When I was a girl, our house had a fairly plain rocking chair in the living room.
As a girl, I never really thought about it.
And then, when I got pregnant with the now teenager, my friend gave me a rocking chair that was the same basic rocking chair.
I was tickled.
My mother-in-law made cushions for it to match the enchanted forest-themed nursery. (The teenager has never painted over the mural.)
Gradually, when breastfeeding and rocking a grumpy baby was no longer a thing, the rocking chair went down stairs.
The cats like it.
And as the house seems to get smaller, now the chair is on the enclosed sun porch.
Do you know how hairy this chair gets with four cats?
I finally realized today that I could remove the cushions, not just vacuum them. After all, my mother-in-law made the cushions so we could be comfortable with the baby.
The baby just turned 16.
I removed the cushions. I’ll wash the covers and maybe I’ll put them back, maybe I won’t.
How many of us cling to habits or things because we just haven’t realized that we don’t need them or that they don’tserve a purpose?
The rocking chair looks good bare. More appropriate for the porch.
Sometimes we need to stop for a minute and learn to recognize when we are functioning on auto-pilot and not in response to our current environment or situation.
Later, I will do my review of the June 2020 Ipsy Glam bag. Probably today. No promises.
(But if you’re really into cosmetics and need to see an unboxing— here’s the YouTube video: June 2020 Glam Bag unboxing)
Because it’s Sunday. Sunday should be about family, pets, lovers or your religion. Wherever you find your peace and your wholeness.
With life bringing most people new challenges in 2020, and my life was no exception even before the Coronavirus pandemic (which is another discussion) and the much-needed societal realization that we have some major institutionalized issues in this country regarding race and other types of minorities.
But fear, and hope, and pluck, are all great equalizers. When emotions rise, it can lead to change and fight and passion.
I let the parakeets free fly this morning, which means Nala, my cockatoo, wanted yo stay with them and harass them and steal their food. (I think she has a chip on her shoulder that they can fly and she can’t.)
Opie, our three-legged cancer surviving cat, got out yesterday and returned for breakfast today.
I’m sitting on the porch with a cup of coffee and some of the edible cookie dough my teenager daughter made yesterday. All four cats swirling around me.
It’s Flag Day, so I should raise Old Glory, but I’m too short to reach our flag post.
And I’m about to do my morning journal entry, hang the laundry on the clothesline and read some of The Fault in Our Stars. It’s the teenager’s favorite book and “the only book school couldn’t ruin.”
Why do Sundays end with stress? If Mondays bring so much anxiety, isn’t it a sign our outdated work system is killing us?
Once I finish this, I will be logging into work. I don’t expect it to be an easy day, but I expect it to be decent. And it’s Friday. I have a meeting tonight with… let’s just say a freelance “client” about some editing I am doing on a key project. A good project. A project that could have a positive impact on my community.
I know my posts lately have been lists and animal updates. I’ve been musing a lot about what parts of life really bring personal contentment— and how that has to mesh with corporate America’s expectation that we are the worker bees. We are judged by our productivity, which is defined not by the benefit to the greater good but as money pocketed by those fortunate enough to stand among the elite.
Coupled with these thoughts of critical theory against the capitalistic machine, I find myself musing over pleasure versus good and its contribution to wellness. Let me explain, if I can.
Yesterday, I had some work stress that I had anticipated. So I ordered a pizza to provide some feel-good endorphins to keep my focus away from the computer screen and the universe that exists there now. I had dressed for the office, thinking that would give me confidence in this stressful time.
Dressing up at the home office
It worked— but I was so cold I soon had to change.
By the end of the day, ALL of the food choices I had made had no real nutritional value.
Breakfast: coffee and chocolate chip muffin
Lunch: half a Little Caesars Pepperoni Cheeser Cheeser and Coke Zero
Dinner: regular size bag of Cool Ranch Doritos and a Yuengling
Yes, I’m wearing footy pajamas in May
And now my weight is up. I’m about five pounds above my ideal weight now. But I look in the mirror and I see me. I don’t see five extra pounds.
They don’t lessen who I am.
But if I allow the cycle to continue, the pattern will negatively impact my health. So I need to chose.
Meanwhile today is warmer, but cloudy. I put on one of my favorite summer dresses and a cute cropped quasi-sweatshirt. I finished up the half and half so no more hot coffee. It’s free donut Friday at Dunkin if I leave the house. And the teenager has a fundraiser due today.
