Posts Tagged ‘Love’
Trying Not
I’m trying not to succumb to the outrage. Outrage may well be deserved, but it doesn’t serve me well. I have to choose a different path. I strive to avoid getting my feathers stuck in the tar of controversial opposing opinions, but maybe venting about some of the insanity will bring about an inspiration to counter the inherent despair.
Does any of this make sense?
How did Wells Fargo bank get away with years of creating bogus accounts without customers’ consent?
How did the Sugar Association get away with paying off Harvard scientists?
How do political campaigns succeed by only focusing on the perceived bad things about other candidates without providing any substance of their own in ads?
How did we get to a point where there are only two unpopular primary candidates for President of the United States?
How do people feel comfortable publicly supporting a candidate who demonstrates such contemptible characteristics?
Why do people allow religious ideology to lead them down a path of choosing to injure and kill others?
What if creative people like Lennon & McCartney were able to write songs about peace and love for all of the world to hear?
What if that made all the difference?
All you need is love.
Love is all you need.
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Pequenita consoling me while I distract myself with word games… That’s love.
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Anniversary Thirty-Five
Happy Anniversary today, Cyndie. Thirty-five years in a blink. How’d that happen?
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At the same time, today is also Julian’s birthday. Thanks for sharing this day with us, my other jwh, and making it even more special than it already was!
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Scratch Fest
When I walk in the door at home after work, Pequenita kicks it in to high gear, meowing and rubbing herself against my legs in a plea for attention. The second I settle somewhere to take a load off my feet, she climbs aboard.
I am at her service, giving her whatever she seems to want the most, in terms of massage and scratching. Her head shifts up and down, to and fro, moving to direct my fingers to the next sweet spot.
I suppose we both gain something out of the exercise, but I get the impression that she tends to enjoy it just a little bit more than I.
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Hi, Mom
It’s a tough thing to lose a parent, but my mom lived a long, full life. She was ready to go when her time came, and I was ready for her to go. It’s been many years since I’ve been able to spend time with her on Mother’s Day, and as each additional year passes, instead of getting easier, I find I miss her more and more.
Here’s to my mom.
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Overwhelmingly Loved
I am living a charmed life lately. Really. It’s a bit overwhelming. How do you adequately thank someone for loving you?
Pequenita has been dishing out so much affection for me that I am almost feeling smothered by her. At the same time, who can resist the charm of a cat who repeatedly seeks a perch somewhere on top of you?
She can be so insistent for attention when I get home from work that I have to pick her up to protect my legs from becoming her scratching post. If I make the mistake of choosing to lay down with her for a few minutes at that hour of the day, I usually become the victim of an unplanned nap.
She oftentimes finds a suitable spot on my legs and joins me for a snooze.
My lovely wife has been spoiling me with extra special attention by choosing healthy options for my goal of eating a reduced sugar diet, and tweaking her bread recipes to incorporate more diverse grains with extra substance. Lately I have a thing for millet in bread, along with a fondness for wheat berry and sunflower nuts, in addition to the usual whole grains.
Yesterday, Cyndie nailed it with a couple of excellent loaves, hot out of the oven at dinner time, while she was simultaneously whipping up some fresh homemade pasta to serve as a base under her delectable leftover beef bourguignon that was recently pulled from the freezer.
It certainly feels like being loved, to be fed like that.
My mom gave Cyndie some special training on how to make the bread I grew up with. Talk about love!
Last night, while looking at the beautiful loaves she created, I suddenly noticed an insight about how my father must have felt about the bread mom baked for him throughout their life together. Mom told us stories about how she first learned to bake bread when they were newlyweds stationed in a fire lookout tower in Glacier National Park.
By the time I was born, over 10-years later, she had definitely mastered the craft. Her homemade bread was a staple in our kitchen. Dad was a stern scolder when we didn’t cut straight slices. We toasted it and fried it, and I recall Dad used a slice to soak up the juice on the meat platter when the menu involved steak.
My parents weren’t very demonstrative of their love, but looking back, those years of homemade bread reveal a pretty good version of it.
Now I am blessed with the same. It is overwhelmingly lovely.
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Superb Theme
Seriously, how could I consider any other auto manufacturer when the cars I have been driving for years come from a company that uses “Love” for their marketing theme?
Apparently, I was so smitten on Friday, I completely forgot to contact our insurance company about the lovely purchase. We decided to play it safe and leave the car in the garage until they can be reached on Monday.
It was a little anticlimactic, not driving the new ride right away, but we didn’t want to take any unnecessary risks.
I have a fear that my luck for avoiding collisions with deer so far in the time since we moved to the country could run out, now that I’ll be driving a new car. That’s just the way the odds seem to work sometimes.
I’m hoping I can rely on the love to keep deer from doing anything regrettable. I wonder if that could work with other drivers, too.
It’s a Subaru. Feel the love.
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Wondering Aloud
Cyndie and I have recently found ourselves pondering the limitations of our ability to love someone out of their predicament. It gets downright frustrating to watch others destroy their own lives despite a wealth of loving family support desperately wanting to help.
Frustration Builds to Anger
I think part of the challenge for us is the struggle of overcoming anger that builds up in us from witnessing the neglect of self, and abuse of others, dished out by people in need who choose to ignore all common sense offers of assistance. By our own philosophy, we want to be sending a flood of love to all others, even if they are making us angry. That gets hard to do sometimes.
As a person who lived with a dysfunctional mindset of depression for many, many years, I recognize how self-focused a person with mental illness can become. I understand that the person with mental illness doesn’t logically perceive how much pain and sorrow they inflict on those who dearly love them, especially family. Heck, even if the message were to make it through, it could well be insufficient to inspire a change toward choosing to become healthy in response.
