Archive for December 2010
Celebrating Dreadlocks
Did you know that two years ago I had my long hair transformed into dreadlocks?
Weather Talk
It’s amazing what materializes out of nothing. It’s like being from Minnesota and talking about the weather with a stranger. From absolutely nothing, comes something. BAM! How about this weather? It sure is something, isn’t it?
Winter is finally here. A hurricane-force winter blast just bombarded our east coast, and dumped troublesome amounts of snow on New York. Shots of buried cars on the un-plowed streets look worse than one of our Minnesota snowfalls. It made me feel I have less to brag about. It got me to wondering about why Minnesota has a reputation for being a place of such extreme winter when other cities get hit just as hard. Then an insight came to me as I was struggling to remove the snow from my roof. The snow was over 3 feet deep in places, and working the shovel through it all revealed it was actually multiple layers from all the storms since before Thanksgiving. Oh yeah, that is one of the reasons it is extreme here.
Now we are under siege from a nasty mix of precipitation that threatens to wreak havoc on all things snow-fun related. It’s the dreaded wintertime melt when temperatures break the barrier of freezing and snow conditions degenerate significantly. This is NOT igloo-friendly weather. The forecast is for rain today. Ugh.
That’ll give people something to talk about.
What a World
It’s been pretty fascinating around the old home-front lately. Yesterday afternoon, I found myself on the roof again. The third time in the last several days. As much as I love the snow, and usually enjoy shoveling, I will admit at this point to being very interested in taking a long break from lifting any more shovels full of snow. Over the Christmas weekend, I successfully finished clearing the snow from the south-facing half of our house. I figured the front half of the roof could wait until I next have the time to deal with it. A few issues have conspired to push the urgency up a bit. The weather is going to be well-above freezing, while the sun is up, for a few days here. They are even predicting a high likelihood of rain by Thursday this week. Then, when I arrived home in the afternoon, Cyndie pointed out that the symptom that had alerted me to the problem in the first place on the back side of the house, was now happening on the front.
The icicles are not just growing from the edge of the eave, but now also along the line at the outside wall of the house. Ice dams! I needed to get up there right away. A neighbor walking by said it didn’t look safe up there. It probably isn’t. I’m not up there because I like it. I cleared as much as time allowed and enough to hopefully take advantage of the melting temps and predicted rain to remedy the previous situation. I paused on the roof after the neighbor hollered her concern and wondered why the universe would conspire to force me to need to clear the snow off our roof. Maybe I just needed to make my back and arm muscles become entirely exhausted for some reason. So far, so good, on that account.
Alia and John meet for the first time!
Meanwhile, the mysterious serendipity of people and connections has blessed Cyndie and me with being the go-between for an acquaintance of Cyndie’s to discover our friend, Ian and family in Portugal! I was able to meet Alia for the first time last night over dinner in Minneapolis. She is due to leave for Portugal in one week. Alia will be bringing her extensive experience with horses to contribute to the care of Lucy, Frida, Doll, and Sebastian. I think she will also be a wonderful companion to all the animals, as well as Ian’s family and friends. We never dreamed that our visit to Ian’s Forest Garden Estate might lead to something like this.
You just never know what additional good might blossom from the goodness you put forth into the world.
Night Out
Even though there were others present with us last night, and not all the Hays clan was gathered, those in attendance declared it the “Hays Christmas event.” David came down and took Mary and me, along with Cyndie, and Dave’s friends, Jeff and Barb, to see the Trans Siberian Orchestra. Late night for me. We enjoyed a pleasant stop at Forepaugh’s restaurant in St. Paul before the concert. Then we joined 20,000-plus of our closest friends for the show. Wow. That was a lot of pyrotechnics, lasers and lights, rapid guitar licks, and big hair. Not the usual Christmas music show I’m familiar with. The whole evening was a joy. The worst hardship we faced was managing the snowy St. Paul sidewalks. Christmas is over, but it still feels like Merry Christmas to me! I even got the whole day off, yesterday, from working on cleaning the rest of my roof.
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What Break?
You might think that today is the Monday between Christmas and New Year’s celebrations when everyone is on vacation and free to do whatever they wish, going to movies, visiting friends, returning unwanted gifts or plotting some joyous way to occupy their time. I would think that, too, if it weren’t for the fact that not everyone is on vacation. Talk about a buzz-kill. The day-job has nabbed my time for four full days this week. I find myself pressed between the incredible luck of actually having a job, and bemoaning the fact that I have to go to work. Yes, don’t we make things just that complex for ourselves.
