After working our butts off yesterday, including sending off the taxes (yes, we used Turbo Tax this year and probably will next year, too, now that we have rediscovered our capacities), today was a "play day." We went to Church in the a.m. (I like to go on the third thursday of the month, because it is mostly music, in high style, with trumpets and bell ringers, piana, organ and sometimes string instruments) and thus I get filled up with "big Methodist music."
After that, we went to RinCon Market and leisurely read parts of the NY Times while savoring eggs, turkey sausage and a decadent cinammon role. Another musical treat was a cellist playing Vivaldi so we really had a lovely morning.
One of my colleagues from a previous consulting job was going to be at the 7th Ave. Studios for Open Studio weekend (www.ercregistry.com/sfairfieldsculptor). I have been wanting to go to this event for the past three years, and so I made it today. http://tucsonopenstudios.com/artists.php
While I was there, I reconnected with an artist from the 1970s who is a weaver, Crane Day (www.craneday.com). I bought a pancho from him in 1976 that I just recently wore in Philly when we went there for my niece's bat mitzvah. The pancho got many raves while we walked Philly's chilly streets.
I met a new artist, K. Loren Dawn (kloren@oceanplum.com)who does collages that struck me as whimsical as well as affordable. She has a genre called "nomadic artist" where she puts watercolors and small collages into a plastic stationery envelope that can be easily tacked onto a wall. I bought one of those and put aside a larger one with glass shards and pastel brush strokes that seemed to strike my fancy today, entitled "chips fall as they may". Even with just modest support, it's good to be a "patron of the arts."
We ended the afternoon on with a trip to the newly opened Costco on the southside of Tucson. We needed lamb chops for a small Seder dinner tomorrow and they have a good meat selection but it's almost not worth it to me to have to snake my way through the mountains of retail goods that fill the floors. I try to make the best of it by watching young families herding through the aisles with babies in carrier packs and toddlers in the basket seats. But the experience always leaves me feeling depleted and a bit ragged in the brain.
So it was good to get home, review all of the artist's cards I picked up from their studios and tack up my small nomadic art collage on my wall to remind me of the artistic spirits swathed in their warehouse studios on 7th Avenue.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Sunday, April 10, 2011
a year ago, an idiosyncracy of life and more to come
It was a year ago today that I walked back from the neighborhood mailboxes with a note from my radiologist saying the my follow-up mammo showed "no evidence of cancer." I remember bounding over the rocks in my front yard and with mindful determination coming into the house to "take charge" of my day. I was going to repot plants, by golly, and get on with my life after having in hang in suspension for the past ten days.
I came out to the patio and glanced up as Mark was taking a couple of steps on the lower rung of the expandable ladder, on his way up to the roof to prune the euchalyptus branches. I went to the potting table and heard Mark holler: "Look out!". I looked up and caught a glimpse of him jumping off the ladder as it tumbled like slivers of frozen water toward the potting table and then onto me. I crossed my arms over my chest as I fell downward, bracing my back and head against a fall to the concrete. I felt a tug on my leg as I curled backward.
In the next few moments, Mark rushed to my side, peeling away the layers of broken pottery, cracked table and ladder. As he pulled away the ladder, I held up my leg and saw my foot looking foolish as it turned ninety degrees sideways. "This is bad," Mark said, and I just looked at the foot with splayed toes, amazed at the incongruity. My shoulder ached, my neck ached as I held myself in semi-prone position, but I felt nothing in my foot or ankle.
Mark called 911 and checked my eyes and breathing as they suggested. Then I began to feel some anxiety. A trip to the Emergency Room and then what? This was my Saturday, and what about tomorrow?
Thus starts an idiosyncracy of life when moments of change cascade into our lives whether we are ready for them or not.
Twelve months later, I have slivers of scars hiding screws and a plate in my ankle. I have a new physical therapy support system to help me "strengthen my core" as well as my ankle, calf, and thigh. I go regularly for a massage which tended my back muscles through the weeks of crutches, walker and black boot. I have a new work community because of a younger colleague who was one of three non-family members to drive me where I needed to go. I walk with a different stride--shorter and more measured, slowed a bit by necessity and practice. I have this blog and over 300 days of writing entries.