We need to clean this weekend, and the kittens gutted my one shelf in my closet (but they are so cute and give good cuddles so all is forgiven).
Maybe I have given you something to ponder. Happy Friday.
Mondays are hard for most people. But they are especially hard for my four-year-old Goffins cockatoo, Nala.
I get it. My weekend routine is laid back and includes lots of periodic cuddles and the occasional pizza picnic on my bed, whereas Mondays involve her being ignored while I work.
The Monday through Friday routine used to be— before the Coronavirus pandemic— about 30 minutes of early morning cuddles, some free roaming time while I got dressed, then back in her cage to watch (listen to) Sesame Street until Hulu decided no one was watching.
I think that’s when she would take an afternoon nap, based on her behavior I see when I’m home.
Around 3 p.m. my teen daughter would come home and open her cage door so she could roam until I got home around 5. Then I’d cuddle her for about 30 minutes and bring her down to the kitchen while I cooked.
Then she came back up to my room and around 8, I returned to cuddle her, and watch some TV on my iPad in my room since she refuses to go to sleep without a person in the room.
I have only had Nala four months. And I don’t have experience with parrots/large birds. I barely have experience with budgies.
When I first brought her home, she plucked often. Of course the change was upsetting. She settled in and used plucking primarily as a way to get attention or express that she was overstimulated.
But on Mondays, she would strip her belly or legs and be standing in a pile of feathers. Luckily our routine has minimized that.
Now she occasionally plucks a feather— but it’s often a wing feather and she makes herself bleed. She did this yesterday and I blame myself. It was Monday. It’s a cold May, and I couldn’t get warm so I was in and out of the bedroom all day trying to find someplace to work.
Every time I tried to work with her on my shoulder, she would bite my ear (telling me that she knew I was distracted and not focused on her) so I would force her back to the “bird playground.”
And after work I rushed right out to go grocery shopping.
But like a good bird mom, I came home and rushed up the stairs to cuddle my Nala. My neighbor texted and wanted to go for a walk.
So, with Nala literally yelling at me, I went for a walk and picked up a pizza. (The new Pepperoni Cheeser! Cheeser! from Little Caesars). I thought I would apologize with a pizza picnic.
Nala had plucked a wing feather and was covered in blood. We had our pizza and I brought her down to her shower perch and gently bathed her. She seemed to enjoy that. Or maybe she recognized my remorse.
We then watched TV but she refused to cuddle. She would only sit on my shoulder and chatter. Literally giving me an earful.
So today I brought her with me to go make coffee. She loves coffee and is fascinated by the coffee machine.
As we were going downstairs, I don’t know if she lost her footing, or if my balance was off, or if something scared her… but she fell down the stairs.
I felt awful. But all Nala cared about was her morning coffee. She seems fine and is stealing the budgies food as we speak. But it’s sometimes very humbling to live with a bird.
Yes, I know the title is nonsense— but the world has turned a tad upside down as the world tends to do as having billions of people and billions of animals on a planet will erupt into some unexpected situations from time to time.
The teenager loves to eat lemons. I love to cook with lemons. For a while, especially when I first discovered Gaz Oakley the Avant Garde Vegan (Check him out on YouTube—amazing falafel, his own recipe for peri-peri sauce) I always kept fresh lemons in the house.
That was also about the time I would have lemon water first thing in the morning. The juice of half a lemon with tap water.
I did that again this morning. First time in probably a year. Or more.
Today was also the first time in a week I haven’t gained weight. The first month of this pandemic, I was eating better but stopped because… Easter… or so I claim. I am a jelly bean addict and once I start eating the jelly beans I launch onto a sugar and caffeine roller coaster.
This was breakfast. Not ALL of them.
So maybe this post should be called “bad habits.” I originally lost about 5 pounds due to stress in the beginning of the pandemic, but between beer, pizza, Easter candy, homemade cookies and triple jalapeño bacon cheeseburgers from Wendy’s they have found their way back.
But look— I got a salad
It’s been rough. More pressure than ever at work. A good friend walked away coldly without even saying goodbye. A work colleague who often made me smile left unexpectedly. Medical bills still coming in.
But in the end, I still feel inside these struggles help us grow and bring us to the next level— as another work colleague likes to say— we don’t age, we gain experience like in a video game. So I’m less than a month away from my 45th Level with the teenager two months away from Level 16 and a drivers license.
