Reflective Mind Dust in Everyday Ramblings

A lowly local thistle. Love the wonderful textures here.

We have been lucky with the weather so far, no rain of course, which is a bit worrisome, but also not too hot. We’ll get there though in a few days. It does seem as if it will cool down at night and that will make it manageable.

That and the fact that I am home in my apartment, my hobbit house built into the hill and much cooler than most of the other units here.

Annoyed as I was having to get everything out of the storage room in such short order it actually benefited me in an unexpected way. Since Mrs. Sherlock got the all clear from her doctor to do physical things late last month, she has thrown herself into activities, riding her bike at least twice a week, hiking, going to plays and talks and movies as well as yoga and free weights with me.

We were planning on hiking last Saturday, but I canceled as it was the best time for Most Honorable to come up to help me with the tail end of the move. And we had skipped the week before, because again, moving out of the loaner apartment. I have been seeing her most mornings in my class on Zoom.

Thursday, she got back from a bike ride and started to feel awful. Yes, after all this time she has her first contracted case of Covid. She and Mr. Sherlock are both fully vaccinated. She started a course of Paxlovid this morning. I still haven’t gotten it yet and I am relieved I wasn’t exposed. Not just for me, but for my sister Kes, who is vulnerable.

One of the old guys, the coffee guys, a retired oral historian has been taking photographs for years has a show of photos from two trips to Cuba, one in 2016 and one this year. I am going to hike on my own over to the gallery tomorrow to see them. His wife is an artist as well. I will wear a mask.

It would be helpful if I came up with a routine of working on sorting and purging and putting away stuff. For now, the piles are livable with but that won’t last long. Particularly as the weather changes. And I start to want to cook again. I just need to work on it a little at a time.

Today was a kind of do-nothing day. Teaching has been more challenging this week. On top of modifying for my student that had a front entry hip replacement exactly a month ago, (she gets to start driving tomorrow), my student with Rheumatoid Arthritis has been having an intense back pain flare up and making classes workable for both of them and not too repetitive or boring for everyone else has been a lot.

Plus, I have been doing my PT and Pushup Club exercises as well. It is all just out at the end range of being too much. Adding social anxiety on top of that. The guys are so smart, and our conversations are amazing, but they are also, exacting in a way I haven’t really engaged with since Mr. Finch.

Yesterday it was three painters, two photographers, a very tan river-centric retired therapist and me. The conversation was about a lot of things but a lot of it was about letting the person encountering the art tell their story before the artist tells the story. They wanted to know why I hadn’t gone back to painting and collage making, which I did quite a bit as a young person.

I didn’t want to just blurt out, umm, because I am a woman that needed to make her own way in the world. One guy did tell the story of his mother who was completely discouraged from pursing her artistic dreams. Anyway, the conversation stirred up a lot of internal reflective mind dust and I had trouble sleeping last night. Instead of ruminating I went ahead and finished the slow-moving murder mystery I had been reading.

And napped today and watched Foundation and Gardeners’ World.

Tomorrow I turn and face the world again.