Tending Joy

 Keeping myself current, somehow -- oh, and keeping you current, too.

Relationships

Dear Husband and I continue in counseling. T'other day he acknowledged that he's getting value out of it, for himself as well as for the relationship. I'm getting value out of it too, more for myself than for any real or lasting improvement in the relationship. We are talking better -- which is excellent. Sadly, the more clearly we talk the more clear it becomes that we have fundamental differences that may not be resolvable.

He said not long ago that he thinks of life as a series of projects. Which might be great, except that whenever he's in mid-project he can't do anything else. He feels guilty if we take an afternoon off and aggrieved if I want his attention for something 'frivolous' like 'having fun together' instead of completing an obligation we have taken on. When we started in counseling the 'project' was the great boat rebuilding -- which had us in Guatemala for four winters running without ever leaving the boatyard village except for one weekend. We processed that to death, after the fact, but this spring he's done the same thing with the project of cleaning house for being on the market, and again with the project of putting up fences for goats.

But even when we're building fences I still need to do hospice work, to meditate, to do coven magic, to study, to weave, to dance, to cuddle. Somehow all these become distractions and ways in which I abandon him while he's stuck with the project. Even though I don't want him to be stuck with the project, I just want us to have some 'life' together in addition to the 'obligation'. The more we try to talk about this the more he insists that he has to continue to live his life the way he was brought up -- to be always committing to responsibility and always putting that responsibility first.

I, on the other hand, have spent much of the past 20 years trying to grow out of my own upbringing, especially sometimes when it seems that it doesn't support my growth and upliftment. The impulse to Calvinistic self-denial dies hard, but it can be reduced. I wish I could find a way to make that clearer to him.

In other news, the tone of conversation in the household has moderated. Now that it's really clear that we need to sell the property some resentment and backlash have given way to actual progress, both on 'clearing out stuff that won't go with' and 'figuring out where to move to, and how'. It will be a big wrench for at least three of us to separate into two pairs in different places, but it has become more and more clear that this is necessary. Too many things have been too far out of balance for too long. Affection is still there, but sometimes even people we love need to move on.

I haven't spent much time with the kids and grandkids this year, but we're in more touch via 'social networking' media. It's an interesting shift. And in another month I expect to have some time with a new grandbaby, due in September.

Writing

Pretty much nothing is happening. I write lengthy comments on other people's blogs, very occasionally, and sometimes a longish e-mail. But no progress on the memoir since the last Gotham Writers Workshop class ended in the spring. I'll get back to it, but I'm not sure quite when.

My advice to the rest of you is: Start writing your memoirs in your 40s or 50s, while you still have significant short-term memory to help you keep it all organized. Waiting until 60 was foolish.

Chaplaincy

Recently served as chaplain for a friend having surgery. Was accepted by the hospital personnel with a minimum of hassle. Continuing to like the feeling of helping people be present to the parts they want to focus on and release the unnecessary parts.

Medical

Seems the gastric distresses of the past couple of years are related to a combination of stress and stupid dietary indiscretion. Just because yogurt is easy doesn't mean I should try to live on it. Just because it's unavailable somewhere doesn't mean I should quit it cold turkey. Making sure I actually get both protein and fresh vegetables seems key. Possible gluten sensitivity but this doesn't seem to be a big problem just now. Gotta watch out for depression.

Otherwise I am in robustly delightful good health.

Celebration

One of the frustrations of my life is that we have utterly failed to find ways to celebrate that both of us enjoy. For our 25th wedding anniversary last year we agonized over what to do. Ended up that he took me dancing "for graduation" (from the MA I completed last year) and then I helped him give a party "for several reasons" including the anniversary. I like dancing, he doesn't. He likes parties, I don't. After all that we said we'd "be sure" to celebrate our 26th. But it was last week, and we were so focused on building fences for the goats that he canceled his birthday celebration and suggested we push back our anniversary for the following week. But that week was over yesterday. Did we celebrate? What do you think?

Magic

Lots of coven work this month, and I'm loving it. Put in my request to work toward initiation and have a plan for that work. Have started some of the pieces of it.

Sobriety

The occasional single glass of wine or beer. T'other night a gin and tonic, just the one. No difficulties, no confusion, not much pull to drink more. Looks like the Guatemala experience had more to do with deprivation than alcoholism in particular.

Spiritual Practice

I keep promising myself that I'll meditate tomorrow. What is THAT about?

Keeping commitments

I'm doing better at resisting the temptation to say Yes too fast. I'm doing better at being where I said I would be and doing what I said I would do. Biggest improvement: Actually calling people as soon as I realize I can't meet a commitment, rather than waiting to the eleventh hour and hoping against hope for a miraculous change in whatever's in the way.

