Name them one by one

Me, my grandma, and my mom in June 1979

When I had recently graduated from high school, my parents and I visited my maternal grandmother in an assisted living or skilled nursing or long-term care facility. Those are the three current terms covering the gradations of care in what we used to call a nursing home. My grandma could walk around, she shared a dormitory-like room with another resident, and she was quite cognizant of who and where she was.

We ate our evening meal with her in the dining hall. After dinner, the staff led everyone to sing, “Count your blessings.” (This was a church affiliated facility.) Afterwards, my grandma said that “we”—the residents—want to sing “Abide with me,” but “they”—the staff—make us sing “Count your blessings.” I repeated this later to my dad, and he thought it was hilarious. My dad laughed at anything that showed people’s quirks, flaws, or foibles.

Both hymns have their good points. “Abide with me” is a beautiful hymn that is particularly poignant for those approaching the end of life. “Count your blessings” is a bouncy song meant to lift one’s mood. I think my grandma experienced it as borderline toxic positivity, but I can see why the staff didn’t want to sing “Abide with me” every evening.

Tonight, as evening draws near on this New Year’s Day, it is my season to count my blessings. 

1. My new dishwasher is washing its first load of dishes. I’ve been without a dishwasher for a couple years, I guess, and suffered from procrastinating hand-washing my dishes until they had sat in the sink for a long time, getting gross. Now machinery is spraying soap and water around to clean them while I sit here typing with clean hands. 

2. I seem to be in recovered health. If you go back a few months, you can follow the story of my hospitalization with a severe kidney infection, the temporary placement of a nephrostomy tube, a stay with my sister for care, and a hospital procedure (ureteroscopy with laser lithotripsy) to get rid of my last kidney stone. I also had some gender-specific symptoms that I won’t detail. Within the last week I had post-op, follow-up appointments with three specialists and was pronounced fine by each one. The main thing I have to do now is remember to drink lots of fluids. Lots.

3. The repairs to my house pursuant to a failed sump pump are complete. Clean drywall, mold-free walls, a new pump, and an alarm to let me know if the pump is failing before water damage occurs. 

4. While the repairs were being done and while I was staying at my sister’s, resting, recovering, and taking antibiotics, my sister, sister-in-law, and assorted nieces, nephews, and greats, along with in-laws, worked on cleaning my place and reducing my clutter. My house is a much healthier place to live, and also I have a wonderful family. I still need to find permanent homes for lots of my belongings. I am working gradually on that.

5. I put up a Christmas tree and had my family over to decorate it and to celebrate a niece’s birthday. I used to do that every year, but it’s been a good number of years now that I hadn’t done it—just couldn’t get organized and never felt up to it. So I take it as a good sign that I could host this event this year.

6. I have all the necessities of life: food, shelter, clothing. And have I mentioned my wonderful family?

7. My dogs love me.

Highly accomplished

The following conversation occurs in Pride and Prejudice regarding when to call a woman “accomplished.” Miss Caroline Bingley begins:

“…no one can be really esteemed accomplished who does not greatly surpass what is usually met with. A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages, to deserve the word; and, besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half deserved.”

“All this she must possess,” added Darcy; “and to all she must yet add something more substantial in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.”

I cannot claim to be “accomplished” by Mr. Darcy’s standard. Even Miss Elizabeth Bennet comments, “I am no longer surprised at your knowing only six accomplished women. I rather wonder now at your knowing any.” Nevertheless, I did accomplish some things today.

First, I put back together my dogs’ kennels, which had spent the months of my absence folded flat in the garage. Two were simple, but the third was difficult. I could not get the door on for reasons that would take too long to explain. Suffice to say, after using pliers and a hammer to make small adjustments to some metal pieces, I finally had it complete.

I needed to get those kennels ready today. The last two nights my dogs have slept with me. Three dogs and myself in a recliner would be okay if everyone calmly lay down in the places where they’ll eventually end up. But my dogs have to spend time wiggling, climbing and crawling all over me, jumping to the floor and back again, attempting to or succeeding in licking my face, and—in Beatrice’s case—yapping and snapping at anyone who invades her personal space.