Designated Driver AND babysitter, mom friends out there!!!!
Yesterday was a sunny day amidst a forecast of rain. Last week the teenager did not complete her three weekly gym assignments and she told her teacher in her log that she “got lazy” and he wrote back that sometimes he gets lazy, too. This is a great lesson for our (older) kids in communication and work ethic. Those of you with younger kids, God Bless You and Keep You.
I would be screaming every day if the teenager were, say, six. Our brains are wired too differently.
But back to gym. We got out the tandem bike. (Yes, we have a bicycle built for two— it was a gift.) I wanted the teen to “win” gym this week. And she should get extra credit for captaining a bike with her mom, who has cerebral palsy and no real balance skills.
Tandem biking
Then her dad came over and brought his famous hot buffalo chicken dip for dinner, at the teen’s request, and included beer for us grown-ups. And he even got on the bike! (He doesn’t ride bikes.)
I excused myself to work on some more chapters of Bill’s novel Debauchery (and reached the first sex scene— those characters are so in love it hurts). Please don’t be scared by the violence and BDSM in this novel/series. The real theme here is the beauty of acceptance no matter who you are.
And the first of several pet related packages came. So here is a Petco unboxing and some animal videos:
It’s important on days when the world is fighting a pandemic or if your mood is not quite right to remember the bright spots.
The sun was bright. The air warm. My house windows open.
My daughter and I had a picnic on my bed at lunch.
My boss likes one of the projects I submitted today, which almost made it a good day.
Fog the kitten curled up in a tight little ball and slept in my lap. She looked like such a dainty baby.
My daughter— how I wish these days at home with her never had to end— cleaned the kitchen and made dinner AND shared a piece of her peanut butter Reese’s Easter Rabbit.
We watched another episode of the Waltons, a throw back to my daughter’s childhood and my own. We both envy the Norman Rockwell rural Americana depicted there. When she was a baby, I used to watch the Waltons while she nursed (with the sound on mute so she wouldn’t hear it and I put the subtitles on). As a preschooler, we would often watch an episode to settle down before bed. And the episode where Elizabeth broke her leg spurred a decade of my daughter having a fascination with broken legs. And a brief desire to be a surgeon. Her reaction to the show now is priceless— I never really thought about the fact that the Baldwin Sisters were alcoholics. That was one of her first observations.
Tomorrow the teenager plans to make banana bread.
My daughter had planned a cookie and coffee break for me today, but my work day (even a home) that my 9-plus hour stint at the computer didn’t allow it. So I hope we can try again tomorrow.
For those interested in the things the cat stowed in the couch series, I haven’t found much lately.
I never finished my “point” with my post earlier today, Rainbows and Unicorns. I meant to use that post as a reflection on goal setting.
But I got distracted talking about the state of the world.
So, as my friends and I talk about our first world problems, it’s easy to feel bogged down thinking about taxes and the medical system (I owe about $700 for a breast ultrasound right now. Sigh.) Etc. That was when we took a minute to exchange philosophies on goal setting.
I struggle with big picture goal setting. I do much better if someone suggests various big goals and then I can break the goal I select into smaller pieces.
I’m really good at deciphering steps to make a clear larger goal a reality. I do really well with baby steps.
So it was a nice discussion and reminder that sometimes we need to approach our lives and our problems by picking the steps we can bite off and chew, not rush all the way to the end goal.
When you find yourself overwhelmed, break the problem into the very next small step and move slowly forward with each success.
Some of my friends are grouchy. I remind my grouchy friends of their curmudgeon status, if only to remind them that not everyone sees through their crunchy exterior.
One of these friends likes to remind me that the world is not rainbows and unicorns.
We were discussing how overwhelming basic life situations can be. Medical care and the associated bills. The job market and, while unemployment is low, there isn’t much opportunity for professional employees and living wages. Through in some politics. The rising cost of food. The lack of healthy options in our food supply. The exploitation of the developing world.
You see how easy it is to get bogged down?
So this friend reminds me the world is not rainbows and unicorns.
And I reply, probably in the most unflattering whine, “I know the world isn’t rainbows and unicorns, but I want it to be and that makes my heart hurt.”
In other news:
Several of my friends are enjoying my witchcraft series. One walked by something sparkly on the ground, stopped after a few steps and remembered my theory of finding powerful things. He reversed course and found a necklace. The shape and color of the stone appealed to him. So he picked it up.
Angel Ackerman 