It seems I have a grandsnake.
This is not a blessed event for which I was hoping!
The granddog and grandcat are great. I’m good with the grandfish and grandlizard.
I’ve barely recovered from the dearly departed grandrats, Princess and Cinderella.
Just between you and me, I don’t miss them. And a boa constrictor doesn’t seem like much of an improvement.
Nonetheless, Bubbles is part of the family now.
When I was a high school sophomore, I started fainting. Frequently. Inconveniently. Embarrassingly. Sometimes, painfully.
I tried to explain it to my folks. Perhaps I was less than convincing while upright and coherent.
My classmates were really supportive the day I fainted in World Religions, fell out of my chair, and got everybody an extra day to study for the exam.
Then, one day, I fainted in gym class. It might have seemed like simply a good plan to escape a context that made me feel uncomfortable, except for one detail.
I was on the top bar of the uneven parallel bars when I fainted.
As my Qigong guru would say, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”
Or, perhaps in my case, when the student is ready she’ll notice the teachers all around her!
Lately, I’ve been learning about expectations.
The head of my teaching team on this subject is Luther, our newest rescue dog. Somewhere between very large and huge, depending on your perspective. Hairy. Slobbery. Luther usually has a bit of his most recent meal left on his nose. He’s not yet a fan of face washing. Like all good teachers, he started where his student was.
Today has been a bit crazy.
Last night the house bears and I fell asleep in my studio space, West Wing saving the world on Netflix.
Someone, who shall remain nameless, had to pee about 5:00 am. I put them all out, turned out a bunch of lights, checked all the locks, and we all headed to bed.
That lasted about an hour and a half, when a different someone started pacing.
All out again. A cup of hot water with lemon for me. Back to my chair.
Several choruses of, “No, it’s not breakfast time, yet.” Morning meditation conveniently delivered with help from my phone. Birds singing the sun up in the background. Another brief nap.
Sarah off to the dog spa for her summer style update.
Walks. Fast brunch for me. (Which would turn out to have been a good choice on timing!)
A lesson for Luther. His first away from home. Phoebe helped!
The faucet at our kitchen sink staged a sudden walkout. One minute I was happily filling the water dish, for about the 4th time this morning. The next minute, no water.
No warning. No leaking. No funny noises. No quaking construction noises from the big road behind the house.
I did the obvious thing and went to see if there was water elsewhere.
There was.
More perplexing. (And more than a bit frustrating.) Then, the light came on. Or, rather, didn’t.
You see, this faucet was a recent replacement after the one I loved died about six months ago. New-fangled and fancy, more commercial-esque than actual commercial, but reportedly sturdy. Making a choice was more about urgent, at that point, than important. In-stock. Complete with a sensor that turned it on or off with one touch of a forearm, rather than, you know, smearing raw chicken all over the handle.
Appealing to a former surgical nurse.
But today, in the space of about half an hour, the sensor light went out. And the water did not run.
Fast text to the wizard guy who built our deck. Several texts to Bill who is not, at the moment, local.
BTW, my neck is not amused at the moment, and there’s no way I could get under there and try to fix it myself.
While I was cruising Amazon, pondering a replacement, I noticed a twitchy sort of feeling. Mentally, that is. And then, from my objective observer position (Think owl in a tree. You have one, too!) I noticed something else. I was twitchy but coping. Breathing, even. Deeply.
Suddenly, I really felt, for the first time, the wisdom of meditation which has, historically, been something of a challenge for me.
I believe it works. I’ve just had trouble getting it to work in my world.
Noise. Distractions. Too small a house. Really big dogs.
No time or space.
Recently, I’ve been showing up and sitting more often. Daily, even. (Well, mostly.) A way of coping, I suspect, with lots of learning and change.
The faucet doesn’t work yet.
I still have to deal with the air conditioner repair guy AGAIN tomorrow, for like the fourth time in three weeks.
More to learn. Blogs to write… you get the drift.
And then I knew. From the inside, rather than the outside!
Meditation is not about keeping everything calm and quiet so we can sit on the floor (read that “chair”) and breathe.
Meditation is about being able to breathe even when everything is not all calm and quiet.
Which, when you think about it, is pretty awesome. And useful.
