At home, here in subarctic suburbia, weather in the past week has included a string of chilly cloudy days that had me baking cookies and boiling beans in a stubborn effort to add a little warmth to this place without kindling another fire in the woodstove.  As the clouds began to break up, we got some strong winds, rain, hail, and a few frosty nights. 

Right now, the sky is blue, the house is chilly from last night's freeze, and the sun promises to warm it up quickly.  Meanwhile, I'm wearing my little blue winter hat and a polar fleece sweater, but can make do without the fingerless shooter's gloves.  It's not that cold:  near the freeze point outside, low fifties in here.

Bagel had three kittens in a nesting spot she chose on the floor at the far end of the hallway:  two gingers and one black and white, all apparently male at first glance, all big (for tiny new kittens) and apparently healthy.  Bagel was behaving strangely yesterday, leaving her litter, coming out into the front room and attempting to drag one of the 3-month-old Piebeans from her mother Alice's second litter back to her nest.  The one she picked was Count Spatula, the black and white.  Doug speculated that she was trying for a matched set.

There was this quotation from Einstein:

Relax, the retrograde station doesn't occur until 15:49 UT (Universal Time), on Monday, May 26th, 2008.  Don't relax too much, though.   Since Monday, the effects of Mercury's slowdown have been apparent, and  next Wednesday the planet's apparent motion  will be less than a degree a day, until Tuesday, June 24, when we go into the direct-motion speedup "shadow period."  Everything gets all the way back to normal by July 4, when Mercury again passes 21 degrees Gemini, where the retrograde station occurred.

The
Yellow shaded areas indicate dates when Mercury is retrograde. 
The "Red Letter" days are the most erratic, when Mercury is
moving at its slowest, less than 1 degree each day.  Plan even more carefully on "Red
Letter Days".   The "gray shadow" areas are those called the "Shadow
Period".  The "gray shadow days" mark the
beginning and ending of Mercury's retrograde influence.  (Shadow begins when Mercury is at position where it will later
turn Direct; Shadow ends when Mercury returns to position at which it went
Retrograde.) 
The Retrograde cycle starts with warning Shadow days, intensity
increases during the "Red Letter or Storm days" , things then
move into the heightened chaos of the Mercury Retrograde, Mercury then
slows and we have "Red Letter Days" at the end of the
Retrograde, a final tapering off of Mercury effect during the closing
Shadow Period cycle, and then Clear Days Ahead!

May
2008

This morning, I went outside as the rising sun was melting the night's
frost.  In sunny open areas the frost was already gone,
leaving behind dewy droplets.

In deep shade, the
crystals had lost their sharp edges.  The shapes remained, but
melted away as I watched them.

Here is a 1024x768
wallpaper version of the shot above, for those of you in warmer
climates who could use some visual desktop relief from the
heat.

Below is the budding tip of a new tree branch,
showing how far along is the progress toward summer here. 
Besides these sparse bits of pale spring green, there are some signs of
darker new grass in a few places.

I am incubating an idea
for a post, with help from Doug and Greyfox, about, "the most efficient
way man has devised to hold back human progress."  That's a
quote from Greyfox.  I'm still organizing thoughts and the
writing hasn't begun yet.  Doug will be wanting onto this
computer soon for his regularly scheduled session of D&D
Eberron. 

Breakup is really happening now. 
I know this not only because the ice broke up and moved out on the Tanana River a week or so ago, and because mosquitoes are thick here now, but today when I drove past Kashwitna Lake, the ice was breaking up there.  Also, we have not had a fire in our woodstove for about a week, and except for some chilly mornings it has been comfortable in here just with the solar energy coming through the windows.  Today, the water level in the outhouse had receded far enough for me to be able to use it.  That's a biggie!

Love is stronger than fear.
I know this because I keep going out and riding shotgun so that Doug can learn to drive.  Earlier this week he drove a mile up the highway to his dad's place, then about three miles back down the valley to the general store to buy ice cream.  I drove home from there.

Today, we tried something that could set a pattern for future driving lessons.  We needed to go to the Willow Post Office to pick up some packages.  He started out driving, and when I felt that the tension had built up more than enough in both of us, I had him pull over, and I took it the rest of the way.  We are going to take this thing in stages and let it be easy.

