Can I just say first off that the photo of the sodden cardinal above cracks me up every time I look at it? It reminds me so much of Sam the Eagle from the Muppet Show:
Separated at birth?
Anyway, back to this week’s blog post. I had a post percolating in my head for the last couple of days, but I realized as I sat down tonight to write it that it needs to percolate for a few more days – which left a large void in my head where a new blog post would normally reside, so instead of an actual post I thought I’d share some of my favorite photos from this week. I’ve been really interested in catching the birds in flight lately, which results in me taking a zillion photos and subsequently deleting slightly less than a zillion off of the memory stick (photos of birds that don’t actually contain birds, or photos of birds that look less like birds and more like abstract art).
The thing I love so much about my favorite sunset-watching park is that I can go there all by myself as the daylight comes to an end, and I never feel afraid. That is because if there is a sunset, there will be other sunset watchers. I’ve never been there, at any time in the year, and been the only one there for the sunset. There are people with dogs, people with babies, high school friend groups, other older females there alone. And even in these Covid times there is plenty of space for everyone to enjoy the sunset safely.
Ever since mid-March of 2020 my opportunities to be safely around other people have been extremely limited. Grocery store trips, doctor’s offices, waving at people across the street as we go for a neighborhood walk (we’re all so good now about crossing well before we encounter other people) – that has pretty much been the extent of my in-person experiences with those outside my family.
I was talking with my friend Beth during our weekly Zoom call yesterday and we were reminiscing about going to live events – concerts, movies, plays. One of the things we agreed that we missed about live events was the collective energy you feel from being in a room with many people all excited about the entertainment to come. You just don’t get that from watching something on television. When I watch my sunsets, I feel that same sort of communal vibe. We’re all there to experience the incredible beauty of what is about to unfold right in front of us. Of course there are the occasional annoying people (hello, can you corral your dog/child/loud mouth please?), but the vast majority speak in hushed voices, make sure they are not blocking the views of other people, and wear masks even though we are outdoors and spaced much more than 6 feet apart.
The sunset pictured above was last Wednesday. My photos can’t come close to capturing how stunning it was (I was using my iPhone, as I usually do for sunsets – I might have to break out the “real” camera for my next outing). It inspired me to get out there earlier in the month in March and maybe catch more than one sunset during the month. I don’t know how I can have nearly an entire month go by (January and February both) without doing something that gives me SO much pleasure. Do you have something like that in your life? Something you love to do but never seem to find the time to do?
Hello! I don’t think I’ve written about our bird friends since we put the feeder back up. If you’ll recall, I had to take the feeder down for a couple of weeks because some of the house finches were showing signs of an eye disease called mycoplasmal conjunctivitis. I gave the feeder a good cleaning and a bath in a 1:10 mixture of bleach and water (in the actual bathtub, because the darn thing didn’t fit anywhere else). The birds are back at the feeder, which gives me great joy, and I’ve been keeping a very close eye on our finch friends. So far, no funky eyes. Thank goodness.
Last weekend I participated in the Great Backyard Bird Count, a joint venture between the Audubon Society and Cornell University’s Ornithology Lab. I was one of 267,866 participants from 176 different countries. It was incredibly easy and so much fun. All I had to do was download the Merlin app (a free birdwatching app provided by Cornell), look for birds in my backyard (it didn’t have to be my backyard – could have been a park, etc) for at least 15 minutes over the course of the weekend, and submit my sightings through the app. I got a lot of satisfaction knowing that I was a small part of such a massive citizen science project. Here is a lovely video sent out by Cornell to thank the participants.
One of my goals on my 20 for 2020 list was to take yoga lessons. I had taken in-person yoga lessons in the past and had also practiced on my own (using online tutorials), but I hadn’t done much yoga lately and wanted to get back into it. I never did take any in-person lessons in 2020, for obvious reasons, and I also never got in the groove of trying any of the many yoga videos/lessons that can be found on YouTube. I had been doing a lot of general stretching during the day, because sitting at a computer all day really does a number on my back, but never made the transition to yoga – until about ten days ago. I rediscovered “Yoga with Adriene” on YouTube – I don’t even remember what made me take the plunge again, but I’m so grateful to be practicing yoga again. In the short time I’ve been back practicing, I can notice a difference in my flexibility and strength, especially in my core. It’s a tiny difference to be sure, but it’s enough to get me hooked again.
