It is impossible to avoid finding pleasure in a day. Sometime I have to look for it, on occasion it is necessary to wrestle it out of the mess that a day can be. So, I should be writing here more often.
I do not because I am weak and the end of the day finds me too exhausted from all of the things that are not pleasurable. Still, I should make the effort.
Yesterday found me without any scheduled clients. In itself, it is a cause for unbounded joy, because it means that I have an entire day to catch up on all of the things that never seem to get finished in a normal day. So, yeah, that was really great. I did have two short, impromptu meetings with other staff, but I managed to bring everything up to speed, including the forum site that I created for clients.
The two previous weeks were full of clients, and they were all, with a single exception, my most favorite type. They come in, do the work and pull together all of the adjunct work they need to do.
Ah, my exception. He is the man who rarely shows up, often sleeps/dozes, and is very resistant to doing his own work. We have established that he does not have any reading or behavioral deficits, and my best guess is that he really does not embrace forward movement in his life right now. When he shows up, we work; when he stays home, I am able to take walk-ins and do more catch-up stuff. My supervisor believes that I should have fired him as a client long ago, but, truth be told, I kind of look forward to what he will do next. He is also a bit dramatic, and wails that if he forgets his appointments that I will be mad at him. Frankly, I find him amusing, but if that is what he needs to feel about it, then that is just fine. He missed his appointment this week. I am looking forward to the next installment.
What else. I am still infusing hydration liquids into a cat with kidney failure. She is doing well and is so sweet about allowing me to poke her with a huge needle and then fill the space above her shoulders with cooler than body temperature liquid. She tolerates the entire procedure and then takes a step or two away from me, plops down and sits and rests whilst I put all of the equipment away. Her owner is calming down a bit and the two of them are often the sweetest part of my week.
I received a call this morning from the social service agency for which I sometimes volunteer. One of my old clients has been diagnosed with cancer and I am taking her to an out of town appointment tomorrow. I think that I am also going to be designated as her person qualified to accompany her and take notes during her doctor visits. I am saddened by her illness, but thrilled to be involved with her again. If she is strong enough, I will offer to take her to lunch before returning her to her home.
The kitties are fine, although C seems to be having trouble with his colon again and is vomiting a fair amount. Sad for the process of his health, but also because it means that he cannot sleep in my room whenever he likes. I have no desire to clean up the effluence from either end of that wonderful guy, so he must stay on the wrong side of that door. It means that both cats cannot go there, and that makes for sadness for all of us.
I am trying to stay upbeat here, but I had an issue with my good, as in decent vision, eye last week. It has not resolved and there is not explanation of the cause or how to fix or prevent the bastardly issue. So, I am concentrating on enjoying the vision that I have now and not stressing about something which is unknown and might not fully manifest anyway.
I am weary of my weight, as in huge body, and am trying to move in the direction of doing something about it. I have good intentions, really and truly I do. Moving from intention, desire and need is difficult for me. It is as though I do not feel deserving of a healthy life. It is like I deserve to have a sad body to match my sad life. I cannot control or really even affect the life part, but I could and can do something about my physical aspect. Why is this so hard and why does it make me weep. I have to move beyond this barrier. If I do not, I will die long before I want or need.
Showing posts with label grattitude. Show all posts
Showing posts with label grattitude. Show all posts
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Friday, December 31, 2010
Simple living really is not always all that simple
At least in the big picture aspect. Doing something more simply, making, baking, taking care of a creature that will be used for food, gardening and preserving. All noble and, given the state of the world, most likely to be useful and necessary skills at some point.
Consider the garden. If you are able-bodied, preparing and nurturing a food garden, harvesting and preserving of stuff, well, all of that is much easier than when you are less able-bodied. When walking is difficult, bending a caution and kneeling or squatting impossible, gardening can be the most miserable and unproductive thing you do all day. Putting in raised beds, finding and purchasing tools and equipment is blazingly expensive. Locating such assists second-hand is impossible. Well, maybe not impossible, but I am more likely to have the money faerie drop a whole blankety-blank-load of cash on me than I am to find an ergonomic hoe that I can afford. However, I did find a portable bench that is weatherproof, but I am not getting it until I solve the issues here regarding permissions to put in a garden space, an entirely separate issue.
Preserving your harvest, or foods that you have located in a locavore kind of way, is wonderful, but only if you are successful at it. One failed batch can completely wipe out any potential savings offered by the successful batches. Raising food animals is even more fraught with issues.
So, you go along, making economies where possible, giving up some favorite things, making do and getting by. Small things matter, like making soap, cooking from scratch and baking. Even the failures here can often be reclaimed in some way or composted.
Hand and home crafts are probably the best. Making things for self and others, especially when I am re-purposing materials, is satisfying at a nearly cellular level.
Developing these skills, learning them, experimenting with what aligns with my abilities, practicing and producing, has come to be more important to me now than when I dabbled in all of this as a young, energetic and hopeful wife.
The list of things that can be done to rely less on what other people produce for me to buy is endless. It is complicated by the responsibilities that have taken on and over in my modern life. Every single day brings choices that I never would have imagined facing.
