11/25/23

 Saturday, November 25, 2023

One month to Christmas😱

In bed at 9, up at 4:45, let Lilly out (twice),  24°, cloudy, high of 34°, wind W at 6 mph, 3-9/14. WC is 17°.  The waxing gibbous moon rose yesterday at 3:08 p.m. and was very visible in the daylight, reminding me of Sarah's lovely photo of the daylight moon over the Tetons.  Sunrise at 6:56 at 118°SE, sunset at 4:20 at 2:42°SW,9+23.  Solar noon at 11:38 and altitude at 26°.

Treadmill; pain.   I woke up OK but the CPP started early on.  Last night's pain was pretty nasty right up to bedtime.  Intense pain this morning around 7:45, a 7 or 8, right kidney area, had me moaning and thinking about calling Andy to see if he or Anh or Peter could drive me to the VA emergency room since Geri is quarantined with COVID.  It got better after 10 minutes or so.  Where did that come from???  It came back @ 8:25.  I typed out a text message to Andy but didn't send it; again the pain went away.????  Pain worsened at about 2, sent the text to Andy, who picked me up and took me to the Zablocki ER.  Got there at 3, got home at 9.  UTI or a flare of my IC.  

I'm grateful for my wife, my friend, my partner, my daily companion and fellow journeyer, my caregiver and caretaker, my role model for friendship, for living life responsibly, courageously, and mindfully, for more than I realize.  Years ago,  I started a list on my iPhone of 'what I love about her', starting with "her laughter" which delights me to hear, to listen to, a warm, wonderful laughter.   I added her devotion to duty, as a wife, a parent, a daughter, a friend, a citizen, an employee, a cat and a dog 'mama'.  Then her thriftiness and frugality, her delicate piano playing, her gutsiness and adventurousness, her sharing tasks like shoveling snow (now her sole undertaking), her respect for confidences, her intellectual and practical curiosity, her self-reliance and resourcefulness, her patience, her many long-term friendships, her judgment and practical wisdom, her tough-mindedness, her persistence in attaining goals from her deferred degree to completing a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle.   I think also of her intrepidity, as when she beat the crap out of the pickpocket behind San Marco in Venice and of her putting up with my eccentricities, including walking miles in the cold winter rain, without complaint, from Sablé-sur-Sarthe to Solemnes in western France so I could hear the Benedictine monks chant at Abbaye Saint-Pierre.  A remarkable woman and nobody knows her as I do, privileged.

Gratitude and happiness.  Arthur C. Brooks has an essay in the current online The Atlantic titled "Four Ways to be Grateful - and Happier."  The list: (1)  Make thankfulness an interior discipline, as did Marcus Aurelius. (2) Make it an outward expression, as in 'thank you.' (3) Make it a sacred duty, like Rousseau and Jesus. 4. Make it into words of worship, as in Meister Eckhart's simplest prayer: Thank you.  Brooks' suggestions:

First thing, before getting out of bed in the morning, recite a few sentences to frame the day. I like Psalm 118:24: “This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” If you don’t want the religious language, find another such reason to celebrate the day, or write your own.

Maintain a gratitude list that you update once a week. You could tape it to the bottom of your computer screen and glance at it each morning before you start work, pausing briefly on each item.

Make a routine of your outward gratitude in a couple of daily emails or texts, sent before you get to work. You don’t need anything overwrought or dramatic, just a few words showing someone that you noticed something nice they did and appreciated it.

And on the days you aren’t feeling like sending your two thank-you messages? Make it three instead. Then remind yourself that to lighten the load on someone else with your words of thanks is a duty you have accepted.

Write or adopt a gratitude prayer or mantra that you can say throughout the day, especially at trying moments. Maybe it could be “Thank you for my life,” which, believe me, works wonders when you’re sad or afraid. Some people repeat thanks in a foreign language they find sonorous.\

I won't follow all of Brooks' advice but I do need to stay mindful of all I have to be grateful for in life.   I know I focus too much on the horrors of modern life: wars, mass shootings and 'ordinary' gun deaths, racism, the rise of fascism  America's fetid politics, and on and on, not to mention chronic pain.  I could always count on my dear sister to tell me to SNAP OUT OF IT! if I was pissin' and moanin' during one of our daily early morning conversations.  Losing her was a huge loss in my life; having her in it for so long was a huge blessing.  I'll try to remember to write a daily gratitude entry in this journal from now on.

LTMW at sun-up I see our first visitor, a chickadee hungry for some breakfast, another experience to be grateful for.  I feel the same about the beautiful large wreath with electric holiday lights our new neighbors, the Pandls, have mounted on the front of their house across the street from us. Around 8 a.m., the reddest male house finch I have ever seen perched on the short feeder and ate his fill while a snowbird did the same on the niger feeder.