Yes, family seems to receive the brunt of our worst selves, even when they are the ones to whom we are most attached. Well, for that matter, even our own selves tend to become the target of our worst. That’s how these predicaments get started in the first place!
Cyndie and I understand that the only person we can change is ourselves. As a parent, it became one of the driving forces for me to want to become the healthiest I can be. I couldn’t force my children to love themselves and make healthy decisions, but I could make that a goal for myself. Doing so became an influence on my relationship with Cyndie. Our subsequent couples therapy and efforts to grow toward the healthiest possible relationship then imbued our household with that intentional energy.
I can’t say for sure that it is responsible for healthy choices our now grown children have demonstrated thus far in their lives, but I no longer see my past dysfunctional behaviors reflected back to me like I began to experience when they were young and I was ill.
Healthy Choice of Sending Love
The exercise that Cyndie and I talked about wanting to embrace last night is to emulate the confidence of our precious friend, Dunia, and not let our feelings of frustration and anger sidetrack our good intentions of wholeheartedly loving those dear to us who are not of a mind to love themselves. We want to send love with the fullest belief in the power of that love to make a healthy difference.
You see, doing so is an act of making us healthier. We can’t make others choose health. That is their responsibility. We can know we are honestly providing loving energy and by focusing on that, overcome the interference of frustration and anger over things we cannot control.
It doesn’t hurt to have a place like this blog where we can vent some extra frustration now and then. It allows us to let go of that which no longer serves and regain a balanced perspective in love.
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March 11th
I had forgotten the significance of March 11, until one of my sisters emailed a note that our sister, Linda, would have turned 64 this year if she were still alive.
I have a precious picture of Linda standing with me at my high school graduation. The event was not a significant achievement in my family, and as such, treated as more of a formality. I was the 5th of 6 kids. By the time I reached the milestone which marks the completion of high school, it had already been done enough times in my family that it was old hat.Floating Along
It’s the middle of February and a life at the ranch is humming along with a reasonable sense of normalcy. We had a fun gathering with Julian and Elysa yesterday for a Valentine’s Day brunch. Julian brought his hoverboard for us to see and test. In a brief lesson, while standing with my hands on the back of a chair, Julian guided me through some steps on the basics.
It only took one quick loss of control where I practically dumped the chair, to decide I was good with just standing on it. I’d had enough and was comfortable simply watching Julian move around the house and spin in circles.
Later, Cyndie took a turn figuring out how to stand on it, while holding the back of the same chair I used. I decided to kneel in the chair as ballast, while watching her. She got about as far as I had before coming to the same conclusion… that was all she needed to experience, thankyouverymuch.
For some reason, her quick exit brought me a renewed confidence to give it another try. Soon, I let go of the chair and was wandering around the house on it. What a gas.
Julian stayed close and moved a few things out of the way to give me greater clearance. I took a couple of spins around the center island in the kitchen, turning in both left and right directions, one time coming in with a bit too much speed. That provided a sense of how one could find their body leaving the board and continuing in the direction of the last momentum.
I decided to complete my initial experience before meeting with any catastrophic failure. Having not practiced dismounting the board, I headed back to the chair. I wanted to try to get off without holding on, but have it within close reach, just in case.
It took many tries to convince myself to lift one foot, without tipping the other forward or back. I pretty much had to leap off, and found myself automatically grabbing the chair at the same time, anyway.
It was a lot of fun. While all that was going on, we also helped Elysa brainstorm ideas for a party she is planning to have at Wintervale this summer. She has a birthday milestone approaching this year and plans to celebrate accordingly. It took a couple tries to adjust our thinking to the fact it will be light out until almost 10 p.m. and there will be leaves on all the trees.
Before they needed to head home, we took the kids on a walk with Delilah through our woods and stopped to say hello to the horses at the barn while wispy white flakes floated down.
It was a super way to share the day with those whom we dearly love!
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Warm Indoors
It has been darn cold the last few days. It has an extra bite because we had been experiencing such un-winterlike conditions up until now, and got lulled into complacency. I finally realized I should pull an actual winter coat out of the closet, the one with my scarf tucked in the sleeve.
I got a good chuckle out of the legendary former Minnesota Vikings coach, Bud Grant, walking out to the ceremonial coin toss prior to last Sunday’s playoff game on national TV, without a jacket on. It was below zero and he was wearing a purple Vikings short-sleeved polo shirt, flaunting the Minnesotan hardiness.
Last night we chose indoor recreation, with a wonderful fire to make it extra warm and cozy. Cyndie had designs on making chicken parmesan, and talked George into bringing his pasta machine over. He showed up with that, and more. Can you say, “homemade ice cream?”
Oh, but that’s not all. He also made chocolate sauce to go with it, and brought some fruit toppings.
Good thing I was appropriately prudent with my choices earlier in the day, and had headroom left over in my sugar quota to enjoy my favorite treat, guilt-free.
The highlight of the evening was Cyndie’s glee over her first successful made-from-scratch pasta making, under George’s helpful tutelage. He arrived in time to intervene on her baking tendency to add flour continuously while working the dough. Together, with a little water, they got the consistency back from being too dry and the pasta turned out great.
We enjoyed a treasure of an evening, laughing in the kitchen while preparing food, luxuriating in sitting down to eat the food, and then hanging by the fireplace to play cards, eat ice cream, play guitars, and thrill in the joy of simply being together.
Indoors. Where it is warm, and life is good.
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I stored the ice cream George brought, out on the deck, where it was a lot colder than our freezer. Plus, there wasn’t any spare room in the freezer, anyway.
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