Taking risks for love beats running scared, and confronting insanity beats turning your back on it and walking away.
I know this because my marriage is now a joy.  The payoff has been well worth the trouble.  Just five years ago our life together was a dreadful, scary, and trying experience.  There were many times I would have left if I'd had a place to go and if I hadn't stubbornly refused to let the man move in and run me out of my own home.  Now I'm glad that he never followed through on any of his promises to leave.  Through this experience, the whole family has learned a lot, and each of us has grown... and grown stronger and happier.

There must be something else I have good reason to know.  Maybe.  I'll have to think about that.  Later.

I ran out of time and cut my entry short yesterday.  I had intended to write about worry, about how I used to be a world class worrier and gave it up for the sake of my mental health.

I guess I learned to worry from my mother.  I know she used to verbalize her worries a lot, and until I had children most of her worries centered upon me.  Then they shifted to my kids and I became the focus of some other emotions for her.  

I grew up believing that worrying was normal, the thing to do about fear and anxiety.  I even expanded on the concept after life had handed me a number of unpleasant surprises that exceeded my worst worries.  I began trying to imagine the worst case scenario in every situation, making that my expectation, so that any possible surprises would be pleasant ones.

Then a pair of unrelated events occurred close together in time and caused me to reevaluate the importance of worrying in general and of choosing the worst case scenario on which to focus my worries.  I was caught shoplifting a silk scarf.  Earlier the same day, I was not caught when I shoplifted a book.

I do not now recall the book's title or author.  It was a New Age metaphysical thing, and this was at a time thirty-some years ago when I was reading everything in that genre that I could get my hands on, and that was practically all I was reading.  I went through a phase then of not reading fiction at all, but only reading self improvement books, history, philosophy, and other similarly fictional works that presented themselves as fact.

Anyhow, that book introduced me to an idea that is now commonplace in works of psychology and metaphysics:  that we tend to manifest the things upon which we focus our thoughts.  I was out on my own recognizance for the shoplifting charge, with a court date set several weeks in the future, and I was diligently worrying about it, trying to imagine what was the worst thing that could happen.

Then I read that book and started working to rein in my thoughts and turn them toward the best case scenario.  It must have worked.    When I went into the clerk's office at the courthouse on the appointed day, to find out which courtroom to go to, my name wasn't on the list so the clerk sent me to the DA's office.  There, I was told that no charges had been filed against me.

I took it as an object lesson.  The cessation of worrying wasn't instantaneous.  For years, I had to consciously catch myself many times when I'd been worrying and looking for the worst possible outcomes in any given situation.  Eventually, I got to where I could go weeks without a worry, and only be thrown into anxiety by some dire impending threat.  I completely abandoned the "worst case scenario" strategy.

Then it occurred to me that dire impending threats, more than any other situations, require clear thinking and rapid response, and that indulging in fear and worry just impedes one's ability to deal with the threat.   That realization, and the repeated advice of Meher Baba, Bob Marley, and Bobby McFerrin, to "Don't worry. Be happy," have made a non-worrier of me.

There is another aspect to the worry thing.  Worry is fear turned conscious and active, and projected into the future, a failure to be present in this moment.  Likewise, a range of reactive emotions such as shame, embarrassment, humiliation, resentment, etc., are based on errors, accidents or trauma from the past, kept conscious and active by mentally focusing on the experience of pain, failure, disappointment, etc., instead of focusing on what can be learned from the experience.  Making every painful situation a learning experience turns unpleasant feelings into pleasure and growth.

It baffles me to see so many people living in a hell of their own creation.  There was a time when it would have distressed me to see it.  I saved myself a lot of distress by reaching the understanding that my distress hurts me and helps no one, at about the same time that I realized that we all inject into our lives whatever emotions we choose to feel.  My bafflement is an intellectual thing.  I wonder why so few people choose happiness, and I am glad that I have chosen it.  I want to share my happiness, but I'm not going to get bent out of shape by others' refusal to accept it.  That would be silly, wouldn't it?

