Clouds

Clouds speak to me in ways I can hardly fathom. I can't ever remember their names. I do remember pink skies at night, sailor's delight; pink sky in the morning, sailor's take warning. Beyond that, clouds speak to me as does poetry and music. It goes beyond the images I can see in clouds, it's almost visceral. I remember the way the clouds looked the last night of my father's life and the way they looked on the way home from the hospital when I found out my Godmother had lung cancer. On a happier note, I remember so many gorgeous clouds on the way to the beach as a child and with my daughter years later. I remember being struck by the clouds a few days ago when I took this picture.

Me, me, me

Someone suggested that I should post some of the portraits my father did of me so here goes. My dad was an episcopal minister but he also painted off and on through the years when he had time. When I was younger I would sit for him but as I got older it wasn't easy to get me to sit still so he would do a combination of painting from photographs and then get me to sit for the finishing touches. He also painted portraits of his other children, of course, but since I ended up with the ones of me, I have a lot of paintings of me, me, me. I hung a few but even my healthy ego isn't quite up to a gallery of paintings of myself in my house. I always liked the one I'm posting first and I also like the photograph of me and my brother which is what he used to start the painting. I think he originally tried to do it of me and my brother but that didn't work so he did this one of me alone. Perhaps my favorite one that my dad did of me is the rather primitive one when I was 8 years old. I sat for that one. The photo underneath the little elfish me is what I always call my flower child photo. I was a few years older than I was in the painting but the funny part is that in some ways the painting looks more like me and is less affected than the photograph where I'm clearly trying to look pensive or wistful or something or another. The little elf my Dad caught in the painting is more how I look back on myself as a child where the flower child in the photograph is more how I wanted to look. Too bizarre. How can a photograph be more staged in retrospect than a painting. After my Dad retired he took art classes. He even went to Italy for classes as well as for the travel. I have a large painting that he started from photographs he took in Italy as well as from some sketches but he never finished it. He also took art classes at the community art center which is located at the park where I walk. As a matter of fact, that community art center is nestled in the trees and is at the top of the steps I photographed and included in a prior blog entry. They offer a variety of art class as well as yoga, tai chi, photography, and crafts courses. I should look into taking the one they offer in digital photography. I took a chi gung class there before my melanoma dx and enjoyed it a lot. I hope I can do something like that again when I get through all the physical therapy I'm doing. Today was a light lymphedema massage and it was weird. My leg felt twice as heavy at the end of it as it felt before. They want me to start wearing bicycle shorts or running tights after the lymphedema massage as well as when I walk. They want to see how much that helps to decide if I need a compression garment. My next session this week will be in the pool and will be for lymphedema as well as for the frozen shoulder. Friday will mostly be working on my shoulder. It's so odd how my LND was on my left groin and at this point I do have a mild case of lymphedema but my right shoulder is almost worse. I go to the rheumatologist this week and will find out about some of the additional testing he did which may provide answers to some of the rest of the puzzle. It's still blowing my mind that he found out I had a vitamin D deficiency which explains the bone pain and balance issues. I think the mega dose of prescription vitamin D I'm taking has already begun to help. The charcoal my Dad did of me was when I was waiting for my ride to a new year's eve party when I was in high school. He painted that one around 1972. It is so cliche to talk about time flying by but sometimes I look at mothers in the park with their babies and am shocked that they are not much older than my baby. It's funny how wistful I feel too. It's not that I actually want to go back. I certainly am not one of these people who would ever tell a young person, these are the best days of your life, because I don't feel like that about it. I know when that sentiment was expressed to me as a child it made me panic because if that was as good as it was going to get, I didn't want any part of it. I didn't think that was as good as it gets and it wasn't. In so many ways life is easier for me now than it's ever been. I enjoy it more even with all the irritants that have come my way recently from health problems. There is so much to enjoy on a daily basis. Sights, sounds, colors, smells. I lose it every now and then but in general I don't have anything to prove to anyone. That is such a released feeling. Looking back on my childhood I can appreciate the fact that I grew up in a loving family and had so many opportunities but as a child it was hard to see what I did have. That didn't make me a bad person or an ungrateful person. It was simply the way it was. I was reading the newspaper recently and they had an article about the Monet exhibit which will be at the NC art museum and the first thing I thought was, I need to call Daddy and see if he wants to go with me. Too bizarre. My Dad died in 1998 and here I am in 2006 thinking I should call him up and see if he wants to go to an art exhibit with me. I remember going to the old NC art museum when it was downtown, as a child, with my father. He went there sometimes during lunch because the church where he as a rector was just a block from the museum. Later they moved the museum to another site where they have room for an outdoor ampitheatre and an outdoor art walk. It's much bigger than the old downtown museum and quite nice but I miss the old one. I can picture myself as a child walking through the museum with my dad. I also remember trips to Washington when we went to the Smithsonian. That complex fascinated me. My dad went to Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria before I was born but he would go back for sabbitical courses sometimes and we went to the DC area fairly often when I was growing up, or that's my recollection of it. The funny thing is when my husband and I took our daughter to DC as a child all she wanted to do was play in a little park near our hotel. We set off to go to the Smithsonian and she spied that park and that was her place. She did the same thing around that same age when we took her to NYC to visit my sister who lives there. She loved this rope swing in central park and wasn't particularly interested in going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Of course she was only 5 or so. She did like the Boston children's museum where we went when we spent the night in Boston on the way to visit my other sister in Nantucket. The last two pictures are of yet another portrait my Dad did of me followed by the photograph he worked from. So this concludes the me, me, me blog.