Holding dear, or ideal, the days when all of these tasks and activities were commonplace is a pointless exercise. More intellectually interesting than useful. I was reading a bit from a book sent to me by a dear friend (one of those intimate on-line relationships). It described how women created fabric, from raising and tending the sheep, to shearing and preparing the wool for spinning and weaving. The final step was called, maybe still is, waulking. It was a difficult and long process and the women had ritualized it, creating a ceremonial enrobing for what they needed to do. There were songs and chants during the waulking, and the end found them standing the roll of woven tweed on end, turning it in relation to the movement of the sun and asking blessings for whomever wore the garments made from it.
There is no place in my modern life where that is possible. The old days or olden times seem idyllic to me sometimes. No traffic, no bills to pay, no deadlines defined by someone else, all of it. But, to live in those times meant being subject to the seasons, the weather, pests and predators, not all of them non-human. It meant long days of back-breaking work and hoping that what you did, made, provided, would be enough to make it through to the next harvest, the next hunting trip, the next acquiring and creating of what was needed.
The best for which I can hope are small gatherings of my family and friends where we shower love and support on one another. Well, we do that to the best of our abilities and inclinations, we are, after all, only humans. Or the rituals of baby showers and wedding showers and funerals.
Beginnings and, not death, but the passage from the now to a new beginning. That endless cycle of what it means to be human. And, all of the in-between that makes a life. Just doing the best I can, when I can and how I can, and releasing my attachment and responsibility for the things that I cannot.
None of it, not one moment, is all that simple. Not scheduling and timing the baking and cooking and preserving. Not the soap making or sewing or mending. Not all of the trying to protect the few garden foods that I have. Not even when I am sitting in the yard, knitting, watching the sky, luxuriating in the breezes from the little pond and enjoying the birds, bunnies and other small creatures that wander by, although those crystalline moments are probably the closest.
Maybe it is all about the process, the sacrificing time for the pleasure of doing and providing for myself. Just trying to get it right, or close, or comfortable, or something.
Consider the garden. If you are able-bodied, preparing and nurturing a food garden, harvesting and preserving of stuff, well, all of that is much easier than when you are less able-bodied. When walking is difficult, bending a caution and kneeling or squatting impossible, gardening can be the most miserable and unproductive thing you do all day. Putting in raised beds, finding and purchasing tools and equipment is blazingly expensive. Locating such assists second-hand is impossible. Well, maybe not impossible, but I am more likely to have the money faerie drop a whole blankety-blank-load of cash on me than I am to find an ergonomic hoe that I can afford. However, I did find a portable bench that is weatherproof, but I am not getting it until I solve the issues here regarding permissions to put in a garden space, an entirely separate issue.
Preserving your harvest, or foods that you have located in a locavore kind of way, is wonderful, but only if you are successful at it. One failed batch can completely wipe out any potential savings offered by the successful batches. Raising food animals is even more fraught with issues.
So, you go along, making economies where possible, giving up some favorite things, making do and getting by. Small things matter, like making soap, cooking from scratch and baking. Even the failures here can often be reclaimed in some way or composted.
Hand and home crafts are probably the best. Making things for self and others, especially when I am re-purposing materials, is satisfying at a nearly cellular level.
Developing these skills, learning them, experimenting with what aligns with my abilities, practicing and producing, has come to be more important to me now than when I dabbled in all of this as a young, energetic and hopeful wife.
The list of things that can be done to rely less on what other people produce for me to buy is endless. It is complicated by the responsibilities that have taken on and over in my modern life. Every single day brings choices that I never would have imagined facing.
Holding dear, or ideal, the days when all of these tasks and activities were commonplace is a pointless exercise. More intellectually interesting than useful. I was reading a bit from a book sent to me by a dear friend (one of those intimate on-line relationships). It described how women created fabric, from raising and tending the sheep, to shearing and preparing the wool for spinning and weaving. The final step was called, maybe still is, waulking. It was a difficult and long process and the women had ritualized it, creating a ceremonial enrobing for what they needed to do. There were songs and chants during the waulking, and the end found them standing the roll of woven tweed on end, turning it in relation to the movement of the sun and asking blessings for whomever wore the garments made from it.
There is no place in my modern life where that is possible. The old days or olden times seem idyllic to me sometimes. No traffic, no bills to pay, no deadlines defined by someone else, all of it. But, to live in those times meant being subject to the seasons, the weather, pests and predators, not all of them non-human. It meant long days of back-breaking work and hoping that what you did, made, provided, would be enough to make it through to the next harvest, the next hunting trip, the next acquiring and creating of what was needed.
The best for which I can hope are small gatherings of my family and friends where we shower love and support on one another. Well, we do that to the best of our abilities and inclinations, we are, after all, only humans. Or the rituals of baby showers and wedding showers and funerals.
Beginnings and, not death, but the passage from the now to a new beginning. That endless cycle of what it means to be human. And, all of the in-between that makes a life. Just doing the best I can, when I can and how I can, and releasing my attachment and responsibility for the things that I cannot.
None of it, not one moment, is all that simple. Not scheduling and timing the baking and cooking and preserving. Not the soap making or sewing or mending. Not all of the trying to protect the few garden foods that I have. Not even when I am sitting in the yard, knitting, watching the sky, luxuriating in the breezes from the little pond and enjoying the birds, bunnies and other small creatures that wander by, although those crystalline moments are probably the closest.
Maybe it is all about the process, the sacrificing time for the pleasure of doing and providing for myself. Just trying to get it right, or close, or comfortable, or something.
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