner voice" is a better way to determine our goals in life than listening to what our culture tells us our goals should be: there is the "listening for my deity's will" frame, listening to find how my individual path can be aligned to a greater universal path, or recognizing the diversity in our species and how my combination of experiences and genetic inheritance might have a particularly authentic expression in an ethical way of living. M- P- said, "Oh, so you're more about practice than belief," which isn't entirely true: however, i believe the strength of our Meeting's community is shared practice not shared belief. The woman who reacted, though, seemed to really hear what i was suggesting: that there was a way of listening past a phrase that belies a frame we don't believe in and finding the part that's common to both.

* Theism, in general, being the belief that there is at least one divine being with and active involvement in the universe and the possibility of a personal interaction with a human. Deism being a belief that there is at least one divine being which does not intervene in the natural world.

Anyhow, time to putter with goals

( Read more... )

[OS X/Mac gibberish follows] So, i applied Security Update 2010-001 to my Leopard laptop and things seemed fine but were later wonky‡. So i rebooted and things seemed fine but were later wonky. So i rebooted again and found a discussion about the security update. There were a few complaints that sounded like my brand of wonky, and someone snapped that, hadn't we wonky-problem people remembered to go run Disk Repair and Repair Permissions. So i did, and for once repair permissions seems to have resolved my problem. I put my laptop to sleep and things seem to be working fine this morning. [end OS X/Mac gibberish]

This is good, because the sinus infection seems more problematic today, and i don't have the energy to resolve personal tech problems. Just complaining about it has taken a great deal of time.

So, i went through the goals check in and did some quick research, but still felt like death warmed over. So, i'm staying home, doing the team meeting by webex,

That done, i'm off to the doctor.


‡ "Wonky" describes a situation where, after waking from sleep, applications wouldn't open and internet retrievals seemed impossibly slow.
( Goals check-in )