Yesterday,the eve of this "anniversary", I shared hysterical laughter with Mark over the ridiculous occurrences of the day: a car battery that needed replaced, signaled by a car clock that kept resetting (think "Groundhog Day" for a car); a missed birthday party of a friend because I received a phone text that said "Hi, Anita, we are canceling our party due to weather" and found out later, it was a "wrong number" text by someone who also had a friend with my name, also had a birthday party they were cancelling due to the freakish winter storm which dropped snow on rose petals all over the Tucson valley; a series of 11th hour emails from our accountant (or, we suspect, a member of his staff), over necessary documents to complete our taxes and the tax filing of my 92 year old dad who had given me the tax envelope--which I didn't check, assuming, mistakenly, that my 92 year old father was functioning as the 91 year old he was last year--without the documents he thought he had put in there and needing pages of medical, dental and prescription costs info that I had to get from over the Internet (this required one hour's worth of phone calls to Secure Horizons and another 30 mins, including on-line "chatting" with Walgreens, and a new email address in order to get this info in a timely manner) which still resulted, Mark and I are guessing, in our accountant and/or his staff possibly "firing" us as customers because we expressed frustration at getting the request for this info one week before the filing deadline!!!!
How absurd life continues to be: so we laughed and laughed and drank white wine that glistened in our glasses half full.
If you have read all of this post--have a glass of wine on us and celebrate the idiosyncracies of life and laugh until you think you cannot stop laughing. It's the only way, sometimes, to get ready to go to bed and live another day.
I came out to the patio and glanced up as Mark was taking a couple of steps on the lower rung of the expandable ladder, on his way up to the roof to prune the euchalyptus branches. I went to the potting table and heard Mark holler: "Look out!". I looked up and caught a glimpse of him jumping off the ladder as it tumbled like slivers of frozen water toward the potting table and then onto me. I crossed my arms over my chest as I fell downward, bracing my back and head against a fall to the concrete. I felt a tug on my leg as I curled backward.
In the next few moments, Mark rushed to my side, peeling away the layers of broken pottery, cracked table and ladder. As he pulled away the ladder, I held up my leg and saw my foot looking foolish as it turned ninety degrees sideways. "This is bad," Mark said, and I just looked at the foot with splayed toes, amazed at the incongruity. My shoulder ached, my neck ached as I held myself in semi-prone position, but I felt nothing in my foot or ankle.
Mark called 911 and checked my eyes and breathing as they suggested. Then I began to feel some anxiety. A trip to the Emergency Room and then what? This was my Saturday, and what about tomorrow?
Thus starts an idiosyncracy of life when moments of change cascade into our lives whether we are ready for them or not.
Twelve months later, I have slivers of scars hiding screws and a plate in my ankle. I have a new physical therapy support system to help me "strengthen my core" as well as my ankle, calf, and thigh. I go regularly for a massage which tended my back muscles through the weeks of crutches, walker and black boot. I have a new work community because of a younger colleague who was one of three non-family members to drive me where I needed to go. I walk with a different stride--shorter and more measured, slowed a bit by necessity and practice. I have this blog and over 300 days of writing entries.
Yesterday,the eve of this "anniversary", I shared hysterical laughter with Mark over the ridiculous occurrences of the day: a car battery that needed replaced, signaled by a car clock that kept resetting (think "Groundhog Day" for a car); a missed birthday party of a friend because I received a phone text that said "Hi, Anita, we are canceling our party due to weather" and found out later, it was a "wrong number" text by someone who also had a friend with my name, also had a birthday party they were cancelling due to the freakish winter storm which dropped snow on rose petals all over the Tucson valley; a series of 11th hour emails from our accountant (or, we suspect, a member of his staff), over necessary documents to complete our taxes and the tax filing of my 92 year old dad who had given me the tax envelope--which I didn't check, assuming, mistakenly, that my 92 year old father was functioning as the 91 year old he was last year--without the documents he thought he had put in there and needing pages of medical, dental and prescription costs info that I had to get from over the Internet (this required one hour's worth of phone calls to Secure Horizons and another 30 mins, including on-line "chatting" with Walgreens, and a new email address in order to get this info in a timely manner) which still resulted, Mark and I are guessing, in our accountant and/or his staff possibly "firing" us as customers because we expressed frustration at getting the request for this info one week before the filing deadline!!!!
How absurd life continues to be: so we laughed and laughed and drank white wine that glistened in our glasses half full.