On the bright side, I am able to look at the responsibilities of my day job in the positive light of allowing me respite from the back-breaking work of shoveling the snow off of our roof. It has accumulated to over 3 feet in places, and my vents aren’t even 6″ tall. The blanket of snow has so insulated our rooftop that the attic is becoming warm enough to melt the snow. We have developed icicles that reach from the second story, all the way to the ground. I’ve lived in this house for over 23 years. Even though there have been 1 or 2 other times in all those years that I’ve felt it necessary to clear the snow from the roof, it was never this early in the snow season. What do you think the odds are that I’ll need to be back up there again before spring? I’m beginning to see the value of the design of the roof of an igloo. No icicles on the eaves!
A Christmas Wish
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‘Twas the day after the day
and what more could I say
my heart longs for there somehow to be
some way to prolong all this glee
little girls and littler boys
all have so many new wonderful toys
forget the new underwear and socks
that one just plays with the box
friends and family seem almost desperate
to gush such well wishes it sounds intemperate
like Christmas day is some critical time
to greet others, it’s the day that is prime
but it’s just one like all of the rest
364 more we are put to the test
oh how I wish we could all learn to be
more like this all the time, sans the tree
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Perfect Gift
My son has succeeded in finding a gift that was a complete surprise to me, and is just the kind of toy I love. Buckyballs! This is what Christmas morning is supposed to feel like. It’s like silly putty, made out of little steel ball bearings. But they are magnetic. It is pure addictive fun. Here’s wishing that you experience many joys of Christmas today, and get a chance to commune with those you love. Try not to eat too much!
A Time of Gathering
‘Twas the day before Christmas, and all through the house, our kids have gathered, along with my spouse! Today is the beginning of special family time. We begin with a morning of just the 4 of us together, and then the day and weekend ahead will be filled with Cyndie’s family and their extended family. They hold a wealth of lessons for us, plum with angst and anxiety, yet brimming with the love of one-of-a-kind bonds.
Merry Christmas to you, one and all!
In Contemplation
It’s a quiet day today in Relative Something. The holiday of Christmas is fast approaching. It spawns events and gatherings of people, yet it also evokes moments of solitary contemplation. Amid the hustle and bustle, and the clatter and clutter, I offer an image for your quiet consideration. Remember, the amount of daily sunlight is on the increase again. It is a magical time of year.
Into the Fire
Why does familiarity breed contempt? The more familiar I get with that phrase, the more I despise it.
In my grand acceptance of the belief that opposite realities coexist in all things, it makes total sense that familiarity would also bring respect and affection. For some reason, the classic winter holiday songs I adore –really, the only ones I ever want to hear– are the ones that are familiar to me from repeated hearings throughout my childhood. Not just the songs, though, but particularly the Bing Crosby, or Nat King Cole voices singing the songs I heard. They became my only accepted versions. It can be downright painful to listen to subsequent variations.
Another thing that reflects my belief in coexisting opposite realities is how pain can be both bad and good. What hurts us, can help us. One reality of that is emotional pain. Avoid it all you want, but that will never bring resolution. It tags along with you everywhere you go, like a trailing piece of toilet paper stuck on the heel of your shoe. But if you face such issues head on, speak about and deal with them, such problems can dissolve from your emotional carry-on, like magic.
Why haven’t I been able to get myself to act on that idea of stepping toward the pain? Probably, common sense. If it hurts, stop doing it. I haven’t learned how to get myself to step all the way through. I take that first step, meet the pain, and react defensively, often saying something that makes things worse instead of better. I find myself more hurt, and nothing’s fixed. I tell myself to never do that again. Might as well go get that toilet paper and intentionally stick it to my heel.
I was blessed recently by the experience of a lucid dream that directly reflects my idea of facing the pain and giving in to it, all the way. In my dream, suddenly there was fire. It was as if I was hovering above it. The fire didn’t appear to me as the individual pointy flames, but more as all-encompassing balls of fire, very orange. The area that was burning was very green. In the classic way that dreams can present, the image that I am left with is one of large flowery heads of broccoli. Maybe I can unpack that part later. There was a brief moment of anxiety over the threat of all that fire. Then my mind made the very quick acknowledgment that I was in a dream. This is the very precious moment in a lucid dream where I am able to sense that I am dreaming, without causing myself to wake from the dream. Instead of reacting in fear to the flames, and struggling to devise an escape, I made an immediate decision to fully give in to the flames. If they were going to burn me, then so be it. The word “immolate” suddenly filled my awareness, whether from my subconscious, as a sort of direction of my actions in the dream, or from my more lucid mind reacting to the decision, I don’t know. I held my arms out wide and allowed my dream-self to fall into the fire.
It is a brilliant moment in a lucid dream, that instant of having faced up to the threat. I’m guessing it is so dramatic that it causes me to exceed the barrier that kept me dreaming. I usually wake up at this point. But the experience is not lost, and I am very aware of the sensation that I fell into those flames and did not get burned.
It must be time for me to unload some of my baggage.
Relative Something 