YesterdayI stepped outside into several inches of new snow. It fell most of the day as well. I also saw that the next seven days were going to be our coldest streak of the winter – staying below zero degrees most of the time. It was as if February was giving me permission to “chill”. So I did.
January and February are our most serious winter months and often have the most severe weather. When I was a child it was with great anticipation that I listened in the dark, pre-dawn hours for the radio announcer to give the school cancellations. Back then -30 degrees was the bench mark for us to stay home, the buses would not be running that day. Or, at least, they wouldn’t be running until it warmed up a little.
I have that same feeling now when I see a blizzard, or a arctic freeze coming. It’s permission to curl up under a blanket, start the fireplace, read more books. Yesterday’s good things were:
A puzzle that got started.
At my house puzzles get covered with plastic. I have a cat.
Knitting projects brought out
At my house knitting has to be kept out of harm’s way. I have a cat.
I made soup. We ate it before I could take a picture. Sorry. It was Lentil Soup.
It was the kind of day that brings relief to the parts of you that have been getting tired (unless you’re the one responsible for shoveling the snow…). It’s okay to get sleepy and take a nap. It’s okay to sit by a window and watch snow fall. Spend a few extra minutes with a cat on your lap. Yesterday February gave permission for those good things.
I am learning to recognize blessings, not actually counting them, like the old song describes, but realizing that all the small surprises in my day are really blessings. That was the common denominator of all the good things on this Wednesday in the first week of February.
A stunning sunrise that kept evolving so fast that I ran outside in the freezing temps at least three times to capture its stages. The brightest spot is no longer hidden behind a building like it has been for several months. The sun is moving! (I know, not really…)
Our family pod of five, gathered together to have a meal. And our extended family and friends on ZOOM who took the time to throw a virtual birthday party for our Ryan, my youngest daughter’s fiancée.
The catalog promising that spring is coming eventually for us, and even now for some happy gardeners. I have already planned, and ordered but that doesn’t keep me from reading it all again. Gardens are such hopeful things!
I’m especially grateful for these blessings on a day that also holds much tension. A dear friend battling cancer went into the hospital on an emergency basis. Blessing and trial, side by side, else how would we know that by contrast they sweeten each other. We are praying for this situation and appreciate all who join us in hoping for more time with our friend.
“I have got to get out of here!” This thought comes to me every now and then and thankfully I can do something about it. I can move. I often think, well, what if I couldn’t?
I’ve seen the frustration of people who can’t move due to life changing paralysis (former client), or chronic disease (the husband) and it never fails to produce gratitude. But, when I’m not looking right at it and thinking about it with intention, I sometimes take movement for granted.
Today was one of those days when I knew I should get out and move a little, because I still can. It’s cold outside (yeah, winter…) and the first few minutes I felt it. My face got cold and I felt the warmth being sucked out through the multiple layers of leggings, shirts and jackets. I was breathing differently to protect my lungs. A few minutes later as I started moving my skis, I forgot all about the cold. And by the time I’d been out an hour and a half, circling the property multiple times, stopping here and there to take a picture, I was actually hot inside all those layers. Movement wakes my body up, and it feels really good.
Wide, open spaces where I can move (to keep warm).
The ability to move is something to be thankful for, and it’s worth protecting. I ask God daily to help me keep moving, both for my own sake and for those I help, because they can’t move as well. Maybe it’s aging that is giving me more awareness of how wonderful it is to move. Maybe it’s February, and winter, and the cold.
If you got up today, stretched and walked out of the bedroom, savor that. Move it, while you can.
An interesting thing at the end of this first day of February – a relief, and a miracle of sorts.
The husband has a condition, Lewy Body Dementia, which wreaks havoc with his autonomic nervous system, among other things. This is the system that controls blood pressure, and it shows up as giving him unstable pressures from time to time. He has been on medication, but even that is trial and error in keeping him stable. So we check it fairly often.
This morning I found his medication from the night before. He had missed taking it with his other pills and it was still in the container. Sure enough, his pressure was on the high side, so he took a diuretic in addition to his morning medication. Late this afternoon I asked him to check his pressure again and he got this:
A scary blood pressure reading, 197/116, yikes!
For those who might not have had to know anything about blood pressure, the top number is the pressure in the system when the strongest part of the heart, the ventricle, is squeezing. The bottom number is supposed to be the pressure when the heart is “resting” in between beats. The top number is ideally below 120 and the bottom number should be less than 80. The husband’s reading of 197/116 – not so good. I blinked a bit, held my breath and tried to get my plan in mind in case he stroked out. He’s had this happen before, but knowing that it changes quickly, I’m not one to speed him to the ER.
