Category: Uncategorized

One more toe.

Jon got the bandage taken off his foot today and the stitch taken out of this toe.  Maybe his last toe to have the Flexor surgery, which cuts the tendon to make the toe stick our straight.

Dr Daly doesn’t think (at this point) that the fifth toe will need the procedure, even though it is curled like the others were.

“Three months,” she said, after plucking the stitch and reinforcing the incision with a butterfly strip. We don’t have to go back for three months.

Jon’s had so much work done on this foot, snipping the tendon is all but routine.  We know the drill.  Keep the bandage on, walk only in the special shoe, no showers for a week.

The special shoe irritates Jon’s foot and throws out his back.

But we both know by now that is the way of things.  It’s a give and take.   And Jon gets to decide if what he ultimately gets is worth the pain and discomfort it requires.

He does this with less complaint than I might.

“If it were me,” I say to him on the way home in the car, “when I got home I’d take a long shower.  Not because I’m not clean (Jon had a sponge bath everyday), but because I’d miss the water.”

I can’t wait  put lotion and a clean sock on his foot free of its bandage.

It seems to bother me more than him.

I think what he must be feeling but I can only do that from my limited experience.  I only know the discomfort I can imagine.   For me it’s about showers and warm socks, for him it’s about being able to walk with as little pain as possible.

I am truly ignorant about what he is feeling. How could I know.  I’ve never experienced what he has.

We want to celebrate the good news.

If the ice cream place with the sugar-free ice cream  were open we’d get some. But they won’t be back until the beginning of May.  We had lunch on the way in. Our way of making the day a little more fun. ” I guess that was our celebration,” I say.

Still I stop at the market when we get into Cambridge and I buy a chocolate bar.  Dark chocolate with almonds and salt.

We say we’ll take it easy the rest of the day.  But after feeding the animals, bringing in wood and picking up fresh  bread from Keane (we drive over a covered bridge to get to her house) we both sit down to blog.

And that’s what we’re both doing now.  The day already gone to night.  Dogs sleeping at our feet, the music of rain on the roof,  the wood stoves keeping us warm.

Jon called me on the way home from his doctor’s appointment. He was going to have his hearing checked  which he’s noticed isn’t as good as it used to be.

I feel like I’m fortunate to be married to someone who isn’t afraid of dealing with aging.  Not that it’s always easy, but when Jon recognizes a problem he is having it doesn’t usually take him long to try to do something about it.

He told me that he doesn’t want to be annoying by always asking me what someone said, or not hearing me when talk to him.  I knew when he started looking into his hearing that he was doing it for me and us, as much as himself.

Although I haven’t experienced it the way Jon has, I understand that even just admitting that there may be a problem is difficult.  It’s opening a door that most likely won’t be closed again.  But Jon also always talks about how he avoided doctors for years and now that he takes his health seriously, he is living the benefits of getting help.

I learn from Jon each time he takes on something new.  Which is all constant.  And it’s not just his health.  It’s his creativity, his writing and photography.

I think it’s because of that and his attitude, that I don’t think of him as being old.  Which can probably be annoying sometimes, because I have to remember that even though his mind and heart are right where I am, his body has a harder time doing things than it used to.

I hope that I will be able to face the issues of aging with the same grace, awareness and honesty that Jon does.  And even as my body gets old, I hope my mind and heart can remain as open and curious and creative as Jon’s.

You can see Jon’s photos of the tulips and read what he wrote about his hearing here. 

In this picture that I took out my studio window you can actually see Jon, Zip and the tulips.

Last night Jon put up some of our once read books for sale.  I was at Bellydancing Class so I didn’t get to post them on my blog.  Two sold, but we still have two available.

This is the second time I’m writing this.  In my first post, which I have deleted, put up one of the sold books for sale by mistake. So if you got that post in your email, you can just ignore it.