Second, I put into the kennels new comfy mats I’d ordered from Amazon shortly before I went to the hospital. They arrived neatly rolled up and shrink wrapped. Since coming to the house to supervise workers and then moving home, I’d seen those rolls several times. I thought I remembered seeing them in my living room, and I also thought I’d seen them in my utility room. But as soon as I wanted to use them I could not see them anywhere. I spent what felt like at least an hour walking into every room and one large closet over and over again, searching but not finding. 

I started to write a text to my sister-in-law who has a highly organized memory to ask if she could magically tell me their location. Before I sent it, I decided to make one more attempt. And in the guest room on a bed was a box with “Save for the pups” written on it. Well, yeah. How was I supposed to find that? My excuse is that my mind’s eye was picturing three rolls, not a box. Hurrah, they’re placed, and now the dogs have one lovely bed each, as do I. We’ll all sleep the better for it.

Samuel Pepys often ended his diary entries with: “So to bed.”

Free at last

Huzzah, hoorah, and hooray. Monday my nephrostomy tube was removed. My kidneys are functioning normally. I still have a kidney stone, so I need to get a CT scan to pinpoint that location and then a procedure to remove the stone. I’m making progress. 

Some work has been ongoing in my home while I’ve been at my sister’s. Today I am here at my own home while a drywall installer gets started. It makes me remember my uncle who was a contractor. Back then he called drywall “sheetrock,” and he had the opinion that all “sheetrockers” were crazy. The guy working at my house today seems harmless enough.

Soon we'll all be relaxing at home.

My sister and I were just discussing the progress of both my house and my health and we think I might be moved back into my own place as soon as Monday. (Today is Wednesday.) 

The work I’ve had done relates to a sump pump failure here in the basement apartment where I live. The year that my parents died (in January and April) I had the same kind of pump failure in August, only much worse. I ended up having to live in a hotel for four months and with my sister-in-law for another two months while new flooring was installed and drywall repaired. The new flooring has been a boon for the more recent incident. I have tile floors throughout my apartment, except for the furnace/laundry/water heater/pump room, which has cement flooring. Tile can withstand a bit of water without needing to be replaced.

Anyway, maybe these two pump failures followed by repairs could bracket a down time in my life: my mourning period for my parents, followed by mourning my previous dog, followed by a mental breakdown and recovery. With this new repair done and my moving back home, I can begin a new and happier stage of life. I hope and trust.

How long?

 I have been at my sister’s house for almost two months since being released from the hospital with a nephrostomy tube in place. It is so kind and hospitable for her and her husband to have me here so long, with still an undetermined amount of time ahead. 

I was pretty ill when I went to the hospital in August. (And now it’s October!) I had been in the hospital in July for a couple days for the same problem: a severe kidney infection. When I came back through the ER, I stayed for four or five days. My admittance and early days there are kind of a blur.

We (me and all the medical people I’ve seen) are keeping the infection at bay now with antibiotics. The nephrostomy tube is to relieve pressure in my left kidney (which is enlarged) and keep it alive until we get a more permanent solution. A home care nurse comes weekly to check on it.

Part of the reason I have been at my sister’s for so long is that I had an almost month-long delay in getting a diagnostic scan. I was supposed to have the scan on September 12th—already four weeks after I left the hospital, though I saw three different doctors in those four weeks—but, when I showed up, there was some preliminary procedure that was supposed to have been done before the scan but wasn’t. It took weeks—and a lot of phone calls on my part—to get the various medical offices to communicate and get that preliminary procedure scheduled and the scan re-scheduled.

Incidentally, the preliminary procedure was ridiculously simple and only needed to take about 15 minutes, but no one could do it unless they had an order. 

I had the scan yesterday and emerged mildly radioactive. The radioactive material injected into my veins should be pretty well gone by now, but if I tried to travel by air I might set off an alarm. Fortunately, I have no travel plans, except for my long-delayed trip home, whenever that happens. 

My scan was on a Friday, today is Saturday, and presumably on Monday the doctor who issued the all-important order will review the results. I hope to hear from them soon about what we’ll do next. 

My most fervent prayer for myself is that when all this is done I will be truly well. I have been having recurring UTIs for a year and a half at least. The theory is that it has been the same infection the whole time, temporarily alleviated by antibiotics then coming back. So I’ve been in pretty lousy health since I retired and probably for some time prior, mostly just feeling tired and listless. 

It's a process

I want to be well. Then I’ll say with Moses: “Make us glad as many days as you have afflicted us, and as many years as we have seen evil” (Psalm 90:15). 

