Post 24 of 92

4:31pm.  Tired.   Difficult to work up the energy for anything although I know sitting for awhile, as I'm doing now, will recharge the batteries a bit.

Yesterday went to Pottsville.  Took Mikaela as they have the dog beach.  There is a tidal river which widens into  a large lagoon with sand bars in the middle.  The water is clear, the water is shallow and it is a haven for minnows and small fish.  When we were returning from a walk along the beach we followed the river on a stone peppered sandy path which ran parallel and slightly above the river mouth giving us a pretty good look into the water.

A cormorant came and started swimming over the remains of what I think was a sabellarid reef (worm-built).  We watched as it darted and turned and sprinted through the water.  Have never had a view looking down on a swimming cormorant before.  Then I noticed something else, as it circled and dove  there was a brown smudge of a shadow around which it was turning.  A bait ball!  It was herding the fish into a bait ball and then arrowing in to snatch prey.  I knew whales, sharks and dolphins did this  but I didn't know cormorants did.

Some people were swimming/wading through the shallows toward the bird.  When they got too close it abandoned the bait ball and swam parallel to the shore.  The fish had been trying to find refuge in the reef remains.  Those remains were the only spot in the channel that wasn't bare sand and the cormorant, even while keeping them in tight formation, was always trying to keep them away from the reef.

Amazing stuff.  4:54pm.  (Took so long as I got sidetracked reading about sabellarid worms.  Used to type up scientific papers when working at Harbor Branch for Dr. David Kirtley and another, female, Phd whose name escapes me).

Post 23 of 92

11:33am.  No, I haven't stopped, quite.

Successfully did  yoga with Mikaela in the room.  Thought she'd be all over me, licking my face in downward dog or some such thing but as we'd taken her to the Uki Farmers Market this morning, she was all in.

It's quite remarkable how the energy levels of greyhounds fluctuate.  She can be as hyper and goofy as a puppy, rabbit running up and down the fence or spinning in tongue flapping circles on the rug while the next minute she's be stretched out on the floor asleep.  Greyhounds are couch - or in her case - chair potatoes.

Mikaela is an endearing and irresistible advertisement for greyhound adoption.  A fellow student at the life drawing class will adopt a greyhound next year after she returns from abroad and that is directly due to her meeting and falling in love with Mikaela.  Everywhere she goes she's admired, patted even hugged.  And she absorbs it all with gentle dignity. 

And she smells good.  Mikaela has a subtle perfume on her head that is quite delicious.  Yes, her beds and leashes will eventually get that doggy odour if they aren't washed - but she herself never smells like a dog.

Maybe it's because she's part cat and that's why she's so easy for me to love.  I love her in a way that I've never loved another dog.  Have always been a cat person.  I still am but now I am a dog person too or at least a greyhound person.

11:41am.

Post 22 of 92.

8:41pm.  Have no idea what to write yet trying to write something.  Have been slack about daily two minutes.  So finished my shower, a cup of Bengal tea is steeping, chores are done - have even done some French....

Today, for the first time, am not feeling kind of sick after the 500 calorie regimen.  Perhaps my body is accepting this and reacting accordingly.  The previous two times felt kind of queasy and headachy.  Tonight I feel normal.  Perhaps being a bit more adventurous about what I can eat helps.  I made a salad of fennel bulb, cabbage, carrot and fresh-picked-from-our-garden parsley and silverbeet with a bit of Seasonal salad dressing.   And it was enough.  I'm not slavering after carbohydrates.  After deciding to live the 5:2 diet I decided I would give up the daily with salad two rice crackers slathered with avocado, tomato and Seasonal.  Now I add the tomato and the avocado (which I adore after loathing it as a child - who knew?) directly to the salad so don't feel as though I'm missing out. 

Such a big deal.  Have probably spent 30% of my life thinking of food, diets, my body and how fat it is.  What a waste.  My goal is to take control of this, once and for all, so that eating 'normally' (portion size) becomes normal and requires little or no vigilance.

Everything's possible, right?  8:49pm

Post 21 of 92

9:11pm.  Am not going to even speak to why I have not been writing.