If you have read all of this post--have a glass of wine on us and celebrate the idiosyncracies of life and laugh until you think you cannot stop laughing. It's the only way, sometimes, to get ready to go to bed and live another day.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
storm a-comin'
As I sit at my window, I am looking westward and I see a storm a-comin'. The rose bush leaves are swaying back and forth, skies are greying and birds are trilling tunes for rain.
I remember my Grandad Dice, on cool Spring mornings, going out from the farmhouse, past the gooseberry bushes, through the fenced yard for chickens and the lonely pony who boarded on their farm--into the garden to look at the black soil mounds and gaze at the sky. "I feel a storm a-comin'", he would say, rubbing his right hip which ached with the barometer dropping. He loved those storms because they brought rains for the fields and, as a farmer, without rain, life isn't worth much.
I have the same ache in my right hip which I tried to loosen up in my 8 a.m. swim today. We need the rain so badly that I hope it comes today and sends fragrance of the newly-yellowed flowers on creyosote into the air. No other smell compares than than of rain in the desert.
I remember my Grandad Dice, on cool Spring mornings, going out from the farmhouse, past the gooseberry bushes, through the fenced yard for chickens and the lonely pony who boarded on their farm--into the garden to look at the black soil mounds and gaze at the sky. "I feel a storm a-comin'", he would say, rubbing his right hip which ached with the barometer dropping. He loved those storms because they brought rains for the fields and, as a farmer, without rain, life isn't worth much.
I have the same ache in my right hip which I tried to loosen up in my 8 a.m. swim today. We need the rain so badly that I hope it comes today and sends fragrance of the newly-yellowed flowers on creyosote into the air. No other smell compares than than of rain in the desert.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
poetic asides
I am sharing this link because I am trying to do the April Poetry Month's poem-a-day challenge and other readers might want to do it too. http://blog.writersdigest.com/poeticasides/
For now, I am writing the poems into my tan journal booklet I keep next to the computer but I may post a few of the best either on my blog, my website and/or the Poetry Asides blog. Last fall I submitted quite a few to the Poetry Asides chapbook but I have been disappointed by the lack of followup to that effort, even though I contacted the site several times. Still, the prompts get me to write and it's worth the effort to harvest a few poems.
My entry today will be brief because breakfast beckons and it may get warm today while chores still have to be done. Yesterday, I went full out and my calf stiffened by the evening so I pushed it too much.
Before I sign off, I want to recommend a lovely, poem-like movie we watched last nite: Ondine, 2009, starrting Colin Farrell. The critics liked it but it didn't do well at the box office. Once you can translate the heavy Irish dialects (it took me the first five minutes or so), the movie flows like the Irish seas majestically photographed in many of the scenes. The young actress who plays his daughter is a delight and the young woman he "captures" in his fishing net kept my husband's usual evening dozing to zero as he propped himself up to stay abreast of the story. So find it through Netflex or your local classic movie rental space--it's worth the effort to find and view.
For now, I am writing the poems into my tan journal booklet I keep next to the computer but I may post a few of the best either on my blog, my website and/or the Poetry Asides blog. Last fall I submitted quite a few to the Poetry Asides chapbook but I have been disappointed by the lack of followup to that effort, even though I contacted the site several times. Still, the prompts get me to write and it's worth the effort to harvest a few poems.
My entry today will be brief because breakfast beckons and it may get warm today while chores still have to be done. Yesterday, I went full out and my calf stiffened by the evening so I pushed it too much.
Before I sign off, I want to recommend a lovely, poem-like movie we watched last nite: Ondine, 2009, starrting Colin Farrell. The critics liked it but it didn't do well at the box office. Once you can translate the heavy Irish dialects (it took me the first five minutes or so), the movie flows like the Irish seas majestically photographed in many of the scenes. The young actress who plays his daughter is a delight and the young woman he "captures" in his fishing net kept my husband's usual evening dozing to zero as he propped himself up to stay abreast of the story. So find it through Netflex or your local classic movie rental space--it's worth the effort to find and view.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
infinite variety
I haven't forgotten my quilting journey.
Take a look at this site: http://folkartmuseum.org/infinitevariety
It's an exhibit in NY from a woman who collected over 650 quilts all in red and white!
I have a couple of local quilting contacts on my list to talk with in the weeks ahead and I will continue to post photos from the Oro Valley show three weeks ago.