My busy season at work is, for all practical purposes, over. There will be other, smaller, busy times later this year, but nothing like what we just went through. Last week was my first week back working 8-hour days. Instead of logging onto my work computer at 7:00 each morning, I now have a leisurely early morning of riding my stationary bike for 30 minutes, followed by 20-40 minutes of yoga before getting ready for work and logging in at 8:30. What a relief!
The skies were beautiful today – clear, blue, sunny. I had planned to go to my sunset-watching park and catch tonight’s sunset. However, when I woke up from a nap at 4:00 (I love my weekend naps) the skies had completely clouded over. No sunset tonight. At the beginning of January I promised myself I’d watch at least one sunset a month, and February is quickly drawing to a close. Thursday and Friday’s weather forecasts look promising, but I really must start front-loading my sunset each month from now on to avoid this last minute scramble (I seem to recall I did the same thing in January)!
I’m very interested in the subjects of happiness and joy, and how to get more of both in my life. As I have gotten older, the meaning of the word “happiness” has shifted, from some state of perfection (I’ll be happier when I’m thinner, have more money in the bank, a different job, etc) to a sense of contentment with what “is.” To me, happiness is completely dependent on my attitude toward whatever is going on in my life. Certainly, there are some events in people’s lives that can stretch this to the breaking point, but on average most lives are pretty even-keeled and, dare I say, mundane most of the time. It’s finding the contentment in the mundane that interests me most, and my practice of gratitude goes a long way toward helping me find that contentment.
Joy, in my experience, is something completely different than happiness, but it can contribute toward happiness.
When I think of joy, I think of being suffused by positive feelings as a response to something very particular. Joy can come on suddenly – imagine the feeling of seeing a mother deer and her fawn crossing your back lawn – but the positive vibrations of that moment can continue long beyond the moment. Watching a beautiful sunrise, for example, can create a buzz within that keeps you smiling throughout the day.
I’m really enjoying a book right now that is all about joy. It’s called, “Joy: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness” and it’s written by Ingrid Fetell Lee. The author sets out to answer the question, “How do tangible things create an intangible feeling of joy?” She combines anecdotal evidence with scientific studies to try to identify what it is about certain things that activate joy within us.
There are ten chapters in the book, each identifying a quality of objects or experiences that tend to generate the feeling of joy. I won’t list them all here. I’m only a few chapters into the book, but what Lee says resonates with me. In Chapter One she discusses the power of bright color to bring joy. Think rainbows, sunrises, sunsets, flowers, hummingbirds! I definitely have felt the power of color in my life. Recently, in an effort to make my meals more intentional (as opposed to eating lunch while working on an Excel file on my work computer), I bought a few colorful placemats and cloth napkins in the bright patterns associated with the Provence region in France. Each time I sit down for breakfast and lunch these days, the colors make me feel good. Joyful. The meal itself becomes more satisfying.
As I was thinking about color and joy this weekend, I looked around to other colorful things in my life that bring me joy:
Potted flowering spring bulbs bought at the grocery store on Thursday.
My collection of bright scarves, which bring a sense of joy that my neutral colored tops and trousers could never hope to generate.
Fruit!
My new placemats and cloth napkins
An orange tea towel bought from the same vendor as the placemats and napkins.
Our coffee and tea caddies, with their colorful varieties of teas and coffee pods.
My favorite pottery pieces (which I use more often now that I’m paying more attention to the aesthetics of my meals).
What colorful things bring you joy?
Love,
Michelle xoxo
PS – This is my 100th blog post. Can you believe it?
As a child I was a picky eater. If pressed, I would eat an apple, but I wouldn’t be thrilled about it. Ditto vegetables – I’d eat carrots, potatoes, peas, and green beans. Period. The other day Chris showed me a little meme-quiz which listed about 50 different foods and said, “Give yourself one point for each food you would not eat.” I was pleased that my score was 2 (liver, oysters). I have gotten to the point where I love most vegetables and no meal feels complete without some sort of vegetable accompaniment, even if it’s the glass of low-sodium V8 juice that I have with my breakfasts.
Still, I am always looking for ways to increase my consumption of fruits. Although I went through my smoothie phase (6 years of daily fruit/veg smoothies, before losing interest – but I’m sure I’ll be back some day), I generally have never had a tendency to just pick up a piece of fruit because it looks yummy. Instead it has always been more of a “this is good for me and I should eat it” situation.