Tonight, for the second night in a row, we are being inundated with termite drones looking for a queen.  They get caught in any web (a great way to find webs in the house that have been overlooked), drown in any cup of anything, tickle their way around hairlines and exposed skin exposed to a reading light - so all lights remain off. 

Yet it's a sad thing despite their fleeting annoyance, for save for a very few lucky few, they all die.  Shed wings carpet the floor in gossamer, rust brown bodies are the food of spiders and ants.  Their search for a mate and a new home is a death sentence.

R asked me what year it was today.  What year do you think it is, I asked in return.  Nineteen ninety...two...?  Two thousand and seventeen I answered, my heart breaking. 

How do people get through this? 

And I was short tempered and impatient today.  I apologized this afternoon for being so.  His slide into dementia is not his fault.  His loss of control is not his fault.  His involuntary abdication of adulthood is not his fault. 

I want to  scream.  IT;S NOT FAIR!  But when has that made any difference?  To the raped Rohingya woman sitting in mud in Bangladesh.  To the homeless girl escaping an abusive stepfather.  To the war razed children of Syria?  To the greyhound being buried alive for not being fast enough.  To the kitten tied to a lure for that greyhound to chase and tear apart.  To the mother of the adult child who is mentally retarded?  The list goes on.  Who am I to complain?  And to whom?


9:18pm

Post 20 of 92

4:06pm.  Realized the other day I have picked up a new habit.  An annoying habit.  I sigh.  I sigh a lot.  I sigh with a small yet audible noise.  At the top of my sigh, I vocalize. 

Perhaps I have taken the maxim 'Breathe' too much to heart.    Never used to be aware of when I was holding my breath or breathing with short shallow inhalations.  Yoga has helped with that.  But I'm sure shallow breathing wasn't supposed to morph into sighing. 

Just googled the word sigh and find the word was at its most popular around 1815-1820, took a big dip in the 1970s and has been on the ascendent until 2010.  Sighing, according to dictionary.com as a 

verb (used without object) is:

1 .to let out one's breath audibly, as from sorrow, weariness, or relief.

2 .to yearn or long; pine.

3. to make a sound suggesting a sigh:  sighing wind.

 

Suspect I sigh from sorrow.  Sorrow is perhaps too strong a word yet things have changed pretty dramatically in the past year, much of it excellent, much of it sad.  And 'things' are accelerating, noticeably accelerating.  So I sigh.  

 

Which is better than crying so perhaps it's not such a bad thing after all.  If I'm a little sad, a little sigh acknowledges that.  Maybe that's a good thing.  

 

Or not.  I don't know.  Sigh.  

 

4:25pm

 

 

 

 

 

Post 19 of 92

3:13pm.  Watched a program last night about abdominal fat and its link with the development of type two diabetes.  Dr. Michael Mosley was on Insight talking about food, fat, diets and diabetes.

I'm not obese but I do have abdominal fat, more so than ever before.  My body has changed quite a bit since menopause although my weight is roughly the same.  I have muscles from yoga, the gym and lots of walking but not much of a waist.  In fact the bulge of my stomach is starting to rival the bulge of my bust. 

Not a good look.

Nor a good feel.  For a long time now I have been less than pleased with myself for my lack of willpower.  Why have I got this gut when I eat well and exercise a lot.  Easy answer.  Too much of a good thing, or in this case, many good things.  Since learning to cook, most of my meals, although vegan, or nearly vegan (honey might sweeten) are tasty, even delicious.  (I did have a spectacular disaster a few nights ago however).  So I have large helpings of creamy cashew kale or vegan caesar salad or spicy coconut peas and rice or whatever else is going.  Beyond that, I snack afterwards; roasted almonds with grapes, a rice cracker with honey, carrots dipped in soy wasabi and mayonnaise sauce.  Even writing this I am ashamed all over again.  What a Guts who deservedly now has a gut.  And almost always feels bloated.

My sister is diabetic.  Abdominal fat puts me at risk too.  What to do?

Two days a week of 500 calories or less.  Easy. 

Wasn't hungry for breakfast, still feeling bloated from the night before.  Lunch a bowl of carrots with soy sauce and wasabi dip.  We drove to Brunswick Heads (with Mikaela, bless her well behaved little self) and had Earl Grey tea at a cafe for smoko.  Tea will be more carrots or celery or both, perhaps with some chopped cabbage.  Plus two coffees with honey.  Still comes to under 500 calories and I'm not hungry. 