This is old news, delayed in reporting by the trip to town, my foggy days of recovery following the town trip, and by yesterday's convergence of other matters to blog about with too little time to include the old news, too.

It is really Breakup now, officially and unofficially.  Most of the snow is gone from our yard, and some of the mud has dried up, although the outhouse is still flooded and unusable.  The second hatch of mosquitoes is out, the small fast hardbodies that come right after the first wave of big slow bombers.  They make a nice satisfying pop when squished, but if not handled with sufficient firmness will just get up and fly away after being swatted.  It is for them that the Alaskan slap, press, and roll maneuver was invented.

The Tanana River officially went out on May 6th, 2008 at 10:53 pm Alaska Standard Time. The winners will share a Jackpot in the amount of $303,895.00. The payoff will be made on June 1st, 2008.

[EDIT:]
I almost forgot to mention, today is Florence Nightingale's Birthday.  Thanks to Xanga Footprints and slightly fewer than a bazillion people who have accessed my old post through Google today, I remembered in time to get this note in here before Doug takes over the computer for the day.

Did you ever notice how my name for you evolved as I grew?  Daddy called you "Mommie", so I started out calling you that.  After he died, I started calling you "Mama".  I'm not sure I thought that out or had a conscious reason.  I think now that it could have been another of those tactics that you and I came up with to avoid being obsessed with and haunted by memories.

That bit of hindsight could be way off the mark, of course.  The shift to "Mama" might have been for the same reason as the later shift to "Mother" after I'd gotten married:  because it sounded more grown up.  I did so want to be grown up without having to wait to get there.  Was being grown up important to me because you kept bemoaning the fact that I was growing up too fast?  Maybe, but I don't think so.

Daddy always encouraged me to stand tall and reach high, to learn and mature as fast as I could.  I formed the intention of growing up when I learned that the doctors had said I wouldn't live that long.  I overheard you telling Aunt Katherine about it when I was three years old.  You thought I was asleep.  I didn't tell you I'd heard that until I was -- what... 23 or 24?  I had been eavesdropping when I'd been told to go to sleep, and that was "bad", so I was afraid to admit that I'd heard.

I was so scared of your violent fury when I was little that I carried guilt, for more than two decades, over wishing Daddy dead, on the day that he died.  Did I ever confess that to you in any of those long letters or LSD-fueled long distance calls in the 1960s?  Probably not.  I don't think I ever told anyone, until I told my therapy group in 1974.  By then, I had given up on ever patching up my relationship with you, so telling you about it was a non-issue.

I don't know if you can appreciate the humor in this (I never did quite grok what made you laugh at the 3 Stooges and not the Marx Brothers), but usually when I blog about you, people think I'm belittling you, carrying resentment, holding a grudge, or something.  Some of them come to your defense, saying that they are sure you "did your best."  Do you see the ironic humor in that?  I know that Daddy would see it and laugh.  He was the one who taught me to always do my best, keep trying, and never say, "I can't."

You, on the other hand, didn't have anyone to teach you that.  You worked really hard at appearing to be hard working.  You taught me how to look busy so my employers would think I was earning my pay.  You turned me into your bookkeeper, cook, mechanic, and general dogsbody by saying, "I can't."  You told me outright that a woman had to get a man to do things for her by making him think it had been his own idea from the start.  You also told me that a woman can't be complete without a man.  The Women's Liberation Movement came along at the right time to rescue me from the full lifetime consequences of that, for which I am grateful.

The last time I saw you, on that trip I made from Alaska to Kansas in 1979, to reunite with the daughter you were instrumental in having taken away from me, and to meet my first grandchild, you behaved true to form.  You paid lip service to the conventions you've always professed to believe in, and acted out your true feelings.  By then, I had learned enough psychology and had worked in the field enough to recognize your defense mechanisms and your denial.  I didn't hold any of that against you, and I confronted the crap only long enough to determine that you had no desire or intention to transcend it.  Then I just let it go and concentrated on not letting you bring me down from the pleasure of my reunion and of being a grandma.