We prayed. I told God we would check Dennis’s pressure again in a few minutes and asked him to please let us know whether to stay home or get help. I gave him another diuretic, hoping it wouldn’t keep him up all night going to the bathroom.
About 15 minutes later, after we had finished eating dinner, his pressure was 128/84. His medications had not had time to work yet so we either had faulty equipment or a miraculous change. The equipment checked out okay. I have no trouble believing that I was spared spending an evening in the hospital, even spared the decision of whether or not to go. That’s really the hardest part of my caretaking role, deciding if it’s time.
There were other good things in this day, but this was probably the most dramatic. I’m happy to share it because it wouldn’t be right not to give God thanks for doing me a favor. And I would encourage anyone – don’t be afraid to ask him for things like this because he really is kind. Just sayin’…
Back to watching his phone. Not a worrier, that one.
It’s 2021, it’s February, it’s still winter. I’m challenging myself to find something good to be celebrated every day this month, in the interest of mental health. I need help, and thinking on good, deserving things is going to do wonders. Yep.
A lot of my southern friends have felt sorry for me, having to live “up north” in the winter. I will be the first to admit that the winters are long and can get pretty cold, but there are bright spots to being here.
Entering Wisconsin from the southern border, most of what one sees are farms, lots of farms, and small cities and towns. About 2/3 of the way north, things change and when you finally reach Hayward, you find… trees, lots of trees. Real forests, that go on for a long ways.
Mosquito Brook runs through the forest. There were no mosquitoes. None.
Thirty years ago when I was living here, logging was a huge industry. I used to see the logging trucks, fully loaded, on the roads, and wonder how there could be any trees left in the forests. That was years ago and there are still as many, if not more, logs being hauled out. The forests are so well managed, and so BIG, that there is no apparent shortage of trees.
Back view of sweet machine
And now for the bright spot. Today I got to go out in the forest with my brother on his snowmobile. We rode tandem for two hours. On the way home we switched places and I got to drive. Miraculously, we did not fall off the trail. The experience is a cross between riding a boat in choppy water, riding a dirt bike on rough roads or maybe a bit like posting on a horse with a rough trot. All done out in the forest, at speeds between 0 and 30 (40) mph and at temperatures usually below freezing. We call it winter recreation.
Recreation is pretty big here in the Hayward area because there aren’t a lot of other ways to make a living. People take ice fishing, snowshoeing, skiing and snowmobiling very seriously. There are about eight snowmobile clubs in this northwest corner of Wisconsin that have found ways to get from here to there, mapped them, created apps and invited the “world” to get up here and have fun in the snow. On good weekends the motel parking lots are full of trucks and trailers from as far away as the Dakotas, and the sound of snow machines is in the air. The trails are groomed often. Some are like the “interstates” of the forest and some are “one laners” complete with mile markers and signage.
Not exactly crowded out there, but we weren’t alone either.
My brother’s new machine has heated seats, hand grips, and the throttle (for that cold thumb). Even the helmets plug in and stay warm. It’s a very comfortable, maybe even luxurious, ride. However, they haven’t yet learned how to make them quiet. We live close to a major trail into town and I hear the snow machines a lot. I can only imagine what the deer, bear, wolves and coyotes are thinking now that their forest homes have been invaded.
Groups of snowmobilers travel for hours, stopping for “refreshments” and fuel at designated resorts and bars, bringing a lot of business to our area. All this happy influx of business hinges on two requirements. There has to be snow, preferably quite a bit of snow, and it can’t be so cold that it’s no longer fun but dangerous. This winter has not been bad so far, but we have February to get through yet.
I did enjoy my ride today. The forest was wild, the trail was full of twists, turns, hills and ravines – just beautiful! Most of the time I had no idea where we were, but I was glad to be there anyway. Something good happened today, just sayin’…
I was late going out for a walk yesterday and was nervously watching a drift of storms on the weather radar. Sure enough, as soon as I got to the trail head a light rain started.
I thought it might quit so I stayed in the truck and made a phone call to the North Carolina daughter. We were ten minutes into our chat when a man came out of the warming cabin and approached the truck. He could see I was on the phone so he kind of stood there looking nervous and waiting. When I could see that he wasn’t going away I told Julie I had to hang up and why. She said to call her back in five minutes or she was going to send people to rescue me.