More than that a weight has lifted because of finally taking control of myself.  I quit smoking over 6 years ago.  I do have willpower when I chose to use it.  I can do this. 

Hell, I might be able to see my toes again!  3:28pm

Post 18 9f 92

8:57pm....plus two glasses of wine.  

Have noticed a new habit of mine.  No idea how long it has been in the making but it is surely full blown and mature now.  I sigh.  I sigh a lot.  I sigh with sound.  A sort of female, faint keening sound.  Had no idea.  Amazing how one's state of mind is mirrored in physicality.  Had no desire to sigh, did not look to sigh, then found to my chagrin that I do sigh... often and with sound effects.

So this is rather sad.  Sighing is another form of breath, a specialized sort of breath.  Before I exhale with sound effects, I have to inhale and inhale enough to make the sigh with sound.    So what does this say?  Whatever sighs say.   Is it the resignation sigh?  the sad sigh?  the relief sigh?  I think I might know.

What I do know for sure, however, is that sighing frequently as I was, is damn annoying.  And I don't like not being involved and cognizant of my own life - so this sighing business is sort of a wake up call.

So I'll just take a deep breath, which feels wonderful, and sigh off.  9:03pm

Post 15 of 92.

4:37pm.  Ah, this is the one that I brought the page up and never did a thing with it.  It was late, it was dark and I hadn't cooked dinner yet - and after dinner the only thing I do is draw or read.  Thinking is too much effort.

Waiting for the rain to pass to take Mikaela for a walk. 

Thought I should add a photo.  That day we took her to Pottsville beach where dogs are allowed.  Unfortunately we couldn't let her run free but she was so happy to be there she jumped straight up in the air, like all four legs were pogo sticks.  Didn't know greyhounds could do that.

She has adjusted well.  She knows the routine now.  She plays, sleeps, eats and is more and more blase about the cats.  And the cats are getting better with her.  She is so large that she intimidates just by being in the room.  She looms.  She doesn't mean to and if she looks playfully at a cat, with ears pricked and a happy tail - only wanting to play - just saying her name stops her.  She means no harm but the cats need more time.

Richard still hasn't learned her name.  His mind is failing and seems to be failing faste than before.  Perhaps he's just in a bad phase.That's what I'd like to think.  I try not to worry.  Worrying.  A new thing for me. Am trying not to master the art.  No point in dwelling on how things are.  We're still the lucky ones.  I'm still a lucky one.  I remind myself of that when we are walking, when I'm taking a yoga or art class, when looking out the window behind the monitor at a wall of green.  It really is ok.  Have always believed we are never faced with more than we can deal with.  So when things get bad, I'll have the strength and will and energy and patience and LOVE to deal with it.  4:51pm

Post 17 of 92

4:14pm.  Trouble getting and staying online although the gaps in posts is not entirely due to that.

Anyway.  The other day I downloaded Writer software.  Had it before and used it briefly to write something utterly forgettable.  In the past I have written one and a half novels which mercifully have been lost forever to cyberspace.  Wrote them to prove I had the discipline to write which I did.  What I didn't have is the talent.  So now I think, with this challenge of two minutes a day for 92 days, why not write something, something fictitious.  Maybe a short story rather than a novel.  Great idea save for one tiny little problem.  I haven't the slightest idea of what to write about.  Real writers constantly write.  Their life is a book written in their heads, every person, every situation is organic matter for the compost heap from which something grows.   After a lifetime of drawing I see with an artist's eye.  I see colour and form and texture that probably the non-artist never notices.  Mom told me years ago that if I made art I would never see the same.  She was right.

But a writer I ain't.  Still that Writer software with the black background and the green lettering beckons.  Perhaps something will bubble up from the recycle bin.  4:20pm

Post 16 of 92

8:37am.  I am going to stop buying eggs.  As a vegevegan (my own poor term for a vegetarian who would like to be vegan but hasn't given up eggs or honey) I allowed myself to believe that free range chickens fed an organic grain diet lived a good life and I shouldn't be guilty for eating their eggs.

I was wrong.

