ʎɐp sןooɟ ןıɹdɐ ʎddɐɥ

˙ǝʇısqǝʍ ǝɥʇ oʇ ʞɔɐq ǝɔɐɹʇ ɐ puɐ ǝʇɐpdn ʞooqǝɔɐɟ ɐ pɐɥ oɥʍ 'ı oʇ sʞuɐɥʇ sı ǝƃɐssǝɯ sıɥʇ ˙ɟǝıןǝɹ ǝןʇʇıן ɐ sı sıɥʇ 'sʍǝu ǝɥʇ uı dɐɹɔ ǝɥʇ ןןɐ ɥʇıʍ ˙ǝuoʎɹǝʌǝ ʎɐp sןooɟ ןıɹdɐ ʎddɐɥ 'ooɥ ʎuɐ ¿sʍouʞ oɥʍ ˙ɯıɥ puɐɯıɹdǝɹ ʇouuɐɔ noʎ ʇɐɥʇ ǝןıɯs ɥsıdɯı uɐ sɐɥ ǝɥ ǝqʎɐɯ ˙ǝɔɐןd ɟo ʇno ɹıɐɥ ǝןƃuıs ɐ ɥʇıʍ ʎɐʍɐ ʇǝƃ ʇou pןnoɔ sn ɟo ʇsǝɹ ǝɥʇ ˙ʎuunɟ ʎɹǝʌ sɐʍ ǝɥ ʇɥƃnoɥʇ uınɾ ǝɯɐpɐɯ ˙sɹǝdɐd ɥɔuǝɹɟ sıɥ uo spɹɐʍʞɔɐq ǝʌısɹnɔ uı ǝɯɐu sıɥ ǝʇıɹʍ oʇ pǝsn sǝןɹɐɥɔ ɹǝɥʇoɹq ʎɯ ˙ǝuoʎɹǝʌǝ ʎɐp sןooɟ ןıɹdɐ ʎddɐɥ ˙sıɥʇ ɟo ʞuıɥʇ ʇou ı pıp ʎɥʍ 'ʍoʍ

and the website in case I ever need it

http://www.whatsmyip.org/upsidedowntext/

Words of wisdom from Forrest

Yesterday I went to All Souls UU church on the upper east side of NYC. It is a really beautiful church. Forrest Church preached a great sermon. During it he mentioned that he has said these before but since this was my first time hearing it, I was pretty struck.

Remeber 3 things he said:
Like what you have
Do what you can
Be who you are

I was with A at the service, and she wrote them down to give to her son who is about to graduate from college. I said them over and over to myself so I would remember them. I knew A had written them down as well. I did not want to lose this nugget, so now that I have blogged it, I will know where to go in case I forget.

NYC - great long weekend

This is just how we think and it is amazing how in sync we usually are. We were invited to attend a donor recognition event for our beloved Star Island, and the options were in MA or NYC. The weekend for the MA one was one of our VT weekends, so we said "Let's attend the NYC one and make a weekend of it."

I am sitting on the Bolt bus for our return bus trip and I have to say we fit a lot into the weekend. In somewhat chronological order here is what we did:

*Left 8:30 pm on Thursday night from South Station
*Arrived at Midnight at Penn Station and cab to Pod Hotel on 51st between 2nd and 3rd (Try it sometime, very small funky room, but exactly enough space for showering and sleeping, which is all you need a hotel room for anyway)
*Walked to Times Square and ate a light bite at 24 hour restaurant across the street from Lindy's. We were headed to Lindy's for the obligatory cheese cake but they were closed at 1:30 am. The nerve . . .
*Home to bed, clock said 2am, but it had not been changed from EST to EDT, we actually went to bed at 3am and got up at 9am the next morning
*Bought 1-day metro pass (we did this all 3 days) and traveled via bus to Natural History Museum. Spent most of the day there with a short break to have a bagel from H&H. I loved the gem and mineral wing.
*Walked back across Central Park to our hotel,(79th across the park, then down Madison to 51st and I might add, there were no Starbucks on Madison in all of those blocks) freshened up, and took bus up to Yorkville to dine with the Mays
*Walked home from East 83rd to 51st since it was 20 minutes before the next bus and we had planned to get on the bus when it caught up with us. This never happened. Just a few 32, short blocks
*Down the next morning to Greenwich Village, bought cheap but good stuff at a street fair, after breakfast at diner
*Up to the theater district to see Jane Fonda in 33 Variations (GO SEE IT)
*Quick dinner with friend who is chairing All Star II this year.
*To the donor recognition dinner on Central Park West.
*Back on Subway, finally had obligatory Lindys's cheese cake
*Crashed into bed
*Up this morning to breakfast, I went to All Souls and a quick brunch with 2 friends. Rod walked over to 8th and 9th then to MOMA
*Lunch at Rockefeller Center, poked around in some more shops
*Took subway to 34th and caught the Bolt bus.

Yes, we packed a lot into the weekend. We saw some friends and missed seeing some others. Not enough time in the day to catch up with everyone. Next time.

One of our dreams/plans is to live in NYC for an extended period 6-12 months. Each time we go for a long weekend, we explore areas we have never explored before. We have learned to take the bus coz you can see the neighborhoods. We have learned to not take the bus around matinee time. We got off and walked to the theater and beat the bus by many minutes. The diversity and unique areas are infinite. There is a lot to see.

All in all it was a great time. I AM EXHAUSTED.