The two books that are for sale are:

I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai Sold

Three Hours by Rosamund Lupton Sold

Both two books are in excellent condition.  They are $10 each + $5 shipping.  If you are interested in either of them, just email me at [email protected].   Tell me which you’d like and let me know if you’d like to pay with  a check, PayPal or Venmo.

Jon wrote descriptions of these books on his blog, you can read them here. I just finished reading “I Have Some Questions For You” and loved it.  It was readable, smart and thought provoking.

These long, warm February days invite the hens to lay eggs.  I’m checking their coop daily again.

It’s light by 6:30 and I’m waking up earlier too.   There’s a Mary Oliver poem called To Begin With, The Sweet Grass.  In it she writes…

“One thing leads to another.
Soon you will notice how stones shine underfoot.
Eventually tides will be the only calendar you believe in.”

When you invite the natural world into your life it begins to take over. Like an untended field, we become a little more wild. Our bodies respond less to human constructs and more the rhythms of the earth.

When I first got to my studio this morning it was so cold I had to turn my heat on.   But an hour later, I had the door open letting the warmth in.

Early in the evening, after feeding the animals, Jon and I sat outside again.  The wind was soft and the air warm.  We watched a flock of migrating Blackbirds and Starlings fly back and forth from the trees on the edge of the pasture to the maples that tower over my studio.

As the sun was coming up over the tree tops in the east, February’s full moon, the Snow Moon was lowering behind the trees on the hill in the west.

It was so soft and yellow, if I didn’t know east from west I could have mistaken it for the sun.

There’s is a Bellydancing move called the Ghawazee.  It’s a strong and grounding hip throwing, earthy dance step.  The bigger your hips are the better it looks.  The dancers arms are extended out on either side of them, palms up.

When I saw the Snow Moon and then the sun opposite it in the east, I pictured a Goddess big enough to hold the moon in the palm of one hand the sun in the other,  shimmying her hips from side, to side,   doing the Ghawazee.

Broken bottles of Smirnoff, crushed Bud Light and soda cans, chunks of styrofoam, half filled water bottles, plastic bags, paper cups, plastic food containers,  a piece of metal stove pipe, a soggy cushion, and a five dollar bill.

I’ve been looking at the garbage along the fence line of the farm since the last snow melt.  Yesterday when I emptied the 40lb bag of bird seed into the feeder, I tucked the bag behind the planter on the back porch.

I knew the next few days would be warm, a good time to do some cleaning up.

After coming back from the postoffice, I headed south on Route 22 with the birdseed bag.  Someone dumped a twin sized mattress in the gulley between the road and our neighbors cornfield.  I couldn’t fit that in my bag but I picked up the small things leading to it. (If the highway department doesn’t pick the mattress up tomorrow I’ll call them and let them know its there)

Then I crossed the road and headed north.  I’d walk to the seasonal stream that borders the farm and head back.  I had just lifted the soggy cushion from the tall grass and was reaching for another airplane sized vodka bottle when I saw the five dollar bill.  It was folded in half and waving in the grass like it grew there.

I pictured it mistakenly flying out of the car window stuck to an empty but still sweaty can of beer.

Instant Karma,  I thought.  A tip for my trouble.

Not having to look at the garbage on the side of the road is reward enough for me. But there was something delightful in finding the five dollar bill.

A nod from the Universe.

Mud season arrived this afternoon.  It is a bit early, but it’s supposed to be warm all next week.  I don’t doubt that things will freeze up again before the true mud season visits.

Tomorrow Jon and I will go to Mud U at Hubbard Hall.  The same program where I took the BollyX class.  This time we’re going to learn about composting indoor using red worms.  I was really surprised when I mentioned the class to Jon and he wanted to go.  I was sure he would just laugh about it.

But he’s as interested in the idea as I am, maybe even more.  He’s been researching red worms and even wants to the visit the Adirondack Worm Farm.   I’ll be sure to let you know all about it on Sunday.