I was kidding myself.  Like I did with dairy.  Like I did with seafood.  Like I did with chicken livers.  Like I did with red meat (going backwards in the order in which I gave up eating those animals or animal products).  Two days ago the ABC reported a story of a Victorian abattoir which killed their chickens by boiling them alive. 

Someone snuck a camera inside and filmed it and sent it to Animals Australia.  Being the coward I am I couldn't watch.  I ran from the room crying.  Just the thought of it makes me cry.  That abattoir is only one of probably dozens (hundreds?) which operate in Australia.  There is one here in Murwillumbah.  I buy chicken necks and chicken frames and chicken mince for Mikaela from it.

And that's a conundrum.  Because I have a dog and three cats, animals are killed.  Whether it's dry food which bears no resemblance to the original animal, or necks which are heartbreakingly small and fragile and all too reminiscent of their owners, in order to feed my pets, animals suffer. 

But for me.  I don't need eggs.  Only used them in Caesar salad dressing, egg foo yong and the occasional frittata.  I'll learn to use egg substitute.

8:46am

Post 14 of 92

8:52pm.  My ex-husband, who died, I believe, in 2006, would have turned 62 today.  Since we separated and divorced I have always thought Happy Birthday to him on his name day.  Not knowing he had died until this year, I was still wishing him all the best even when he had passed on.  Actually, however, it makes little difference whether he is alive or dead because he is all of a one in the scheme of things...at least he is in how I see 'Reality'.  So today I wished him a happy 62nd birthday. 

We were ultimately unsuited and far too young to have married (as Mom pointed out but which I ignored as I, naturally, knew better).  Nevertheless my ex was a good man, a caring man who had a great love of children, something which I was never going to provide him, and animals, which I would've in abundance.

Happy Birthday Wayne Darling.  We were young but we loved and we did our best.  8:57pm

Post 13 of 92

4:26pm.  It's not that I've forgotten or given up...just haven't made the time, that measly two minutes to set aside, for this.

Sitting here with a cat sitting on me.  Had this long involved post in mind from Ken Wilbur's The Spectrum of Consciousness but would have to remove Matisse, who is feeling a little needy now that Mikaela has come and demands much of my time, so it will have to wait. 

But as per usual, I couldn't remember the name of the book so did a quick web search to find it (without removing Matisse) and then read a piece about the rise and fall of Ken Wilber and Integral Psychology by Mark Manson who found his hero was wearing clay socks after attending a weekend workshop.

So, really there are no gurus.  Many fingers point at the moon and we mistake those pointing fingers for the moon.  The experience, the wisdom, the search is all ours. 

On another cat on my lap free day I will quote the pertinent paragraphs from the book.  This is the book I read before which made me stand up and take notice and I was feeling a little disappointed that I wasn't having the same experience. Those few paragraphs...when you have to reread something several times in an effort, not to understand, but to perhaps breakthrough the logical rational understanding to the gut understanding of what Wilbur was saying, well, that's worth a bit of a blog.

4:48pm

Post 12 of 92

3:28pm.  How many times does one start out with high hopes for a project, a creation, only to find one hasn't the skills to complete the vision.  The first time this happened to me - and what a cruel loss of innocence it was! - was when I was elected to paint the scenery for the third (or was it fifth) grade class play.  Have no idea what the play was about but remember vividly the moment I realized I did not have any idea how to make a sunbeam out of paint and construction paper.  I saw the finished backdrop so clearly in my mind's eye yet there I stood, with the weight of failure bowing my head, scissors and pale cream paper in my hands.

It was, and is, a pivotal moment.  Every time I start a drawing or a painting and SEE, in my mind's eye, this glorious vision made real, I feel again that same dismay and disappointment when I find once again, I haven't the talent or technique to carry it off. 

The good thing is, with experience one knows that the failure is only a projection of my own idea of what I should be -- the inner critic -- that bitch that keeps me from trying things.  I don't listen anymore.  Or at least not much.  So high hopes may not be as high as at the beginning, but hope prevails nonetheless. 

3:40pm

Post 11 of 92

9:08pm.  Nearly forgot.  Easy to do.  Thunderstorms coming.  What a loaded sentence that is.  Thunderstorms.  And I hear a plane passing overhead.  Between storm cells.  What a view they must have, in the night with flashes of light before and behind.