Nice to have something to look forward to

I am so excited about the idea of heading to the mountains later this month. Bill and I are going to go for what used to be our annual trip to the mountains in October or November. We used to go camp in the forest beginning in the late 1970s before we were married. For that matter we were camping buddies before we were even romatically involved. Nice that we can still do that as friends in spite of being divorced. We won't be camping. I can't remember the last time we went camping and I have to admit at my age there is a lot to be said for a hotel room and a few minutes drive to the national forests. Not sure exactly where we'll go this time. We stayed in Linville Falls when we went to the moutains for mother's day weekend. Bill has a number of places in mind where we could go. One of them is Blowing Rock which would be pretty high on my list. That's just north of where my mother grew up and some of my happiest memories as a child are of a house my family stayed in for a long summer vacation in Blowing Rock. Funny the things I remember. The house we stayed in had fireplaces in the bedrooms. I thought that was so neat. I still do for that matter. There's something so cozy about a fireplace in a bedroom whether it's used or not. I used to think when I grew up that I'd be sure to have a fireplace in my bedroom. I guess I could if I slept in my den/office. I have a day bed in here that I could comfortably sleep on and have for that matter. It's low, unlike the high bed in my room so after my lymph node dissection I slept in my den some so I didn't have to climb up into my high bed. The other thing I remember about the summer my family stayed in that neat old house in Blowing Rock is going to the auctions with my parents and grandmother. My grandmother lived in Boone in the same house where my Mom grew up and we spent a lot of time with her since Boone and Blowing Rock are very close to each other. My grandmother enjoyed the auctions and I thought the auctioneer was amazing with his exagerrated style and fast talking. I took a ton of photographs yesterday on the greenway trails and then a bunch in my wild and wooly garden. The gerber daisy in this entry is in my back garden and has bloomed off and on all summer. There are actually three plants which are from a potted plant I was given from one of the carpool parents when my daughter was in school and I did extra turns at driving. That one potted plant had three separate plants once I got them out of the pot and planted them in my garden. They've been coming back strong every summer for all these years. The other two photographs are from my walk yesterday. Bill and I walked today which was pleasant.