My food dehydrator has changed all that. Each week we buy and eat an amount of fruit that would have amazed the childhood me. I spend an hour or so on Saturday and Sunday washing and cutting oranges, apples, and pears for drying. My dehydrator has 6 trays (this is the model I have, if you are interested) and I need two batches to get through each week’s supply of fruit.
I used to mindlessly snack on the fruit through the day, but as I have banished snacking (which will be another post entirely), I have a small bowl of mixed dried fruit with my breakfast and lunch. I am mindful of the fact that dried fruit is more concentrated in natural sugars than fresh, and am careful of my portions. But what a treat! I’m no longer eating fruit only because it’s good for me – I’m eating it because it is truly delicious.
January 31 is a bittersweet day for me. An anniversary of something I wish had never happened. A day I’d like to erase all memories of. The day I was diagnosed with breast cancer. A day that now marks my milestones in cancer survivorship. Today I am a seven-year survivor of breast cancer.
I remember the exact moment I heard the words. I was a teacher at the time. It was a snow day. I was sitting at my kitchen counter eating a healthy breakfast of a chia seed berry smoothie bowl. I had undergone a biopsy of a suspicious 9-centimeter region that showed up on my yearly breast MRI a few days before. My mammogram 6 months earlier had shown nothing suspicious, however having dense breasts made the reading of the films quite challenging. I was being screened every 6 months (alternating mammograms and MRIs) because of certain risk factors (previous biopsies, dense breasts, late childbearing, early first period) and I was also given a physical breast exam by a surgical oncologist every six months. The idea was that if anything ever did show up, we would catch it when it was tiny.
So there I was, starting to eat my smoothie bowl when the call came. It was my surgical oncologist. She told me to come down to her office and bring someone. I replied that I was on my way, but if it was bad news I’d like to hear it now. “It’s invasive lobular carcinoma. I can’t believe it,” she said. She sounded dumbfounded. A 9-centimeter cancerous mass. In case you haven’t figured it out, that is enormous in the world of breast cancers. Scarily huge. How could it have evaded detection all this time? I was soon to learn that lobular breast cancer is a sneaky son of a bitch. It doesn’t form nice, round tumors like its cousin, ductal carcinoma. Lobular carcinoma forms flat sheets of cells, then slowly builds upon those sheets. A lobular carcinoma tumor can live quite a while in lumpy, dense breasts without raising any particular red flags. It often can’t be seen on mammograms, and in my experience can also evade detection by MRI.
I got up and dumped my smoothie bowl in the sink. I had lost my appetite, and would have no appetite for literally about a year and a half (I don’t recommend this particular diet).
Ten months of treatment ensued, beginning with 8 rounds of chemotherapy. After my chemotherapy I had a repeat breast MRI. The results came in – no evidence of cancer. My medical oncologist was beaming. “I love when this happens,” she said. At her urging, I opted for a lumpectomy instead of the bilateral mastectomy I was leaning toward.
The pathology of the lumpectomy showed continued presence of lobular carcinoma cells, and no clean margins.
“That lobular cancer is sneaky,” I heard for the fifth, or sixth, or twentieth time. I had lost track.
Bilateral mastectomy and 30 radiation treatments came next, and then I was declared to be in remission. My hair was growing back. I was slowly gaining weight. But I was so used to being tricked by that bastard lobular cancer that I couldn’t believe that the cancer wasn’t still lurking in my lungs. Or brain. Or spine. It took me an entire year to realize that it didn’t matter if it was still lurking. What mattered is that I had limited time here on earth. That I had always had limited time here. That these were the golden days – days when I was healthy enough to do anything I wanted to do. Time was a-wasting and I needed to get busy living my life.
I will never be one of those people who say that cancer was the best thing that ever happened to them. No, it is the absolutely worst thing to ever happen to me. But there were powerful lessons learned. Lessons I don’t know if I would have ever learned without some sort of comparable crisis. And those lessons were:
Life is short. Get busy living. NOW. I mean it! What are you still doing here reading this?
Love is all that matters.
None of us knows what is around the next bend in our lives. It could be something incredibly good, or heartbreakingly bad. The only thing we can be sure of is what is happening in this very moment. If this moment is mundane, or boring, or full of everyday frustrations – well, put that in the “win” column. I try not to get too caught up in things that might seem important but really don’t matter one whit.
I am currently living a life of gratitude. I know that I am beyond lucky to still be here 7 years later. I have lost several friends to cancer since my diagnosis in 2014. Every anniversary, every birthday is a gift. I love love love growing older. Bring on the wrinkles and gray hair!