But the greatest view would be of the ... is it sprites?  those flashes of light seen from space of electrical discharges above thunderstorms?  What a view that would be.

And just a note before I close (it's already 9:11).  Mikaela might just be the greatest dog that ever lived.  I am a cat person first and foremost.  A bird person second.  A horse person third and a dog person last of all.  Mikaela might change all that.  This morning, with some cheap dental tools I got from somewhere years ago, I chipped off some plaque from her teeth.  Her teeth are pretty good, especially for a greyhound, but there is a bit of plaque.  Mikaela stood like a statue while I chipped away.  I didn't do much.  Why make a problem where there isn't one?  Even so, her beautiful manners are breathtaking.

As is her love.  She is the most loving dog I have ever met.  Loving without slavishness, if that makes sense.  She doesn't throw herself upside down at your feet and whine.  She isn't needy in that way.  There's a quiet dignity in her affection; a laying of her head in my lap or against my chest.  Giving and receiving.  She affects me more than any dog I have ever known.  And that is in less than two weeks.  9:22pm

Post 10 of 92.

4:27pm.  Actually forgot to write yesterday.  Remembered then forgot.

Further to what I've been thinking/writing about:  This lack of excitement over ideas, the lack of desire to quest after truth.  I'm not sure it's a bad thing.  Another thing I notice with age is the growing appreciation of and being in the now.  Of course, I still spend hours other than in the moment that I'm in yet it is less so than before.  Rather than racing after answers that will forever elude me, I find it is the small things and being in and the noticing of the small things which somehow provide answers of their own.  If I walk, I walk and if I don't waste that walk thinking of things other than the walk, the time is beautifully and, surprisingly, satisfactorily spent.  There is a sort of peace which comes with the mere doing of what I am currently doing.

And maybe that is enough. 4:32pm

Post 9 of 92

5:45pm.  There seems to be a trade off that comes with aging.  Some good, some bad.  There are the familiar good things, like a bit of wisdom that comes with experience.   Not getting het up about the small things, more patience (although that is something I struggle with still), being less inclined to emotional upheaval. 

And the bad things, mostly to do with the mind being willing but the body unable or slow to respond.  Perhaps illness too. 

But one of the things I miss is the excitement I used to experience about ideas.  I don't mean being cynical (although I can be!) or world weary, more of a viewing the idea through a veil, it not having the stark revelatory spark of something perceived the first time. 

I'm rereading a book, The Spectrum of Consciousness by Ken Wilbur, that just had the WOW WOW WOW factor when I first read it.  The ideas put forth were ones I was familiar with through other works so it's not that they were new, but they way they were presented, condensed, explained which captured my imagination the first time.  Now it's as though I just can't get excited about The Meaning Of Life anymore.  It's as though I am so mired in the temporal, the physical, the Realtiy of the day to day, I can no longer remember that I once aspired to the Eternal and continually quested and questioned.  And got excited.

Now it's, bleh.  Like I've given up.  Rather than aspiring for the penthouse suite, I'm just glad to have a bed with clean sheets.

6:01pm

Post 8 of 92

4:42pm.  Don't complain, don't explain.  Or some such.  I am not having such a good day, despite my overwhelming good fortune in health, home and hearth.  Perhaps just being continually tired doesn't help.  The day started well; up before dawn to a sky full of sailing ships and a fresh breeze.  R got up so I suggested a quick walk with Mikaela to enjoy the beauty.  And one remark by R, one myopic petty remark and the day soured.

And that's my fault.  The weakness in allowing others to determine what kind of day I have.  I deserve to not have a good day.  For the day just deteriorated to where we actually argued, something we rarely do - not really argued, just made it apparent we didn't like each other much.  And he can't help what has happened to him and how it affects our relationship - that I get lonely for a relationship that extends beyond the banal.

But I'm complaining and explaining so I'll end it here. 

4:46pm

Post 7 of 92.

4:21.  Little sleep.  Too much caffeine.  High humidity and heat.  Got the shakes.  Got deep circles under my eyes.  Mikaela asked to go outside at 2am.  Not a problem.  I was up anyway.  Then had the flashes  through one's eyelids like xrays followed by rolling thunder.  Got up and unplugged the computer and phone.  Waited for the storm that never came.  It edged closer and closer and then retreated.  Thought my counting was off (counting the seconds between flashes and thunder). 