Right now I’m in the earlier verse: “Turn, O Lord! How long? Have compassion on your servants!” (Psalm 90:13).

Oh, and if anyone is wondering, my wonderful niece(-in-law) is taking care of my dogs. Since she and my nephew have a young daughter whose friends come around to play with them, I gather the pups are having far more fun than they ever have with me.

And of course I’m grateful for modern medicine, kind medical professionals, loving and caring family and friends who have provided so much help that I don’t know what I’d do without them, and for prayer support. That’s the counterpoint to delays and frustration.

Also my sister is a great cook.

Birdie, birdie

 A sweet thing sometimes happens on my deck—a pair of robins build a nest and hatch their babies. It has happened again this year. I occasionally see them flitting in and out of the sheltered place (where my dogs cannot reach) with food for their young. In the evening, one of them—let’s assume it’s the male—sits on the top bar of the dog fence around my deck, and he enjoys the air and looks around and has a little rest. Perhaps he is also watching for any dangers to his family.

Robin on fence viewed through window screen.

A thing that is not dangerous is a dog barking from inside the house. The robin knows this. Benedict, my chiweenie, does not. He sees that bird sitting there, practically taunting him (your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries) so, standing on the arm of a recliner (because he can only see out the window if he stands on furniture), he barks. And barks. And barks. The robin continues to enjoy the air and look complacently around the yard. Benedict barks some more. 

If I am listening to a podcast and Benedict’s barking drowns it out, I sometimes shout, “SHUT UP!” My shouting has as much influence on Benedict as his barking has on the robin. Probably Benedict thinks I am just joining in the fun. Because he does love barking. If I can’t stand it for one more second, I close the blinds even though it’s not even close to dark outside.

And that’s just a taste of the stirring events that take place at my house.

Somewhere

A week ago Sunday we could see the full arc of a rainbow from my sister's front door. So we're looking across the street at a neighbor's house with the rainbow above it.

Back yard happenings

Yes, spring continues to spring. Today has been especially wonderful. After weeks of rain and chill (in the 50°s Fahrenheit) we have had some sun and warmth (mid- to upper 60°s Fahrenheit). It's practically balmy. Tomorrow will be similar, but starting to cloud up, and then we'll be back to rain and chill for the foreseeable future. Hopefully, this brief interlude of kindly weather will give us renewed strength as we carry on.

My forsythia is fuller than ever. 

Behind it, the trees are not yet showing any buds. This is why we appreciate having a forsythia. I sat out on the deck for a while this afternoon, and enjoyed the warmth. We get some noise from the businesses on the other side of the creek.

The Darigold milk-drying tower (which turns milk into powdered milk) is a muffled roar, while Vander Griend lumberyard provides the sounds of lumber dropping onto hard surfaces, trucks beeping as they back up, and the like. 

Vander Griend has improved in one way since last year. Their property used to extend to the creek, but they arranged with the city to remove a creekside building and stretch their works out longer in the other direction. This left room for the city to install a new section of Lynden's Jim Kaemingk, Senior, Trail. It's named after my Uncle Jim, for many years on the town council and also serving as mayor. Anyway, Vander Griend's change of footprint involved tearing down an ugly metal building that was heavily graffitied and which was always on view from my yard during the winter when the trees had no leaves to hide it from sight.

I zoomed in a bit to show the trail. On my side of the creek, the ground is lower, at the level of the forsythia. (My back yard is a flood plain.) The opposite side is several feet higher, and that's where the trail runs. I've pointed out where a group of kids is walking. You can't see the surface of the trail, but you can see the people using it.

Behind the kids, you can see a row of shrubs that I hope will grow tall enough to make even more of a screen for the lumberyard.

While I was sitting in an Adirondack chair in the sun, my herb barrel was at my elbow. It has parsley, sage, rosemary, and ... chives. I need to add some thyme. What I planted last year didn't thrive.

And so the world keeps turning.

Spring is springing

 I believe I've shared before that my dad claimed that his favorite poem was:

Spring has sprung.

The grass has riz.

I wonder where the birdies is.

Well, spring hasn't entirely sprung yet, but it's springing. Here are three signs of spring from my yard and deck.

1. My forsythia is getting some yellow blooms. I planted forsythia for the exact reason that it brings some color in early spring, when we're longing for it.