When I was diagnosed, Sam was a freshman in high school and I honestly thought that I wouldn’t see him graduate high school. He’s now a senior in college, set to graduate 4 months from now. I’m pretty sure I’ll be around for that day. But a few moments ago I had a phone conversation with him, which ended, as they always end, with these words: “I love you, honey.” “I love you, Mom.”
I’m sorry to report that I’ve had to take down our bird feeder for a week or two. One day I noticed that one of the house finches at the feeder looked like it had been in a fist fight – one eye seemed to be partially closed and the feathers surrounding the eye looked ruffled. Since birds don’t have fist fights I consulted Google and found that house finches are susceptible to a disease called mycoplasmal conjunctivitis. It is highly contagious to other house finches and can result in blindness and death due to starvation. They recommended taking down the feeder, cleaning it thoroughly, and putting it back up – which I did. However, a day or so later I noticed another finch had the same funky looking eyes (the first was female and the second male, which is how I knew it wasn’t the same bird). Again I consulted the online experts and saw that the safest thing to do would be to take the feeder down for a significant amount of time so that the flock could disperse. I’m sad that I can’t watch the birds at the feeder for a while, but I really didn’t want to host a super-spreader event right in my own backyard.
I still find it very meditative to watch the goings-on back there, even without the feeder. The other early evening I noticed some deer passing through, munching at the grass and random fallen branches. I had decided not to try to take any photos of them because the light was fading and photos in the late afternoon, past the golden hour, don’t tend to turn out very well for me. “I’ll just enjoy the deer without getting my camera,” I thought. Of course, a young Coopers Hawk decided right at that moment to land in the little tree closest to our house. I scrambled for my camera, fumbled about trying to turn it on and focus in a rush, and managed to get one blurry shot before the hawk flew off again. Even blurry, she’s (he’s?) a beauty. Moments like that are such a gift. After that I decided that any time I am looking outside, my camera will always be at my side, turned on!
I had a lovely weekend – writing a couple of letters, working my current jigsaw puzzle, reading, keeping up with friends with Zoom and group texts. I dried some organic fruit in my dehydrator – navel oranges, cara cara oranges, pears, and granny smith apples. Chris and I watched a couple episodes of His Dark Materials and the 2020 version of the movie Emma. I recommend both! I feel rested and ready to tackle a new work week.
I hope you have a good week. I’ll see you back here next weekend.
I went for a walk in “my” woods today. Took my phone and my “real camera” and stood still for about 45 minutes in an area that usually has a bit of activity. Nothing. Not a bird to be seen. The closest I got to seeing a bird was hearing some crows calling way off in the distance. I’m sure there must be busy times and slow times each day, a sort of rhythm to the forest life, and one day soon I’m planning to spend several hours just observing those daily patterns (I’ve been eyeing this camp stool from Amazon for just such a foray). I do notice that there are slow periods and times when the birds are jockeying for position at our backyard feeder, and I often wonder what the birds do when they aren’t feeding.
It wasn’t the most pleasant of days for a walk outside – gray skies, damp cold, wet leaves, mud – but it was good to fill my lungs with fresh air, and the best sort of meditation to stand still among the bare trees, watching and listening.
It had been about a week and a half since I had gone for a walk – my weekday routine these days is to get up at 6, exercise for 30 minutes on my stationary bike, shower, dress, and log into my work computer by 7. I then work 9 1/2 to 10 hours, sometimes stopping for an actual lunch break (as opposed to grabbing something and eating it in front of the computer). This will be my routine for at least another month, at which point things will start to be less busy at work, I will resume my morning walks, and will work 8:30-4:30 again. And take lunch breaks! Every day!
I do make a point to stretch a couple of times a day. I leave my yoga mat out at all times so that I can flop down and stretch for 5 minutes or so whenever I feel like I can’t remain seated one more second. I’m trying to envision a way that I can continue that practice when I return to the office (I’m not sure when that will happen, but I’m hoping for June).
I have been getting a lot of pleasure these days out of periodically checking the sunrise and sunset times online. Today sunset where I live will happen at 5:24pm. On December 20th sunset was 4:59pm. I love knowing that the days are getting longer, even by a minute or so, each day. I love looking forward to see what the sunset time will be at the end of this month (5:41pm) or at the end of February (6:16pm!!!!) I’m not wishing my life away, crossing off the days until we change the clocks back again (March 13/14!) – I used to do that sort of thing, before cancer. Now I know better. It’s enough to know that this day that I’m in right now is just a little bit longer than yesterday.