Off the beaten path

I went on another photo walk. Took my time, taking pictures along the way. Very pleasant. Since I'm not up to jogging or even speed walking yet, I thought I might as well go on the narrow unpaved trails that are part of the greenway trails near my house. Some of them are pretty rough going and I knew I wouldn't be able to maneuver the whole trail but figured I might as well do what I could. It was fun. I always get this illusion of being in the moutains when I go on the rough trails along the creeks because there are a lot of hills andI get a sense of being in the mountain forests I love. Silly because these trails cut through subdivisions with a thin veil of trees between the greenway system and the neighborhoods. When I was a child we didn't have the elaborate greenways but the neighborhood I live in now was all forest back then. My neighborhood wasn't developed until 1968. I was born in 1957. One of the trails in my neighborhood winds through the woods beside the creeks and goes all the way to the neighborhood I grew up in which is quite a few miles from where I live now. When I was a child I used to play in the little park down the street from my house. It wasn't a play ground style park. Just a little strip of trees with a creek in the middle and a grassy field at either end. I would pretend that I was in an enchanted forest when I played in the park. To an extent I still do that when I get in the woods, particularly on the dirt paths where I'm shielded from any houses. I can leave my ordinary life behind. I used to think a wiked witch had turned me into a human being and that I would be rescued and return to the land of enchantment. It took me longer than most children to discard my fantasy life. It took me even longer to appreciate the here and now, the reality of my ordinary life. My ordinary life is pretty damn good in many ways. I think a new goal may involve balance. The vitamin D deficiency which is being corrected explains my balance problems. That issue is already improving. I had to be careful when I was walking today, and I turned around at the part of the path that reguired agility. The issue was I needed to scamper over large rocks or make my way on a very narrow ledge with a sudden drop. Let me say I didn't scamper or maneuver the narrow ledge. I turned around and went back to the wide paved trail. That was pleasant too and I was able to cross a bridge and go back to the other side of the creek where the off trail path didn't have such a steep drop beneath it. I'm not interested in falling at this point in my life but if I do fall I don't want very far to go before I land. It was a very pleasant morning. I guess I'll try to be productive this afternoon. That could happen.

Photo Walk

I went on a photo walk this afternoon. That's the great thing about fall weather. I was able to take a break from work and walk in the afternoon without it being too hot. There was only sporadic fall color, as it will be several weeks before more than a scattering of trees are changing colors in the NC piedmont but the process has begun which is enough for me at the moment. I drove the mile or so up the road to the lake instead of walking there as I used to. I had the bright idea that I would drive and park at the far end where the arts center is since I wasn't walking and I would start my stroll from that end for a change. It didn't really hit me until I was walking back to may car after my photo walk that those nice downhill steps were now being turned uphill. I'll call that a brunette moment of the 1st degree. It wasn't that bad but the whole time I was walking, I was so smug as I thought to myself: cool, I don't have to walk home, I just have to turn around and walk to my car. The only issue was that I was pretty tired by the time I got to the steps that lead up through the woods to the art center parking lot. Not a long distance at all but stairs and hills have become my weak point and I was mostly embarrassed because I felt like I must have looked about 80 as I slowly walked up the steps. Who cares. It's not like it's a competition. I'll either get stronger and better or adjust to slow. I'm sure I'll get over it. The hard part for me is no matter what I've weighed, what kind of shape I've been in, I've always moved fast. That is an adjustment for me but one I'm slowly but surely making, pun intended. I'm still ending up with a lot of photographs that get away. Perhaps the most interesting photograph I didn't get today was a humongous turtle sunning on a rock. I got it set up perfectly. I had to take it through the trees and get in just the right spot so the light was good and also be careful not to lose my footing and, drum roll, I snapped the picture right when the turtle grew tired of posing or perhaps was a little sun burned and dove into the water. Oh well. I will hopefully get better at this as time goes on. I am justifying taking another break from work this afternoon to post these pictures because I will try to work as much as possible tonight. I have physical therapy tomorrow morning and would like to be caught up enough so I only need to get a little work done in the morning before P.T. I guess it doesn't matter since I'm sure I'll end up working this weekend. I am so lucky to be able to work from home and to an extent set my own hours as long as I get the hours in. I didn't mind driving to my office this morning to pick up some materials I needed because it was a pleasant drive. Hard to believe I used to make that drive every morning and afternoon. It's not that it's that far to my office as far as commutes go. I know plenty of people have well over an hour, sometimes two hour drives to work in rush hour traffic. It's only about my being so accustomed to being able to get out of bed and go straight to my computer and work off and on through the day and evening. I'm not sure with the chronic pain and neurological symptoms I've had for 16 months if I could have continued working full time, if I had to commute. I know there are plenty of people with worse problems than mine who have active cancer and somehow keep working under much harder conditions than mine. I have the utmost respect for people who can keep going even when it must seem impossible to. I often feel like a total wimp. I know I've mentioned this before on my blog but that's how I feel sometimes but it's counterproductive to dwell on it. I think it has to boil down to what I'm going to do with my good fortune. I am like a broken record but it keeps coming back to one foot in front of the other and trying to move forwards. It's about finding a new rhythm whether or not I get significantly better than I am right this minute. What I have right this minute is a lot.