Something I did hold against you at the time, but have forgiven since then, was the role you played in my giving up Carol/Angie for adoption.  I also resented that you made the trip to Wichita from California to testify at the hearing where my "babysitter" petitioned to have my parental rights vacated so she could adopt Marie, while I was working two jobs in an effort to have her back with me, and you never let me know that a hearing was even being held. 

Was that legal?  It certainly does not seem morally justifiable.  I think I should have had the right to tell the judge my side of the story, or at least to know that this legal maneuvering was going on.  You knew, but I didn't.  Why was that?  I have wondered about that since I learned about it, after the adoption was finalized.  When I asked you, in '79, you pulled your favorite evasive maneuver.  You cried.  I'll bet you never knew how ugly you were every time you screwed up your face and forced out the tears. 

But all that is done and gone.  You're gone.  Marie died using cocaine, a couple of years after you died.  Carol/Angie is alive, and denies her resentment for my abandoning her.  I think that could be because the Billie who reared her had a lot in common with the Nellie who reared you.  The two of them even have some physical resemblance.

In 1986, I came home after having worked two weeks at the Alaska State Fair and found a note hanging on my door.  It said to call the State Troopers.  I called and was told that you had died.  I tried calling Marie, but her phone had been disconnected.  A week or two later, Marie called me.  She said that she had just come from your funeral.  Somehow, the troopers got the message wrong, or whoever called them thought you'd died when that heart attack had put you in the hospital.  You had hung on there in the hospital for a while, while I thought you were dead.

If I had known you were there, alive, I couldn't have gone to see you.  I was barely making ends meet, but I would have phoned you.  You probably wouldn't have enjoyed the conversation.  You never did much like what I had to say, but I would have called you because you were my mother.  For several years after you died, I had recurring dreams in which I wanted to call you but couldn't recall your number.  I'd think about calling Granny to get your number from her, and then I'd be unable to remember her number, too.

I haven't had any of those dreams since I learned how to forgive.  It wasn't for you, or for anyone else but me, that I chose to forgive everyone for anything and everything.  Holding onto resentments is like taking poison and hoping that the other guy dies.  Much better to get over things than to go under.  I'm over it.

Your loving daughter,
Kathy

This is my contribution to the second May Featured_Grownups challenge.

Anyone can participate.

Write a letter to your Mother.  It doesn't matter if she is in heaven or on earth, or someplace else entirely.  Tell her what she means to you...

Then go here and leave a link to your post.

You can make it fun, serious; it's up to you... it's your blog! ~ feel free to use pictures, songs...you choose, we enjoy!

This topic runs through the end of MAY (or whenever we get tired of it)

...but I'm still presentable.  The funk buildup would probably wrinkle some sensitive citified noses, since I don't wear perfume or use deodorant, but I had no problem going out to my ex's to try and track down a missing book he might have borrowed, and then to the general store for ice cream.  People were surprised to see me out and about, and they all seemed pleased.

The mystery of my private post yesterday is solved.  I didn't post it.  I left it on the computer in xTools when I left for town, and Doug saved it privately for me.

When I went to leave, my car didn't start.  I looked under the hood, wiggled the battery terminals, but didn't want to get my clean hands all greasy so I called Doug out.  He was checking spark plug wires when he found the distributor wire disconnected.  That got me some spark, and after I remembered that this is Blur and not Streak, and he has a manual choke, I got the thing started.  That's the hazard in having a "new" car that looks just like the last one but has major internal differences.  Blur's radio doesn't work, either, so I got to listen to his body rattle all the way to Willow and back.

There is still a lot of snow among the trees and in people's yards and driveways, but the dirty stuff on the shoulders and in the ditches has all melted.  I got rained on twice yesterday, under sunny skies, but saw no rainbows.  I did see lots of ravens, several eagles, and a flock of gulls.  No wild furries, but there was one beautiful brown and white dog lying at the end of a driveway watching cars go by.

I bought gasoline, first time this year.  Egad, almost $4.00 a gallon!  I wouldn't be able to afford that volunteer gig I used to do in town every other Thursday.  My post office errand went uneventfully, and in addition to the Interlibrary Loan book, Cognitive Enhancing Drugs, that came from the University of Nebraska at Omaha, I borrowed Ken Wilber's The Spectrum of Consciousness, and paid $3.00 for about a dozen discarded books, including three hardbound books on self care and natural healing, two metaphysical works I hadn't read, and a few thrillers and mysteries for when I need a break from the mind expansion.

