Happy New Year! It’s funny how much hope is generated just by swapping out a used up calendar with a brand new one. But there’s always hope in fresh starts, and anticipation, in a blank page, a new morning, the first stitches of a crochet hook. My usual New Year’s Eve ritual was ignored. I […]
I was born in 1960. My 60th birthday is next week. It is my turn to be utterly baffled at this change of decade. I have watched others turn 60. They all tell me that turning 50 was no big deal, but turning 60 was. I could tell that 60 is a bigger shift than […]
“Wow! It takes such strength to say what you said!” I was dumbfounded. I didn’t understand. It wasn’t like I had to argue with myself, calm shaking hands, take a deep breath, before telling my coworkers I have anxiety. I just said the words. It seems to have mattered more to my listeners than to […]
That diet I’m on, where I deleted every game on my phone? Yeah, I put some games back. Something in a comment about not coloring every picture. I was compulsively coloring. Every. Picture. So Happy Color is back, and now I deliberately color only the ones that are the kind I like to color (mostly […]
You know how the kitchen always ends up a mess when you cook, even if you’re one of the clean-as-you-go folks? There will be a delicious meal – and there will be splashes and spots and dirty dishes. 2019 was like that. I learned so much but it was a hard year. 2019 has left […]
I think I’ve mentioned Daily Om before, a website that offers life affirming essays and online courses. I’m currently taking a course on clearing. On any other website, it would be called decluttering, but it’s not just getting rid of stuff. It’s the why we hang on to things and how it feels to have […]
Obviously, something deep in my subconscious wants to imitate Nedry’s lock screen in “Jurassic Park”, doing his finger-wagging “Ah-ah-ah”. I had bronchitis in February. Was out sick for two weeks. Bronchitis was something I had a lot as a kid. Usually when the bullying over time finally got to me, my body would react with […]
(Part 1 here) Sometimes, I think that I have undiagnosed ADHD. I relate too well to descriptions of people with ADD etc. Apparently, December children are overrepresented on the ADD spectrum. I am a December child. My therapist did point out that it doesn’t really matter if I have ADD or not; I hold down […]
I’m thinking about the last five years, because the blog I started in 2014 went poof as I switched providers. (Always read the instructions thoroughly before switching website hosts, kids.) Then a bit of magic happened and I could save my texts and restore posts; the photos were already saved. As I went through and […]
A friend commented on another blog post of mine about how we’re told that loneliness shortens a life span like a smoking habit does. Her married parents are now within waving distance of 90; she doubts she’ll get to that age. I have a theory, or maybe it’s just a good ol’ opinion about longevity […]
In my ongoing journey to figure myself and life and all that stuff out, I’m now trying to learn about non-attachment. Attachment = expectation. In “The Shack”, they suggest you ditch the noun and go for the verb: Expecting. That is making more and more sense to me. Expectation sets you up for failure; expecting […]
Once physical disease is ruled out, it is time to consider the root cause of most mental depression: a lack of love and connection in life (not a lack of serotonin). Source: Wikipedia Commons Via Paula’s blog comes the idea of grabbing some book, going to page 62 and line 6 on that page to […]
The spring of 1969, I traveled across country with my grandma and grandpa. Just before leaving California, I had heard The Beatles song “Help!”. The movie had been showing on TV one evening at my mother’s. I liked the song and I remember singing it in Maine, where we’d stopped off at Grandma’s son’s place […]
Norway has been good to me, dentally. My grandpa was also good to me. Orthodontics are subsidized but still cost out of pocket. So the year I had no cavities I started wearing a retainer. One thing Norwegian children have been through together, is the school dentist. In my part of Norway, the school dentist […]
I tripped over a book on using yogic mantras to help with anxiety and depression. So I said OM a lot this morning, and maybe that’s exactly what I needed to get going again (as well as three days of rest and downtime). I once upon a time, back in California, meditated and chanted OM, […]
Yesterday’s grouchiness was a warning. My body and my moods are basically klaxons trying to get my attention. This morning I had no energy, no desire, no absent Grumpy. He was still with me. He had a message. I hate when I’m like this. I hate that my emotions so easily rise to the surface […]
So, as usual, I am Mercurial and go up and down more than a rollercoaster. After a great day yesterday—which I realize now may have taken more out of me than I thought, with all that talking to the psychologist—I ended up grumpy today. Total raincloud-right-over-my-head grumpy. Grumpy At the end of the day, a […]
My comfort zone:Sitting on a bus on a rainy day I don’t like ever talking about what goes on deep inside of me. A few close friends may find out, but not co-workers or you, my reader. But the truth is, I’ve gotten a taste of what it is like to be struggling with something […]
It arrived. The one document that makes everything irreversible. It makes me catch my breath. I get emotional opening the thick envelope from the US embassy in Oslo. They returned my passport, canceled. That’s what makes the envelope thick. The rest are slim papers: The actual Certificate of Loss of Nationality of the United States, […]
Coughing so hard, I can hardly breathe. Coughing so hard, I start to feel twinges I shouldn’t. This is what I had in February, and for a while I thought I had the flu. I didn’t. Instead, my body has decided that some foods are not good for me. The baffling thing was the fever. […]
A Roll in the Universe 