I’ll also be posting my latest batch of Potholders in my Etsy Shop on Sunday.   I was going to do it today but things didn’t go as I planned and now I’m too tired to do much more than have dinner and maybe watch a mystery with Jon.

In the fall I began to think of ways to insulate the floor in my studio.  It has such a shallow foundation, there were few ways to make my floor warmer in the winter.

It seems most of the cold was from wind coming through the cracks in the stone foundation.  One option was to fill the spaces between the stones with cement.  But that’s a lot of tedious work that none of the people we talked to about it wanted to do.

I didn’t want to do it either.

The other idea was to fill bags with leaves or put straw around the foundation to insulate it.

Since we have plenty of fall leaves all around my studio from the maples, that seemed the easiest and most practical solution.

I put the bags of leaves on the north and east side of my studio, where the foundation is the highest and the wind comes from most often.

This has not been one of our colder winters, but I have felt a difference in the cold coming from under my studio and through the floor boards.  Not only is my floor not as cold, it helps to keep my whole studio warmer.

Next year I’ll put bags on the west side of my studio too.  The foundation on the south side is only two stones high, there is rarely, if ever, wind from the south and the stones warm up in the winter sun.

It wasn’t our most restful weekend.

Jon wrote about it on his blog.  About how he came to see that the cannabis he was taking for sleep and anxiety was actually making him more anxious not less.  At the same time he was having a bad reaction to the antibiotics he was taking for a tooth implant.

It was one of those times, for me, where the line between helping and co-dependence can waver.

Knowing the limits of how much I can help  Jon and how much he needs to do for himself can be  tricky. Whether it’s emotional or physical help.  But having two people who are aware of the dangers of being co-dependent and don’t want it, makes all the difference.

Jon and I both experienced co-dependence in our first marriages. We’ve never had the problem in ours because we are both aware of it.   And if we do see it creeping in we adjust what we are doing to stop it.

I seem to have a built in mechanism that makes me get only so involved in what Jon may be going through.  He jokes that when he gets sick I’m good for three days of taking care of him, then I get frustrated and irritable.

I couldn’t pin point the exact timing, and it does depend on the severity of the issue.  Obviously, Open Heart Surgery is different than an upset stomach.

But what Jon says is true.  I have my limits.

Yesterday afternoon I didn’t just want to get to my studio and do some work. I needed it.  My art helps keep me sane, helps balance my imbalances.  So I cut a conversation with Jon short and practically ran out of the house.

The good part is Jon understands the importance of this as much as I do.  He says he doesn’t take it personally. And even if he is just saying that to be kind , I’ll take it.

Because it is true.

In the past I would have thought I was being selfish, and felt I was being a bad person.  But now I don’t think of being selfish as just a bad thing.  There are times being selfish can lead to something good.

Like when helping others in a bounded way.  It makes me feel good to teach an Art class at The Mansion once a month.  It’s not the only reason I do it, but I don’t think I would continue doing it if it didn’t make me feel good.

I also know if I did it more than once a month, I would begin to resent it.

When I have a need to do something for myself, like going to my studio, even if it’s not the most opportune time for  Jon, ultimately it will be better for both of us.  I will be less angry and frustrated and better able to be there for Jon when I return.

I have leaned to trust my feelings about co-dependence.

I  know that helping someone has to have boundaries.   In the past I have experienced how helping someone with a problem, can lead to taking it over for them and then wanting to control them.

I’ve been on both sides of that.

Yesterday I did less blogging than I normally would have.  I give myself permission to do what made me feel the best.  And yesterday blogging wasn’t one of those things.

Today both Jon and I have been thinking and talking about what happened over the weekend.  It was big in ways we hadn’t realized.  We listened to each other and trusted each other in a new way, which will be lasting and make our relationship even better.

It turns out it may not have been our most restful weekend, but it was an important one.  And having gotten through it together the way we did, makes my love and trust for Jon even greater.