2. My honeysuckle is starting to leaf out. At the end of last summer, this plant was looking pretty leggy and straggly. I cut it back severely, not knowing if it would even come back. It's not a spring chicken. (Har. I crack myself up.) Perhaps it will recover.

3. Some tulips are sending up leaves. I bought myself some tulips in a pot last year. When they were done, I just left the pot sitting on my deck. Now it looks like I'll get some blooms out of the deal.

Welcome, spring. 

Silly dogs

So I’m just sitting quietly at my desk, minding my own business, when my dogs start barking, Vociferously. I see that my nephew is driving the lawn mower back and forth, to mulch the leaves in the yard. I open the door and, according to their custom, Benedict and Rosamund rush outside, barking. Vociferously.

Benedict: Barking is my almost-favorite thing (second only to treats).

Beatrice, who is clever, has been pretending that she too wants to run outside, but when the door is open she hangs back. She knows that if the other two are not around to act jealous, I will let her cuddle up to me while I hold her in the crook of my arm. So I close the door and sit with Beatrice at my desk.

Beatrice: All I want is to be warm and cozy.

Soon the outdoor barking stops, even though my nephew is still driving the lawnmower. I peep out the window in the door and there are Benedict and Rosamund wanting to come back in. I let them in and they rush to the couch and armchair and start barking towards the window. Although they are not clever, they are not entirely without intelligence, and they have decided it’s much more enjoyable to bark in a warm room while standing on cushy furniture than to bark outside in the cold. I open the door to see if they’ll go outside again, but they come running just to stand by the open door and bark from there.

Rosamund: I'm just a hyper little dog.

So I pick up a bag of treats and lead all three of them down the hall, reward them for going into their crates, shut the crate doors, and give them each a chewstick. I close the blinds and leave the room, closing the door behind me, hoping they will settle down to a nap. That’s where they are now. The lawnmower is put away and all is quiet indoors and out, except every so often Benedict gives a yell. Quiet, boy.

Not snake oil

So I keep seeing these ads on Facebook for a pill that stops itching. Apparently it works like a charm. I get all interested until I realize it's a pill for dogs. 

Move along

Nothing to say, I just wanted to make it so that the first post you see at my blog is not one about difficult struggles and so on. Instead, here's a picture of my dogs out on the deck on a hot, sunny day.

Of course, one might find it distressing to see so many weeds growing between the pavers, but today I am optimistic about getting the weeding done. Later I may post about my accomplishment of planting all the plants I have bought so far. That is better than I've done in probably seven or eight years.

Also, I have a nephew & family visiting soon who have teen and pre-teen kids and I may see if I can hire them to help with some deck cleanup. Sometimes when I talk about work like that my sister-in-law says, "That sounds like a job for strong, young grandchildren." I have no grandchildren, but she has. They are still young and strong, but not so young anymore that they are not busy with their own lives.

That's kind of a double-negative, in the grammatical sense, not emotional. Anyway, they are busy doing things like having jobs and getting engaged. I have another grandchild by proxy (i.e. great-niece) who lives locally but is too young for such labor.

So I am hoping the visiting greats will welcome an opportunity to earn some money while helping their old Auntie. (I like to pull out the Old Lady card when handy.) If not, I'll still get it done, just not as quickly. So no pressure, youngest generation.

Okay, one more photo. While I was writing this entry, I felt a warm little presence by my left foot, so I took a quick picture of what was under my desk chair.

Discomfort

I remember reading once, in a novel, a description of a character that he was “comfortable in his own skin.” It’s a figure of speech that indicates self-acceptance and confidence. Now, not as a metaphor, but as a physical fact, I am uncomfortable in my own skin. My skin is dry and itchy. I scratch the itches and my skin becomes raw and painful. And ugly. Sometimes I see it as so ugly that I tear at it with my fingernails, making it more raw, more painful, and more ugly.

When I go to bed at night, after I’ve been lying there a while, my skin starts to feel hot, tight, itchy, and painful. It is almost impossible for me not to scratch it. After a while, I feel so upset about the ugliness and unpleasantness and pain that I become stressed, unable to relax—almost twitchy. I keep lotions nearby to rub on to try to do that instead of scratch. Sometimes, after I’ve been asleep for a while, I wake up with these feelings and scratch in a half-sleepy state until I wake up enough to get up and go to the bathroom to clean my skin with cool water and a washcloth.