The trip fatigued me and my sleep was fragmented last night, but I still feel relatively great.  I needed that break from the cabin fever.  I got more housework done today than in the entire time since my pneumonia crisis last September.  I have done enough for today, however.  Now I plan to rest, and also to take it easy tomorrow, and go to Wasilla to spend Thursday with Greyfox.  I'll probably go to the NA meeting tomorrow, too.  It's the monthly business meeting after the regular one, and they haven't had a secretary for months.  Maybe I can keep minutes.

Something was unexpected about the comments to my shower blog of yesterday.  Among the general glee and celebration of my cleanliness, there was a bit of discussion about the amount of work I go through to get a shower, but nobody remarked on the fact that I take a shower in only 2 gallons of water.  Maybe that is because most people have never measured their water use and don't realize how little that is.  There's a valve on the shower head of the SunShower bag, and I turn it off while soaping.  I can actually shower and shampoo in a gallon or less, but I took my time yesterday and rinsed my hair three times.

I'm off to Couch Potato Heaven and the X-Box 900, so if you need me, you'll have to wait until I check back in.

Today I had my first shower since I was in the hospital in mid-December.  I've stood by the woodstove and washed up, dipped my hair in a pan and shampooed after a fashion, but none of that was as thorough and effective as a shower.

After Doug went to bed this morning, I heated water and gave the old SunShower bag a baking soda rinse to cut the scum and kill whatever's been growing in it through the winter.  Then I heated more water and filled it.

Getting it and both my feet over the dog barrier in the hallway was not easy, but by resting the 2 gallons of water on the gate as I leaned my back against the wall and lifted one foot over at a time, I managed to get me and the shower back to the bath.  I was careful climbing onto the rim of the tub to hang the bag on my self-fabricated hook that hangs from the bracket that once (before my time here) probably held a rod for a shower curtain.  No mishaps, I'm pleased to report.

The occasion for all that exertion is my first solo outing since... hmmm... last September or longer.  The big neurochemistry book I requested through Interlibrary Loan is waiting for me in Willow, and the post office there has a package for us, probably new headphones that Doug ordered.  If I get through this without any big problems, such as a respiratory emergency, next on my agenda is going to Wasilla to see my old fart and pick up the coffeemaker he found for me at a yard sale.

Originally, I posted this at 2:11 PM yesterday.  Somehow, I know not how, it posted privately.  This morning, I wondered why there were no comments, until I noticed the "Private" stamp.

I made it there and back again.  More, later.

I was invited today, by an old friend, to add her new Xanga, BCGII, as my new Xanga Friend.  I suspect that it was all part of a nefarious plot involving Go! Smell the Flowers, because it coincides temporally with her having awarded me the somewhat unattractive Flowersmeller badge now visible in the sidebar on this site.

In the spirit of the thing, now that I have the power to do so, I am going to award five other people the badge (with my apologies -- I know that color combinations, etc., are all a matter of taste anyhow -- maybe you'll like it).

Here's the gig:
1.
If you are awarded the flower smeller badge or are a founder of  “GO!
Smell the flowers” then pop the flower smeller badge up at your
blog and award it to 5 others by writing a post with links to the 5
blogs or websites that you choose.

2.
You can award this badge  to a maximum of 5 people per month from now
until eternity as and when you come across more flower smellers. 

3. Link to this post  so that people can find the origin of where the award started and find their way to this community.

4. Proudly display the Flower Smeller award with a link to the post that you wrote announcing your award.

5.
All flower smellers - be prepared to be approached to write a 500 word
account of yourself to feature in the 2009 book - The Flower Smellers
that some of founders will be featuring in - here’s a few examples they prepared earlier, in PDF format for now over at The Flower Smellers page. As
more badges are awarded we’ll start a blogroll of ‘Flower Smellers’
and also include the links in the page, the flower smellers.

Here are My First Five.

Jaynebug

MsCatbert2You

butshebites

BluePaNDoRa

notforprophet