Never had that cool change which comes after the storm.  A hot and sticky night, what remained of it.  Have the air conditioning on now.  A/C in two of the three pods.  Feel somewhat guilty using it after toughing it out for so many years.  And what I suspected is true, with the A/C on I am reluctant to go out and do chores.  Still have to do the dog poop run. 

And on that s***** note....4:28pm

Day 6 of 92

9:15pm.  All it takes is one mosquito lurking under the desk.  I've been bitten about 3 times and the bites itch like hell.  Was going to let this go today as it was another hugely busy day but thought, Sloth is  which Circle of Dante's Hell?  So between scratching bites and inhaling the pong that is my unwashed body at this late hour, I am getting my 2 minutes in.

In short:  Took Mikaela to the Uki Farmer's Market where everybody made a huge fuss of her, did heaps of laundry and cleaned, took Mikaela to the dog beach at Pottsville - miles and miles of practically empty completely undeveloped white sand beach....only in Australia.  She so wanted to have a Really Big Zoomie on the beach.  She leapt straight up in the air, tried to run and hit the end of the lead.  But of course we can't let her off yet.  One day....  Came home washed the beautiful new used Skoda Yeti (Gus) and washed Mikaela oo.

9:21pm.

Day 5 of 92

2:43pm  Just got the computer back from the computer hospital where it has, happily, been fixed.  Also explains why I have missed blogging for a few days.

But the big news is we have adopted a rescue Greyhound, Mikaela (previously known as April).  In about 16 minutes she will have been with us for 24 hours.  She is a 4 year old white chested but mostly black girl who raced 6 times, came third once, and didn't like to chase.  Thankfully as she is going pretty well with the cats.  She has shown interest in playing with them but they aren't confident with her yet.

She is a dream girl;  affectionate, intelligent, housebroken, polite, walks well on the lead and for having had her entire life disrupted twice in 3 months, handling it quite well.  We took her to M'bah, did some errands...she wasn't quite sure about the trip.  Kept going to South Tweed and Pet Barn to buy her another bed.  By that time she was sad, thinking perhaps life was going to throw her another curve ball.

When we got home and opened the car door, her tail was whipping from side to side and she'd grown about half a foot. 

One of the most impressive things about her is how quickly she learns.  We have a large easy chair in the bedroom that I covered with a throw.  It was to be her bed.  She thought our bed could be her bed too.  I pushed her off once, took her around to the chair once, put her on it and told her to stay.  She didn't but when the lights went out she jumped into the chair and spent the night there.

Good Dog!

2:50pm

Day 4 of 92

3:18.  So much easier not to have to come up with a title. 

The car seat dog cover arrived today.  Installed it and thought, getting a dog will be somewhat like having a baby (not that I'D know!), our lives will never be the same.  We've bought a car to accommodate The Dog.  We've yet to ditch the truck and buy something which will have room for the dog and hay that won't be exposed to rain.  I'm barracking for a VW Caddy - a small delivery van with commodious storage for horse feed and dog.  Not there yet in convincing R.  Think he needs a few more weeks of wrapping tarps around horse feed and removing same, leaden and awkward with rain - or, better yet, the arrival of the greyhound who watches us with sad brown eyes while we drive off to feed the horses. 

Sat on the deck the other night watching the rain and mist transform the rainforest into something mysterious and otherworldly.  Even the sound of the rain, like a delicate chorus of whispers, made it more exotic and foreign feeling.  I didn't pinch myself.  I just took another sip of wine and smiled.

3:27pm

Day 3 of 92

4:21pm.  Typed the title and wondered, will I, can I keep this up?

Took the day off today.  R went to the Men's Shed.  I was supposed to go to Life Drawing but had a pitiful night, 3rd in a row, and just didn't have the energy.  Drawing like that, 3 hours of total concentration, takes a lot of energy.  At least from me.  Come home wrung out.  Sometimes satisfied and wrung out, sometimes disappointed and wrung out.

Worked on the fussy face of the nude.  Lifted the details with blue tac and have suggested where before I drew.  Works much better.  It fits in with the rest of the picture now. 