Sometimes I've taken Benadryl at bedtime with the idea that it may alleviate the itching and in any case it will make me drowsy. But eventually I felt like Benadryl was starting to trigger restless leg syndrome instead of putting me to sleep. I also tend to develop allergic reactions to any skin product that I use for a while.

During the day, while I’m sitting at my desk, or in my car, or—excuse me for mentioning it—on the toilet, I explore my skin with my fingers, finding rough spots that I want to scrape smooth. This leads to increasingly raw, painful, and ugly skin.

Sometimes after I’ve scratched the skin on my wrists and hands until I am bleeding, I apply an antibiotic balm and wrap my wrists and hands in cotton bandages. For a while, this is soothing, often even for the better part of a day. Eventually, the bandages become annoying and I cut them off.

Scratching until I bleed makes blood accumulate under my fingernails, so I spend time cleaning my nails. Because my skin may bleed at any given time, I wear dark clothes that won’t show blood spots. I wear a lot of black, navy blue, and brown. I wear shirts with long sleeves and full length pants. I can only wear cotton clothes, smooth cotton. Anything else feels painful when it touches my skin.

Sometimes I plan a skin-care session where I take a shower and then apply my latest remedy to my damp skin—over the counter lotion made for dry skin or a prescription thing (lotion isn’t quite the correct word as its consistency reminds me of Crisco). I do this when I have time to slather it on, then sit wrapped in a cotton robe or sheet until it absorbs and I feel less greasy and sticky. Another complication is that my dogs think lotion is tasty, and they try to lick any exposed part of me that has lotion on it. So I have to be able to spend time in my room with the door shut to keep the dogs away.

I’ve had a bit of a struggle with dry skin since childhood, but it has been at its absolute worst the past few years. When I was in about elementary school, I would scratch the lower part of my legs. My sister once laughed at an old photo of me at about 10 years old wearing shorts with knee socks. I definitely looked like a dork, but I needed knee socks to cover my scabs. As I moved into my teen years, I got better at putting lotion on every day and stopped having such itchy skin.

My skin was clear and acceptable looking (always pale and blotchy but at least not with open wounds) from about junior high until my 40s. It started up again with my lower legs and then my lower arms. I would always have one or two sores on an arm or leg, and I would try to keep them covered. My dad told me that he and his father had had the same thing.

My dad also suffered from psoriasis. All of my siblings and a significant proportion of my nephews and nieces have some form of skin issue—dry skin, psoriasis, eczema—some more severely than others.

So after my issues started to resurface in my 40s, I was at that relatively mild level for the next two decades. When it really became bad, with all the severe symptoms I’ve described, was during covid. I had some mental and emotional issues going into covid, mostly related to the decline and death of my parents, but I’ve had recurring bouts of depression since about age 10, so my mental health can range from getting along quite well to really feeling shitty.

I’m an extreme introvert and I would see memes about how introverts were loving covid isolation, but it didn’t work that way for me. My main feeling about the pandemic situation was that everything felt unnervingly weird. The situation was bizarre, and that stressed me out. Also, a few months into the isolation my dog, who’d been my dear companion for close to 15 years, died. More specifically, I made the decision to have him put down. Even now, tears come to my eyes as I remember that.

Sitting alone at my desk at home doing my office work—by the way, I was extremely thankful that I did not lose my job because of covid but had that steady income and benefits—but constant solitude gave me the opportunity to scratch and tear at my skin as often as the urge took me. No one could see me and be grossed out, so scratch and tear I did. I became more and more depressed and anxious until I really could not do anything my job required, nor could I care for myself or my house. I went days without showering, weeks where the only time I opened my door and left my house was to go to a grocery store to have my online order loaded into my car. I had gotten new puppies and their love was comforting, but I couldn’t train them or clean up after them. I finally had to take a medical leave of absence while I got medicated back up to functionality. Not to a high level of effectiveness, just functional.

I never caught the covid virus, but the pandemic still caused a severe (mental) health crisis that is still affecting me. Since getting effective meds, I no longer sit indoors with the shades down for days on end. I take showers, and I clean up dog poop. I was able to limp along, so to speak, with my job until I was eligible for Social Security and could retire. But the one thing that has not improved has been my skin.