I totally get that, and would have said the same to her. But isn’t it a sad thing that we all have heard of so many disappearances, abductions and murders? Isn’t it sad that we have to think about that and make provision for the possibility? Yes, it’s very sad. And that’s why I ask for God’s protection over my day and everything that comes with it. And then I trust him to give me something – instinct, intuition, a gut feeling, an angel. I don’t care, I just trust.
I might have had a few red flags initially, mostly because I had no idea where the man had come from. I had been there for quite a while and all the cars that had been there when I came had left when the rain started. Had he been in the cabin all along? Doing what?
When I considered rolling down the window so he could speak to me I looked at him closer. I began to dismiss any wild ideas when I saw he was fully decked out in his mountain bike gear, and had obviously been riding hard enough to break a sweat. He looked like he had a request. I couldn’t get the window down without starting the truck, which I didn’t want to do. I opened the door instead and stepped out.
He explained that he had been riding on the single track trail and a branch had gotten caught in the derailleur of the bike and it was broken, beyond his ability to repair it. He had walked a mile with the bike hoping to find someone at the trailhead and had entered the cabin on the opposite side from where I was parked. He had gone riding without his cell phone and was asking if I would call his wife to come get him.
We stepped into the pavilion to get out of the rain and I made the call, holding the phone so he could speak to her. But she didn’t pick up – the unfamiliar number that is usually a robo call must have thrown her off. He left a message. He was clearly in a bind so after hanging up, I asked him where he lived. It was only a few miles away and here I was with a truck – I had to offer him a ride home. I wasn’t going to walk in the rain anyway, so why not?
He was polite and genuinely grateful. He asked if I was concerned about taking him with the COVID 19 precautions. He offered to ride in the back seat. I was feeling more and more sure he was a nice guy and in no way a threat. We loaded up his broken bike and got on our way. We talked all the way to his house. He knows that I hike and volunteer for the Birkie ski race. I know that he has skied the Birkie 24 times and has retired in Hayward from Minneapolis. I dropped him off at his log cabin home in the woods, completely forgetting that I was supposed to call my daughter in five minutes, or else…
She promised she would call for help if I hadn’t returned her call in five minutes. I hadn’t. She did.
When I checked my phone on the way home it was full of calls from the daughter. I had scared her and she had been busy alerting my brother. The sherif was next on her list. I had gotten back to her just in time.
Talking about this experience later with Mom, I had to admit that all the reasons I had decided to trust this guy could have been fabricated. It’s true that people bent on evil go to great lengths to appear trustworthy. It’s true that this small town, where it’s hard to find a stranger, is much like other places where unexpected crimes are committed. It’s true that it’s somewhat my nature to take risks.
But it’s also true that the art of being neighborly is an endangered item and needs to be preserved. Mom has a well worn sign on the freezer in her garage “Let all beings be filled with kindness and compassion for one another.” All beings. Filled. I think we’ve got a way to go.
What is onethingI could do, right away, to be a kinder, more compassionate person to a neighbor?
This post is part of a week long Instagram writing challenge, with the prompt “rest”. But, (confession) I don’t really get Instagram yet so I’m putting it here too, where I can find it.
These peaceful scenes were photographed shortly before sundown very near where I live. Nothing speaks rest to me like nature when it slows down at the end of the day. The planet we live on is designed to have cycles, and so were we – cycles of work and rest.
Science bears this out. Circadian rhythms respond to times of light and dark, and there are even longer cycles like the weekly and seasonal cycles. When we tamper with these natural rhythms, we are walking away from our own health. If we fail to give ourselves the rest our bodies need, they will force us to rest by getting sick.
I’ve done my share of pressing the limit when it comes to lack of sleep and unrestful activity. Sometimes (when I was much younger…) I even felt cool, kind of grown-up, and invincible when staying up all night. I would laugh at the need for sleep. I’m over that. My body has lost the ability to adjust and it is telling me in many ways that it wants no more abuse.
Rest is more than sleep. It is stopping your work. It is doing something different, taking a sabbatical, clearing your mind, getting ready to work again. Those who write might even need to rest from that. New ideas come from a rested mind.
Take it from God, what better example. Even he rested from his work, not because he got tired, but because rest is good.
And if you’ve done nothing else during this pandemic, I hope you’ve rested, some.
My blog has been my stress reliever, my “learning place”, my experiment for the last eight years. I have written a lot, and the strange thing is I don’t remember everything I’ve written. There are things in there that I don’t recognize as my own (but they have to be). Sometimes I read a post and think it was really interesting, or funny, or insightful. Other times I read and think “I’ve got to get this out of here quick, so no one else will stumble upon it”. Time for a rewrite.