Funny to be working on nudes.  I do have another drawing, coloured pencil, which is more my usual stuff - starting out one way, a little surreal with a bird and an arm, but if the past is any indication, what I have on the paper now will be vastly different by the time it's finished. 

Spending these 4 hours on my own is nourishing.  Don't have to be doing anything.  In fact I try and not do anything constructive like too much housework, or berate myself if I don't work on a drawing or do yoga.  If all I do is read or watch mindless tv, somehow that's enough to recharge something in me that needs recharging.  4:27pm.

Day 2 of 92

3:49pm.  Spent the last couple of hours working on a nude study begun in life drawing class.  As usual with me, some of the drawing I quite like while other parts, mainly the head, which has become too busy and fussy, I heartily dislike.  Bah!

Had a call from Lisa of Friends of the Hound (FOTH).  She will be making an appointment to come and assess us and our home to see if we are a good prospect to adopt a greyhound.  Lester finished the dog run which includes access to the Aframe and it looks a treat.  Would've been nice to fence the entire yard but way too much money.

Had a lucid dream last night, probably the first  I've had in 30 years.  A lucid dream which I made into a flying dream...carrying a small grey and white kitten.  Even though I was flying, I couldn't gain much height.  Wonder what that says.  I sailed over hedgerows and fields but flying up into the stratosphere was beyond me.  I realized that in the dream but couldn't seem to do anything about it. 

The dream became lucid while dreaming a very complicated dream of lots of people coming over and sitting in my (strange to me) living room.  I didn't have any food for them but offered to feed their dogs.  Everyone was sullenly crowded together on the furniture.  What made it worse was I hadn't invited them so if they didn't want to be there that was their problem.  Not sure at what point I realized that I was dreaming and decided to ditch the stuffy living room to go fly over field and paddock. 

And it's 3:56.

Right I'm inspired.  Read an article about devoting two minutes to something you felt you didn't have time for.  Just two minutes.  About the time it takes to brush one's teeth.  And giving that daily two minutes for 92 days.  It takes about 10,000 repetitions to form a new habit but heck, 92 days is a good start.

If more than 2 minutes is used, all the better but two minutes minimum.

So, I've filled in an adoption form for a greyhound but haven't sent it yet as I want R to read it first.  R has begun physiotherapy specifically designed for people with Parkinsons and it is already making a difference.  We bought a new used Skoda Yeti (christened after a PG Wodehouse character, the newt loving Augustus Fink Nottle) and gave Jeeves, my darling loyal little Yaris, to a friend and her daughter.

And there's my 2 minutes. 

Just read something horrendous in a piece entitled 13 Things You Must Give Up to Live the Life You Want by Zdravko Cvijetic on Uplift (http://upliftconnect.com):

On your last day on earth, the person you became will meet the person you could have become. — Anonymous

If that doesn't light a fire under my backside....

Have been at odds with myself for a while.  The quote above plus a post from a friend (thanks KS) have inspired  me to write here.  I've been silent too long.

Partly because of not wanting to dwell and therefore make more important the negative things that I live with (and to not inflict those things on others) but also just not making the TIME to write. 

I make busy.  I make work.  And there's always work; cooking, cleaning, washing, blah blah blah.  So I can feel good about myself by keeping up the appearance of usefulness, of keeping up my end of things, of earning my right to be here.  Yet, by ignoring the things which make me ME, the things which I and I alone can create, I nullify the gift of my life.  I become just one of the herd; without individuality, without joy, without spark. 

And now, more than ever, I need the gifts I was born with because other aspects of my life which are out of my control, assume and consume more time and energy than before.  To keep sane, I HAVE to cherish and use the truest part of me. 

And there's another bit, a harder bit, the bit about being honest.  Other people seem to have their act together.  I feel like I'm fraying at the seams and that my 'act' is held together by force of will alone.  Heard a phrase from a song by Pink (and I don't follow modern music so have no idea what the name of the song was) where she said I don't want to control, I want to let go.

Well, yeah.

Is that the secret?  To let go so that I sink into the person I might become rather than spinning my wheels maintaining the illusion of this person I suppose myself to be?  It's hard work, dishonesty.  Oh, but the courage required to let go....