I keep trying different approaches. Starting just the other night, I put a damp towel across my lower legs at bedtime, because that’s where the problem is the worst, and that cool, damp feeling did help soothe the pain and itch. I had a smaller damp cloth to wrap around whichever wrist felt worse. I hope that this tactic helps my condition to improve.

For several years, the way I am able to calm down and get to sleep is that I listen to and silently participate with the night prayer liturgy of the Divine Office, which I play on my phone from the Divine Office website. Night prayer is usually between 15 to 20 minutes long. Sometimes I fall asleep by the time it’s over. Otherwise, I move on to the Hallow app and listen to and silently pray along with the rosary, which lasts 20-25 minutes. I often fall asleep before that’s complete, but, if I don’t, I still feel more peaceful.

(I'm silent in my devotions so that my dogs don't think I'm talking to them and get excited.)

During the day, I try to spend some time using my hands to do needlepoint or write in a journal to give them something else to do besides check on how rough my skin feels. I only do brief journal entries; that’s all I’m up for. Since retiring, after I wake up and take my dogs outside, I come back to my bedroom with a cup of coffee and listen to and silently participate with the invitatory and morning prayer liturgies of the Divine Office.

But still my skin and I are in conflict. I am not comfortable in my own skin. I can only hope and pray and do my best to improve.

Keep on the sunny side

"Your nose is so delicious, mom."

About a month ago, I started a Word document that I call “Positive Accomplishments,” in which I list under the date any things that I did that I can consider positive actions to boost my mental health. Sometimes it’s things like “Washed some dishes,” “Washed & dried a load of laundry,” “Raked leaves on my deck.” Other times it’s things like “Went out to lunch with friends,” “Blogged,” or “Sat in the sun.” 

I have a southern exposure on my deck. One side of the deck is shaded by the upstairs deck and the other side is in full sun. Today I sat in the sun. A special thing that may happen while I’m sitting in the sun in an Adirondack chair is that all three of my dogs want to join me there. And by “special,” I mean “utterly ridiculous.” There is not ample room for the three of them, and two of them (the bitches) do not like to share space and so express hostility to one another and the hapless boy dog, Benedict (who just wants to get along). Also, Rosamund really, really wants to lick my nose. For a long time. Non-stop. So I have to hold her off while she tries and tries to get in my face. It’s nice to be loved, I guess.

Nevertheless, it is overall a positive experience.

We call this Friday good

More than a decade ago, at work, someone said to me, “Happy Good Friday!” which struck me as wildly inappropriate. I wondered if he spoke from ignorance or from mockery. He was not a co-worker but a co-tenant of the building where I worked, and he was a strange fellow. (In case anyone doesn’t know, Good Friday commemorates Jesus’s crucifixion—not a happy occasion.)

Remembering that greeting this morning, I also remembered the line, “In spite of that, we call this Friday good.” I thought it came from a John Donne poem, so I searched online and found, “Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward.” I found a youtube of someone named John Melton reading it. I don’t know anything about Mr. Melton, but he did a good job reading the poem. However, it did not contain the line I had thought of.

It turns out the line comes from T.S. Eliot’s “East Coker,” one of his “Four Quartets.” It could also have come from somewhere else; Eliot was a great one for quoting others in his poems. “East Coker” is a relatively long poem; the line comes at the end of part IV. I found a recording of Eliot himself reading it, but he is not the best reader of his own work; he is rather affectless. So I found a recording of Ralph Fiennes reading it, and that was better.

So, yes, this is the day of the agonizing death of our Lord. He was the lamb sacrificed for our sins—the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. That is why, in spite of his suffering and death, we call this Friday good. 

Being seen

“Thou God seest me.” My Grandma on my dad’s side embroidered that and had it framed. The cloth she embroidered on was an old shirt of my Grandpa’s.

The words are from Genesis, Chapter 16. Hagar, a slave, has been used and mistreated by the great patriarch Abram/Abraham and his wife, Sarai/Sarah. They have used her as a surrogate to bear Abraham a child. Abraham has used her as a concubine, but once she is pregnant, Sarah mistreats her and Abraham does not interfere. So she runs away, but she encounters the angel of the Lord, who tells her to return to Abraham and Sarah and prophesies that the child she carries will have countless descendants.

The God Who Sees Me by Patricia Ewing

The King James Version of the Bible then says, “And she called the name of the Lord that spake unto her, Thou God seest me.” The New International Version has, “She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: ‘You are the God who sees me.’” (This is verse 13.)