What a project! But I’ve found that I like it. It’s an historical review of life “back then” for one thing. Many of the posts are timeless and can be re-purposed and put back on the blog with a new freshness. And, believe me, having something to start with makes it a lot easier to write. Rewriting is a skill of its own – a skill that I’ve improved in over the last eight years. It’s encouraging when I can easily see improvements and make them quickly.
Spring is all about fresh and new. Rewriting is too. Let me at it.
I don’t know how to categorize my topic. It’s about health, emotional, mental and physical. It’s often about family. It’s personal. It’s definitely about a particular lifestyle. It’s about caretaking.
Lots of us are caretakers these days. We care for our children with disabilities, our aging parents and family members with dementia. Some of us work in healthcare institutions and give care to patients of all ages and conditions. It’s a special calling, a special task.
This year I’m using the April A to Z Blogging Challenge to share my own experience, my stories, my thoughts and feelings about caretaking. I am a retired RN, retired in the sense that I’m not getting a regular paycheck, but I’m still learning and doing, in the field of caretaking.
I live with my husband, diagnosed with Lewy Body Dementia in 2018. I’m also across the yard from my mother, a courageous 87 year old, and within a short drive of my uncle and aunt, both in their 90’s. Like so many others these days, I have a friend and a dear sister-in-law who are fighting cancer. While not giving daily care to all of these people, I’m often involved with their needs and I do care.
I’m interested in hearing from others about their experiences, since I have already found that caretakers, as a group, have much to share and teach each other. These posts are an invitation to all who read to contribute and connect. The A to Z format doesn’t cover all possible topics of caretaking but serves as a starting place for discussion. Please join me this month as we explore being caretakers.
There is a moral task of caregiving, and that involves just being there with that person and being committed. When there is nothing that can be done, we have to be able to say, “Look, I’m with you in this experience. Right through to the end of it.” Dr. Arthur Kleinman
Word salad, what an interesting term! I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, since I’ve been hearing comments on this blog from RaknelDah. I’m guessing he’s a bot, but maybe not. At any rate, he tosses a mean salad.
The realization has hit me – I have spent all (yes all) my life learning to put words in a certain order so that they might make sense, when it’s not always necessary. It’s true, you need to have a certain proportion of nouns to verbs, place them in a reasonable order, pepper them with adjectives and adverbs, and you can come up with a compelling read. But my bot does this with a skill and abandon that I just can’t match! For one, I have never heard of some of these words. For two, I could never put together so many unrelated things and actually produce something kind of true and poetic. I’m much too inhibited and used to making sense.
I’ve begun sharing Raknel’s comments with my family. The reactions range from my mother laughing so hard she cries, to my daughter deciding to use a portion for her wedding vows. In short, they are becoming a priceless treasure of entertainment and cabbalistic wisdom. (Yeah, I wondered what that word meant too. Look it up.)
For instance, “people sink in fare into your mortal and you discern perfect away that they were meant to be there… but when you bar eyes with them, you be versed at that to a superb extent wink of an eye that they vigor adopt your support in some foxy way.” Now doesn’t that have the ring of truth to it?
And I really think this sums up life’s hardships, “and from time to then things find to you that may look like gruesome, throbbing, and unfair at president, but in corroboration you disinter that without overcoming those obstacles you would healthy not realized your accomplishable, intestinal fortitude, willpower or heart.”
I aspire to the bot’s “unadulterated thimble-wittedness”. I try to envision the “smoothly paved, settled, non-effervescent street to nowhere”. And I take to heart his commands to “Make off every tempo quote!!!” and “Do every time list!!!”
I could make one of those daily, inspirational calendars with bot sayings. For February 10 “Everything happens conducive to a reason.” I even think I’ve heard that somewhere else. Have you? Or a goal for tomorrow could be “Talk to people that you give delivery to never talked to in the past, and sic listen.” The day after that, “Promulgate yourself, you are a crack split and find credible in yourself.” Or the wise directive “If you don’t preserve in yourself, it will be onerous goal of others to conjecture in you.” I certainly don’t want that happening…
All this flow of delicious words found unexpectedly jumbled together – “salad” really describes it quite well. RaknelDah, in his own words says this, “It would be okay and luxuriously touched in the head, but clouded and unequivocally pointless.” I like salad, just saying…
I Just Have to Say... 