Physical reality

I'm loving having goats. I'm also looking forward to selling them off in about three weeks, then starting over with a new batch of young kids.

Plans

We've started talking about the sailing trip up through Belize in February or March or maybe April. Haven't really started the planning process yet, but starting to talk about doing it.

In three weeks we go to Ireland with a group, planning to visit some sacred sites. I can't wait ... and I'm aware that I don't yet have all the information I'll need to make good plans. 

Overwhelm / Overbookedness

Finally took steps a couple of weeks ago to put myself on hiatus with several commitments while we sort out the goats project and get the house sold. Now it feels like there's room. I'm back to weaving and took the current project off the loom tonight. It's either 'finished' or tomorrow's in-depth examination will tell me I need to replace one or two of the placemats in the set. But then ... on to the next warp.

I am so glad for the people who read and respond to what I write here. It helps to feel that there's a place to dump the contents of my head, where I have a chance of being heard, listened to, understood.

Love, light and laughter to you all

 So I'm still getting my head examined.

Bailed on NaNoWriMo almost at once, a grand total of less than 1500 words of fiction for the month. It might eventually grow up to be a cute story or might forever remain a fragment. But daily writing? Maybe next year.

Instead I've been writing down my dreams again, and spending a little time with them each day, and participating in an on-line dream group. This is turning out to be every bit as useful as the face-to-face group I used to be with, though at the usual longer distance / slower pace one gets with on-line e-mail groups or forum posts.

And working on the memoir, which is going slowly. Now I'm at the stage of needing to fill in stuff that's hard to write about -- the decisions that led to my second divorce, the choices I've made based on emotional patterns from childhood, the mistakes I'm most ashamed of. Nothing horrible but lots of ick.

Then there was Thanksgiving, which was wonderful ... and enlightening. Ended up that we had 25 dinner guests, ALL of whom stayed overnight for at least a couple of days. We had airbeds in the basement, the living room, the mud room, in addition to the usual places ... if we'd had to set up one more it would have been under the piano! People were flexible, charming, cheerful, hardworking, harddrinking. The children played pool, watched television, played outdoors, tried out my loom, played pick-up-sticks. The grownups played backgammon, cards, scrabble. Even some of the children played scrabble, which was great to see.

I had a grand time. I had several one-to-one or small-group conversations that felt delightful, heartfelt, excellent in important ways.

I also noticed that I spent lots of time in the next room with my loom, especially when conversations grew political, or abstract, or when people started talking theoretically about topics not personal to their lives, opining at length about things they haven't experienced. I discovered that I am unwilling to listen to any more "let's refight the battles of world war two" conversations. I discovered that I have no idea what to say after a family member patiently explains that the joke wasn't racist, it was just a pun.

I also discovered that several other people found the crowded living room overwhelming, but would sit beside me as I laced warp threads through the heddles and the reed and talk seriously and personally -- about their history, about the recent past in our lives, about family situations past and present, about the current state of "politics and the economy" as it affected them personally. And I liked those conversations much better.

A funny aside to my apparent avoidance of the crowd scene during the houseparty is the echo it has of a long-past event. The year I was seven, we moved 300 miles just a few weeks before my birthday. My parents decided that the way for us to get to know our new neighbors would be to invite every 2nd-grader in my school to a cook-out birthday party. With their parents and siblings. So there were 60 new kids my age, plus families ... cars parked around the block, the yard so full of people milling about that there wasn't room to run around. After awhile (an hour? a few minutes?) I felt overwhelmed, and quietly went up to my room with a book.

So ... I loved seeing everyone, kids, siblings, inlaws, grandkids ... and I especially loved seeing them one or two at a time. Good to know.

It's Thursday, and I've finished washing all the sheets and towels and folded up the last of the beds. The house is nearly back to normal.

Blessed Be.

Strange times.

My computer is about 95% back to normal -- that is, all the software's loaded and working, all the day-to-day data is loaded and working, I even found a February backup of ALL the MSWord docs, so all the good old stuff that I sometimes refer to is back in live space, and all the old novel drafts I worked on last year ... the only stuff missing is a few dozen updated files of which the earlier versions exist, and a couple of specific things I wrote this summer that seem to be totally gone.

One of those is the sermon I wrote about Abundance ... oh, but wait -- didn't I e-mail that to someone? Yes, I did. And there it is, in the successfully backed-up Outlook Express files. Hmm. Maybe if I think of a few other things I'll be able to find them, too. Hmm.