One of my first posts on this blog, back in February of 2020, was my “20 for 2020” list. It was an idea I copied from one of my favorite podcasters, Gretchen Rubin. Every year Gretchen and her sister Elizabeth come up with a list of things they want to accomplish at some point in the year (more information here). They aren’t resolutions – one of the items on Elizabeth’s first lists was to “find the perfect gold necklace” – but are more along the lines of things that you feel will enhance your life in some way. For my “21 for 2021” list, I brainstormed a list of things I want to do this year that relate to my 2021 theme of “Tend.” Many of the things on my list are things I do already, just not on as regular a basis as I would like, or they are new interests/habits that I want to invest in more fully. I have some fun one-offs on the list (the Great Backyard Bird Count and the Christmas Bird Count), some items that will be a pure joy (sunsets!), and some that will require some discipline (writing daily in my gratitude journal).
I would say that I accomplished some important items on my 20 for 2020 list (“get a laptop computer”, “start blogging”, “Daily movement – at least 30 minutes”) but many of the items (“get a pedicure”, “get a massage”, “college reunion road trip with my friend Lori”, among others) fell victim to covid. This year’s goals do not assume that life will return to “normal” at some point, although hopefully we’ll have some semblance of normal before the year’s end.
Michelle’s 21 for 2021 List
Tending to my Family and Friends
Send snail mail birthday cards to everyone in my address book
Celebrate minor holidays as well as major holidays by sending greetings to friends and loved ones
Keep up with my nieces and nephew – birthdays, etc.
Keep in touch with all close friends and family by any means available – text, Zoom, emails, snail mails – on at least a monthly basis (hopefully more often!)
b. to have or take charge of as a caretaker or overseer
c. cultivate, foster
d. To manage the operations of: mind
Like many households, we have a portable fire pit on our back patio. I bought it with rosy-eyed visions of spending significant amounts of time outdoors sitting around the fire at night. One problem with that fantasy – in any given 15-minute span of time spent outdoors at night, Chris can emerge with at least 15 bug bites. He attracts mosquitoes like no other person I have ever met. Scientists should really study the phenomenon. And no, the smoke from the fire does not noticeably deter the little flying vampires. Since sitting “around” the fire all by myself isn’t much fun, the fire pit hasn’t gotten as much use as I had envisioned.
Still, Sam and his friends have spent several enjoyable evenings around the fire. I took responsibility for getting the fire started at first because, let’s face it, I’m a helicopter parent. Having never done a lot of fire-building in my past, though, I was surprised at how difficult it is. How do these things just spontaneously spring up in the wild? First you need tinder – something that very easily lights, like newspaper or thin sticks. Tinder may light quickly, but the fire doesn’t last long, so you need to add kindling – larger sticks or thin pieces of wood. Kindling doesn’t catch fire nearly as quickly as one would like, and I’ve found that the kindling needs to be replenished several times before the actual logs catch fire in a significant way. Even when the logs seem like they’re burning nicely you have to pay attention and add more logs just at the right time and in the right configuration (and of the right size) so as not to smother the fire. Fires, like gardens, need to be carefully tended in order to flourish.
When I was thinking about choosing a one word theme for 2021, I didn’t want to come up with something completely removed from my 2020 word “Create.” I still wanted my main aims to be in the creative realm and in continuing to create a life that works for me. I wanted to take the flames of my initiatives from 2020 – my blog, my photography, caring for my home, my family, my friends, my health – and keep them going, feeding them with the kindling of practice, education, and attention. I don’t want what I started to sort of fade off into nothing from lack of care and attention.
Create is such an expansive word. The sound of the word is like watching a time-lapsed video of a flower opening up. Create. The word itself has a drama about it. In comparison to such a glamorous word “tend” sounds very small and unassuming. “Tend” is the daily pulling of weeds in the garden. It’s preparing soil, watering seedlings. Not exciting, but necessary.
So “tend” is my word for 2021. Paying attention. Feeding the flames. Pulling the weeds. Day by day by day. It’s a lovely little word, really. I’m looking forward to keeping it in the forefront of my mind as I travel through 2021. In my next post, I will share the tangible, trackable, ways I will be tending to my goals.