You can start right now, with three slow breaths, as deep as you find comfortable. Those three breaths start sending signals to your brain to relax. Reminders that the sky is not actually falling in this exact moment.
At which point, you might just decide to ask the handy-wizard guy for some advice tomorrow and buy a new faucet then. (One, I suspect, without a battery!)
And, maybe, you decide three more breaths would be good. And teaching the strategy of three deep breaths to your grandkids and any other kids you know would be even better.
Then, if this makes sense to you, you might just want to check out Meditation 2.0 The Miracle of Awakening with Craig Hamilton. There’s an online event this weekend. Jean Houston says it will be fabulous. I’m excited!
Until then, keep breathing!
Grandmothers Are In Charge Of Hope
If our first language is touch, our second is food.
Lately, I’ve been learning more and more about food, largely with the help of my WildFit friends. One of the keys to my learning has been a new awareness of the food messages American TV bombards us with. Especially, our kids.
One of the things I noticed is the tremendous power of those who sell “breakfast foods.” Think about it. The vast majority of what we think of as breakfast is hugely processed, overly sweet, and filled with chemical colorings and preservatives. Leading, I suspect, to health problems and issues with attentiveness and concentration in school kids.
Hi! It’s me, again. Luther. I asked Mom if I could tell you some new things I’m learning and she said I could, so here goes!
I’m not too sure I like bicycles. One snuck up on me while I was out walking the other day and I wanted to leave. Fast.
Of course, I couldn’t. It has something to do with the thing called a lead. There’s always somebody who loves me holding on to the other end, telling me they think it’s all ok.
Just between us, there are a lot of things in the world that I think are pretty scary.
And some that don’t feel quite so scary anymore.
The other day, a new Auntie I’d heard lots about, but hadn’t met before, came to visit. Her name is Kate. She and Mom talked about me a lot. Not in a bad way.
They talked about Sarah and Phoebe, too, but I didn’t pay so much attention to that! I guess we’re all connected.
What I think they said was that there are some more things I need to learn. There was something about balance-whatever that is-and not wanting to push me beyond what I’m ready for and not wanting to hold me back from all the great stuff in life.
Apparently it’s a lot like those cool people puppies everybody gets so excited about! Mom seems to know lots about them! (The tall ones, too.)
I could tell by their voices that they both love me. And they made a long list of things that are better for me than they were before.
I can ride in the car now.
The other day, I survived when the top, noisy part of the thing called a salad spinner leaped out of the dish drainer and crashed on the floor about four feet from me.
Mom said it was ok and brought it to me to sniff.
I know it was ok because I’m still here!
Mom told me how brave I was and then went back to washing dishes. I went back to sleep.
I actually like being brushed now. I used to think a brush was just another thing to use for hitting dogs.
Nobody here hits and the brush feels really good, especially when I’m itchy.
Mom and Auntie Kate needed some of that fluffy stuff called Kleenex (which I’m not supposed to eat) when they were talking about my old life. Then they decided that the best thing for me is to help me stretch a little bit at a time and cheer me on.
My Auntie Alli says things like that, too.
They also said some stuff about insisting that Sarah sits, which I don’t think she’ll like so much, so she doesn’t think she’s in charge.
And they said Phoebe is not as sweet and innocent as she looks, but I’m not sure what that means.
Auntie Kate says she feels a lot like Mom does, with the people puppies at her house. I guess everybody needs what they need and a lot of that seems to be about things called comfort and confidence.
I’m glad I don’t have to figure all of that out. I’m still trying to learn to sit!
And I’m still not sure about bicycles. I do know that it helps to have somebody close by who believes you can do the new stuff. I have even more Aunties who help with that!
Mom says maybe I can help people by believing for them. Apparently that’s an important job!
Right now, I think it’s nap time. Blogging is hard, but I like telling my stories. Who knew?
Love, Luther
I have a thing about labels. Well, several things, actually.
Not the kind on fancy clothes so much. (Though occasionally purses.) Not cars so much, either, though there’s probably an inherited tendency there on my dad’s side of the family.
Dogs. Yes. I love almost all of them but choose to live with Newfies.
Another set of labels that I’ve found helpful, through the years, at describing and interpreting human behavior (by which I mean, mostly, my own) is the Enneagram Personality Type perspective.