The Faint

Ten days ago R and I were having lunch at our local on the river.  R was yawning, as he often does, and I urged him to walk around, myabe get us a glass of water which he did.  Lunch came, we ate, all seemed well.  Then suddenly Richard slumped forward in his chair. 

I propped him up and unlike a 'real' faint, he stayed upright.  Also unlike a real faint, his eyes were open, his head was up, his posture 'normal'.  But he wasn't there.  He didn't react to touch, to his name being called, he barely reacted to his eyes being touched.  The blink was slow and delayed.

The scariest thing was the yawning.  Often when attending the euthanizing of dogs they have agonal breathing where the jaw opens wide and then closes again.  It is unconscious and I don't think they are breathing, it is just the last gasp of a life leaving.  Richard was breathing but he was also doing this frequent  very wide open mouth yawning.  He was also incontinent which he has never been before during his two previous faints.

It took him a long time to come around, far longer than the previous faints.  This episode resembled a seizure more than a faint.  

We went to two hospitals, the local and the Tweed.  Bloods were done twice, he had a CT scan as well as urinalysis and being hooked up to monitors the entire 8 hours we were there.  Again, everything was fine.  No anomalies at all.

Two days later (we were both pretty blah the next day) he was whippersnipping.

Last night I had a dream.  We were walking down a town street.  An auction of a deceased elderly woman's possessions was just about to start.  Her things were displayed along the sidewalk (although the sidewalk more resembled a tunnel).  I saw a beautiful basket with a medallion design on one end, a deep blue brocade coat and a carved wooden sculpture of three lions heads.

I looked over at Richard and he had that look in his eye, the look like he was about to faint.  I told him to get up and walk, to pull himself together.  He did get up and half fell onto the laps of the people sitting opposite who were waiting for the auction to begin.

We managed to stumble down the street, me half supporting him while I exhorted him to hold on, to stay with me.  The last part of the dream I remember is of him propped up on the bank below a bridge.

I realize a part of me is frightened of the unknown.  I suspect the major stroke of a friend's mother recently has fueled this fear.  When we were at the restaurant I thought he'd had a stroke, that either I'd lost him completely or our lives would change forever from the consequences. 

Nevertheless the dream has stayed with me.  Today, for the first time in months, I have a headache I cannot shake.  It's only fear.  Tomorrow will be better.  In the meantime, all todays are precious precisely because we do not know what tomorrow brings.

Squeezing in a few minutes of scratching an itch (writing) before going for a walk.  The weather has been hot and intolerably humid - until today when it's just tolerably humid and not too hot.  When it is as hot as it's been my brain melts.  Even reading is too much of an effort.  End up watching, mindlessly, television, with the fan  on full blowing right in my face.

Not that I should complain.  I walk around my new life here in the Tweed breathing gratitude. Right now, as I write, it is overcast.  Windless.  I look out a large window over the bitumen turn circle which is edged with the two large aviaries (covered in reflective paper and draped inside with sheets to deflect the heat).  Beyond them is a wall of green bisected by a white trunked tree.  The green wall is a mosaic of greens; pale new growth green, green tinged with yellow, vivid kelly green, deep forest green, soft greens, hard greens, greens webbed with vines and filigreed with pale fingers of dead twigs.  Flashes of pale blue mark the trajectory of the fastest butterflies I have ever seen.  They have pointed, almost triangular wings and describing their colour as pale blue isn't accurate.  The blue almost glows.  But they move so fast and with so many jerks and feints they are  impossible to describe.

When we walk, Richard comes part of the way and then turns for home.  For awhile I am alone.  On the way up the hill I don't think about much except getting to the top.  On the way home I realize, every day as if it's the first day, how quiet it is.  I live in a rainforest suburb and cars drive past, lawnmowers growl, jets pass overhead, but there are long moments, even minutes when I hear nothing but the insects and the birds.  Does the thickness of the bush absorb sound?  My footsteps sound loud on the bitumen.  My breath echoes off the underside of my hat.  The silence serves to bring all extraneous thought to an end.  It presses in until I am finally in the moment; in the green, under the blue.  It is then I take a deeper breath, an appreciative breath. 

And now it's time to walk!  

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