Take a look at this site: http://folkartmuseum.org/infinitevariety
It's an exhibit in NY from a woman who collected over 650 quilts all in red and white!
I have a couple of local quilting contacts on my list to talk with in the weeks ahead and I will continue to post photos from the Oro Valley show three weeks ago.
Muddled Mind
I almost signed off the computer today without doing my blog entry. Instead I was burrowing through work chores and trying to get focused for a week of meetings, medical appointments, a friend's April visit and, I hope, some life to be lived. Thus, my mind is a bit muddled and my heart is a bit heavy with worry and grief.
The chaotic world is too much with us. So, to create my own world, I put myself in a church pew today and listened to Methodist "big" music, I call it. My church pulls in about twenty musicians from the Tucson Orchestra and adds the choir and organ every third Sunday. Today we heard Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Lizst. Wonderful sounds filled the arches and danced along the stained glass windows. Later, Mark and I walked along Mountain Ave. which added art work of poetry along the widened roadway. Ophelia Zepeda's poems were carved into granite boulders, in both English and her native Papago (Tohono O'odham) language. I smiled and cried as I read them aloud. {link for her poetry is http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/ofelia-zepeda )
My son tells me not to "stress out" so much. But it's my nature to take things in deeply and, so sometimes, I feel overwhelmed. How do you try to keep your cup from overflowing or keep your feet on solid ground? Yet, sometimes, to have life gushing out like a waterfall or to fly in the clouds can also be a good part of living. Where I get into trouble is when I lose the sounds of hope and laughter. I really have to dig deep into myself sometimes to open up to those sounds. Cacaphony from the news or words of conversations drowns out the light music.
This week was Robert Frost's birthday (3/26) and I learned that he, one of my favorite poets, struggled with depression most of his life. I wouldn't have thought so from his poems which speak to me very clearly. "I want to go out as a swinger of birches..." is a line that called me to it in the 1970's and still does. We have no birch trees in Tucson, but to swing out on a Cottonwood, or, higher up in the mountains, to swing out on an Aspen would be a good way to let go.
But not yet. My counselor this week wants me to come up with some ideas of what I want my life to be in the next ten years. If today is an example, it would be with more music and more poetry.
What "more" do you want in your next ten years?
The chaotic world is too much with us. So, to create my own world, I put myself in a church pew today and listened to Methodist "big" music, I call it. My church pulls in about twenty musicians from the Tucson Orchestra and adds the choir and organ every third Sunday. Today we heard Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Lizst. Wonderful sounds filled the arches and danced along the stained glass windows. Later, Mark and I walked along Mountain Ave. which added art work of poetry along the widened roadway. Ophelia Zepeda's poems were carved into granite boulders, in both English and her native Papago (Tohono O'odham) language. I smiled and cried as I read them aloud. {link for her poetry is http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/ofelia-zepeda )
My son tells me not to "stress out" so much. But it's my nature to take things in deeply and, so sometimes, I feel overwhelmed. How do you try to keep your cup from overflowing or keep your feet on solid ground? Yet, sometimes, to have life gushing out like a waterfall or to fly in the clouds can also be a good part of living. Where I get into trouble is when I lose the sounds of hope and laughter. I really have to dig deep into myself sometimes to open up to those sounds. Cacaphony from the news or words of conversations drowns out the light music.
This week was Robert Frost's birthday (3/26) and I learned that he, one of my favorite poets, struggled with depression most of his life. I wouldn't have thought so from his poems which speak to me very clearly. "I want to go out as a swinger of birches..." is a line that called me to it in the 1970's and still does. We have no birch trees in Tucson, but to swing out on a Cottonwood, or, higher up in the mountains, to swing out on an Aspen would be a good way to let go.
But not yet. My counselor this week wants me to come up with some ideas of what I want my life to be in the next ten years. If today is an example, it would be with more music and more poetry.
What "more" do you want in your next ten years?
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
after the rain
The desert region is in a drought. Our lakes are receding, leaving limestone lines on the walls. But last night it rained. Not just the "squeeze a few drops" out of the sponge rain, but it really rained. When I walked my neighborhood today, there were raindrops hanging from the newly unfolded leaves. Birds were trilling from the treetops. The air is cleansed and negative ions are filling our lungs as we breathe deeply, refreshed and rejoicing in what rain can do to the desert.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)