Yesterday, I went to look something up in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which is online at the website of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. I browsed my way into the section on Christian prayer. In defining prayer, the Catechism alludes to the story of the woman at the well (John 4), where Jesus begins a conversation with the woman by asking for a drink of water. The Catechism says:

Jesus thirsts; his asking arises from the depths of God’s desire for us. Whether we realize it or not, prayer is the encounter of God’s thirst with ours. God thirsts that we may thirst for him.

I also watched a video, “How God speaks to us in daily life.” A priest in Great Britain, Father Stephen Wang, has a Youtube channel called Pause for Faith. In this particular video, his discussion of prayer draws on the story of two of John the Baptizer’s disciples who follow Jesus—literally—after John points him out as the Lamb of God (John 1). Father Wang dwells on the fact that, as they walk behind him, Jesus turns around and sees them and asks, “What do you want?” So, again, the emphasis is on the Lord’s initiative: he turns around and he sees them. 

It is a commonplace in psychology that people want to be seen, that being seen is a basic human need. If we feel invisible, unlooked for, unseen, we can remember this name of the Lord:

Thou God seest me.

Let the pottering commence

We have had some beautiful weather the last few days, sunny and mild. I have sometimes left my door standing open in the afternoons, letting fresh air in and allowing my dogs to run in and out at will. It really feels like spring.

The forecast predicts this weather will last two more days, then start to cloud up, and then will start cool, rainy days for the foreseeable future. So carpe diem. Make hay while the sun shines. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. Time’s wingèd chariot and all that sort of thing.

I have been clearing leaves out of plant containers and adding soil, to get them ready to receive new plants. Last year, again, I bought plants that I never transferred to the containers. Part of my work today was dumping dirt out of the little plastic starter pots. 

I bought four English lavender last year and never transplanted them, yet they seem to have survived the winter albeit in a somewhat bedraggled state. I ruthlessly pruned them this afternoon, and we’ll see if they come back. 

This year, I really believe, will be the year I make my comeback in growing flowers on my deck. I used to make my deck a bower of delight with fragrant and beautiful plants, but a year or two before my parents died, or maybe longer, I just didn’t have the energy. Since then, every year, I’ve bought plants and every year not planted them. I think it will be different this year because I am retired. I no longer have to get it done on the weekend or else. I can go outside and do a little work, then come in, and I can do that any day or every day.

When I was approaching retirement, when people asked me what I was going to do with my time, I replied, “Potter. Potter around my house and garden.” This week, I’ve been pottering on my deck, and it’s been wonderful.

Container with honeysuckle. 

Cleaned up and added a layer of new soil.

Cleaned up this stone (actually resin)
that had been covered with dirt and mold.

My pot of herbs.
The rosemary thrives through the winter,
and the chives come back every year.
Sage & thyme were looking sorry
in the pots they were in when I bought them.
I planted them to see if they'll revive.

Charmed, I'm sure

 I was scrolling down YouTube and saw a video title that I thought was “charming mistakes you may be making.” Intrigued, I looked closer and saw it really was “cleaning mistakes you may be making.” Shucks.

But it reminded me of an interior conversation I had yesterday. I had made a nice cup of coffee, and put it on my desk and then went to quickly do something—I forget what. I got distracted and much later I remembered my coffee and realized it had probably gone cold.

“Oh, Jan,” I said to myself, “you are so”—I paused—“cute. What delightfully amusing things you do.” That was not where I was originally headed, but I wanted to be kind to myself.

Three is enough

 Day three of inclement weather. No more snow since yesterday—instead, freezing rain, which is worse. It just covers every surface with a coat of ice. Now it’s just inching above 32° Fahrenheit. (I’m so proud I spelled Fahrenheit correctly on my first attempt.) It’s sprinkling rain. Where there is snow, it’s just getting rained on. Where the snow was light (under a slatted shelter) it has turned to slush. Rain and this temperature make everything slippery.

I can own to a slight feeling of ennui. All my needs are provided for. I’m not short of food or necessary supplies (read: toilet paper). The power is on, the heater works, and I am warm (enough) and dry. But the confinement becomes just a little tedious.