Still to add -- the rest of the pictures.

Still not quite right -- an assortment of settings in various software. If I'd realized at the time that I would need them, and that they would somehow NOT be preserved when things needed to be "reinstalled" (not just "copied") ... Maybe I'd have tried to figure out how to back them up. What they are just now is annoying.

Like: WHERE in Windows XP do I get to tell it that my Default Keyboard, from the moment the machine wakes up, is Dvorak? (I've got that set for my User Name, but my Password still wants QWERTY ... which always makes me stop and think. Rats.)

Or: WHERE in Windows XP can I tell it that I DON'T want mouse hesitation or touch-pad tremor to equal 'click here' ?

And: WHAT ever happened to the color scheme I spent days getting 'just right' and have now lost forever (sigh)?

None of these are important. It's just an annoyance, along with dozens of other trivia.

Beloved Dog has moved out, is delightedly settling in with her new full-time family. I get to visit, at least briefly, on Tuesday. The house is weirdly quiet without her. And some things are better.

I've spent several multi-hour sessions working upstairs in my office, clearing out, organizing, filing. There's more to do, but already I feel more in control and in touch with what's up there. Soon I'll have some space cleared for the Thanksgiving visitations, which begin on the 17th.

I sat down at the piano yesterday, for only the second or third time since I sprained my fingers the day Beloved Dog arrived home. I can't play for long, but indeed all the fingers find their notes. So the trade-off is complete: in the spring I got Beloved Dog and lost the piano; now in the fall I have sent Beloved Dog to greener pastures and taken the piano back.

Weaving continues moving forward, even though my eye is not yet back to normal. This afternoon B and I will string up the loom for her placemats, and then the blissful meditative part of the process begins. A bonus: during the clean-up upstairs I found two warps I'd made last fall. Maybe after these mats I can string one of them, and even perhaps complete a second set. We'll see.

The Eye ... I keep reaching to clean the glasses I'm not wearing. The floater has shrunk and thinned hour by hour, but apparently part of what it's doing is dissipating into tiny droplets or fragments that are becoming more and more uniformly distributed throughout what should be the clear gel of the vitreous.

What I see through that eye is the world with normal acuity, except for an increasingly uniform cloud of gray-rimmed water droplets. Probably, the doctor says, this is the blood from the initial bleed. Probably, the doctor says, the body is preparing to re-absorb it, first breaking it mechanically into small fragments as the vitreous moves (as I move my eye). Probably, in other words, this is fine. Likely within the next week or two it will clear. Right now, though, I don't much like it.

Autumn ...

The weather ... the light continues so gray it's becoming disturbing. Rain everywhere, which is okay, but the grayness ... can't we have some light?

Then, anniversaries and resonances -- my Mom's death on the 23rd, several years ago ... and then on the 24th something happens to my right eye. For most of her life my Mom would often remark that her "right eye was always the weakest" and that it was "the one things happened to." I don't need to continue that pattern. I don't like this timing -- is there a message for me? Since I feel like I don't want to hear it, I need to ask: is there a message I'm missing or ignoring?

Now gatherings and partings -- I'm gearing up for Thanksgiving. At the moment it looks like we'll have about 18 sleepover family and probably 30 or 35 for Dinner On the Day ... which will be marvelous and also a lot to do. Everyone will pitch in with everything, so it won't be a burden. The two exceptions are my choice. I learned long ago never to let anybody empty the dishwasher who doesn't live here -- they're bound to put something away where none of us inmates can find it. And the sheets and towels will get done after they all leave.

But as soon as the wonderful party is over and the cleanup complete, I need to pack up the car and be ready to drive to Florida and move to the bigger boat and get ready for big major travel -- maybe Guatemala? -- on a boat so big I can't imagine sailing her alone. A boat I've only been on one inland motoring trip with. (I see I'm apprehensive, but this is totally unnecessary -- it's just a product of unfamiliarity. Probably there's more to talk about, about the boat. But at the moment I'm focused on parting.)

I get to leave behind my covensisters, my CUUPS chapter, my ties to congregants and neighbors and family here. I get to leave behind the woods, the land, even the car I like driving. Not to mention the Cat that I've been missing since the arrival of Dog, who make take another two weeks to forgive me now that the Dog is gone, and will then be properly furious when I disappear. I get to leave behind my loom (at least, unless I decide to take it with me in case of shore space to work in). The piano, my Altar ... I'm noticing I'm not happy about this. I can always come back for a visit, can't I? I'll be back in April anyway, won't I?

So ... strange times.