On Facebook, my friends with school-age children are expressing their anticipation of Monday and—they hope!—schools opening back up. Lots of businesses have been posting closures or shortened hours both for safety of their patrons and because employees can’t come in. It’s starting to look a lot like covid. But, thankfully, it will not last so long. 

What a drag the pandemic was. I attribute my mental breakdown a couple years age to covid isolation. I’m still recovering. I never actually got covid, itself, ironically, but it still made me ill.

But let’s talk about more pleasant things. Um… January is more than half over—hurrah! The winter holidays are like wonderful food, and the post-holiday season is like acid reflux. Oops, forgot to be pleasant.

Handiwork, such as knitting or needlepoint, has been in abeyance ever since I brought home Beatrice three years ago. Each year for three years I adopted a puppy. Puppies are ebullient. Energetic. Lively. Hyper. Every time I sit on my couch, I am swarmed by ebullient, energetic, lively little furballs, all anxious to lick my face and also to prevent the other two from sharing in that pleasure. They wiggle and wag and chew each other’s faces and paw at me and climb up my person as though a wonderful prize waited at the top. My face, lickable. 

By now, Beatrice is three and no longer inclined to chew my fingers and anything they’re holding (like knitting needles). Benedict is two, and calmer than he used to be. Rosamond is one and still highly excitable, and her antics influence Benedict. So it’s just not relaxing or tranquil to sit on the couch, and working on a craft is impossible. I’m hoping Rosamond starts to calm down as she passes her second birthday this summer.

We have reached maximum puppy.

Snow and forgetfulness

 This time the predicted storm did show up. I woke up in the morning to couple inches of snow and now (early afternoon) a few more inches. I am snug inside.

Rosamond bounds into the snow.

My dogs have varying reactions to the snow. Beatrice, my chihuahua mix, has no interest at all in going out in the snow. Meanwhile, Rosamond finds it exciting and goes leaping through the drifts. Benedict, the chiweenie, follows Rosamond's lead but is not quite as eager to jump around in what, to small dogs, is deep snow—especially for Benedict, with his short, wiener-dog legs.

I don't like to leave them outside too long in the cold, so they're all back inside. I can hear my nephew and his little girl playing in the snow. My dogs hear them too. so Benedict keeps barking. He's the barkiest of the three. I keep sternly telling him, "No! Be quiet!" which is often effective for up to a minute and a half.

I was sitting at my desk this morning when I suddenly recalled, with a sense of panic, that I have jury duty this week. I've been supposed to call the jury message line the past three evenings to find out if I need to come in the following day. I completely spaced it. So I called the number and the message says no jurors are needed this week. Phew. I trust that is true retrospectively to Monday. If I missed showing up when I was supposed to, no doubt I will hear about it. I believe that failing to appear in response to a summons is contempt of court. In my case, it was not contempt but oblivion. I'll have to throw myself on the mercy of the court, if the need arises.

Time to stay home

 Well, the blizzard tentatively predicted last week did not materialize. We had the wind and the cold (very cold), but not the snow. Now there's another winter storm watch out for starting tonight. Not blowing snow, as far as I understand, but frozen rain and snow. That will make for horrendous driving. It will be good weather for staying inside.

When I saw the prediction I thought I'd better run to the store again to stock up. But when I started to think of a list, I realized I am still pretty stocked up from last week. There are a few things it would be nice to have but not enough to make it worthwhile to drive to the store. To paraphrase some designer or other, "Take no drive that you do not know to be useful or believe to be enjoyable." I'm a great one for staying home. It's what I've longed for every morning since fifth grade.

As long as I have enough coffee, I'm good. I will hope for no power outage, although even that I can live through. I fortunately live in a neighborhood where we don't get many outages, even when lots of other areas do, and, when we do lose power, it doesn't usually last long.

There was an era in my lifetime when, after a power outage, I had to go reset the time on my microwave, alarm clock by my bed, television or video player, and sometimes even my coffee maker. Now there are just two clocks in my home. One is my phone, which is not affected by a power outage. The other is my Zaanse clock, which likewise is not affected. It runs on weights, gears, and a pendulum. It does lose about 10 minutes a week, so that I have to push the minute hand ahead every Saturday when I also pull the chains to bring the weights back up. That clock is not for accurate time-keeping but for chiming and contributing to the homely ambiance.

My folks bought this clock while they were stationed in the Netherlands (with the U.S. Air Force). It is not any super-valuable antique but it has sentimental value for me.