Yoga the next phase

My friend K recommended the Book "Breakfast with Buddha". I am 3/4 of the way through it and really love it. Last night I was reading about a yoga class that the 2 main characters in the book participated in. The non-yogi explained a feeling lying in corpse pose, which is the final meditative part of a yoga practice. In a discussion the yogi explained that he is in that state, almost all the time. Maybe, all the time. I cannot remember those details.

So, it got me thinking about 2 things. 1) I need to meditate in small doses. 5 minutes in our covenant group, every other week, and 5 minutes in yoga class twice a week. In a 4 week month that is 50 minutes. My friend Laura said once "I don't do math in public." but per that last sentence, I guess I do. I am going to try to put more meditation in my months.

The second thing I have been thinking about is the non-violence training that I went through a few weeks ago with 300 other Lexingtonians. Our training helped us take spewing foul language for 45 minutes, and to not react. This has helped me not react to others as well. It has really helped me realize what my baggage is, and what others' baggage is. With the WBC, it was very clear that their spewing was their baggage and it was easy to leave it in the middle or Worthen Road. With this new skill, I can NOT react to situations whereas in the past I might have reacted is a not very healthy way.

Both of these thoughts are very cleansing to me.

Worry - I continue to explore this one

Within the last year our covenant group explored the topic of WORRY. At the time, some brilliant member said "Worry is the misuse of imagination". I have repeated that to many folks during the year. Some have even put it on the signature of their email.

BINGO - yesterday on Twitter, and I am not sure of the origin or I would give them credit, I found another quote. Not a better one, just another one:

"Worry does not empty tomorrow of sorrow - it empties today of strength."

So as a closet worrier, or maybe a not so closet worrier, this one helps me move the needle on my exploration of worry.

Burying my grief in a shuffling Ipod

After my last post, I took our dog for a walk. My iPod is on shuffle, so the first song was Ave Maria, Pavarotti and friends. It was kismet that this was my first song. As I always do with my favorite songs, I rewound that song 3 times. Then came on Alan Sherman 12 days of Christmas. Back to back Pavarotti and Alan Sherman, huh? Yes, my preferred mode of listening is shuffle. It validates my ENFP MBTI type. The last song as I walked up the front steps was put on by C, last year for my birthday, a Phish.

Night grief is made easier by:

rising sun
walk with the dog
shuffling iPod
laughing at myself

Too sad to sleep

Rarely do I have insomnia. Last night, or rather early this morning I did. I slept until 2:30 am but then thoughts of sadness invaded my pillow and I could not get back to sleep. After Daddy died my sister and I had an agreement that we could call each otnher any time of day or night that we wanted. I think we both took advantage of this at least once. In the middle of the night to be so alone with grief is really hard. Or maybe that is when grief work is best. Cannot be distracted, cannot go anywhere with it.

Usually when I cannot sleep I do a really silly routine. This is it. When I graduated from college, my cousin from Colorado, her best friend and my best friend from college and I went to Europe for 6 weeks. It was a really great trip. So when I cannot sleep, I go through that trip chronologically. Mostly, I remember briefly the town we spent that day in. I don't usually get past the 4th or 5th night before I am asleep. This works for me, counting sheep does not work. Last night I tried this routine twice, but my grief would not be fooled by silly routines. So at 6am it became legitimate to get up and here I sit on the couch, watching stupid early moring TV, with my chocolate lab asleep at my side. It was a long night of unsleep.

ICA - wonderful sunny day

This morning we went to the Barn and cleaned out Bee's locker. We walked up the hill to see where Autumn is buried, took a video of the view that he has and cried and cried and cried. There is an endless amount of tears we can cry it seems. The woman who was leasing Autumn showed up, with some flowers for his grave, right after we started clearing out the locker. She was devestated as well, and she has only been riding him for 2 months. On Monday, the day before he broke his leg, she took her husband to meet him. "Are you sure they don't want to sell him?" he asked her. It did not take very long for him to work his way into her heart.

We went by our local equestrian shop to buy racks to put our saddles on in our back shed, took K's car to the airport (Bee had been in NC with K and A when we had to call to tell her about Autumn).

As a distraction, and because we are members, we decided to go to the ICA. This is a wonderful museum BTW. Shepard Fairey's exhibit is incredible and another video "THEM" by Artur Zmijewski was excellent as well. We are already planning on going back soon before some of the exhibits leave. Then we walked into the North End and had a nice early dinner at a traditional Italian restaurant. Home by way of the T and a cab.

Murg is off to see Watchman at an IMAX near here and I am going to go to bed early. This is a result of buring the candle at both ends all this week, and some restless nights. Grief like this disrupts your equilibrium. A visit to the ICA helps as a nice distraction from this grief, AIG, CNN etc.

A Surreal Week - we cannot write the script

This week has not turned out as I expected it to. Briefly, on Tuesday our horse Autumn broke his leg and we had to have him "put down". As a parent this was one of the worst experiences ever. We have had him for over 7 years. During those years, Bee rode him 5-6 times a week. Lately, since he stayed here for Bee's second year of college, Rod has been riding him twice a week, and someone else at the barn has been leasing him.

Making the decision was difficult and saying good-bye to him was heart wrenching. I used work this week, as a distraction, but driving home today to face the weekend, I realized how surreal it has been. Pretty much since Tuesday night, I have just been putting one foot in front of the other. I actually have been pretty productive at work as a way to keep the grief at bay.

When there is a death of a loved one, all kinds of memories come back. The first time I saw him, the first time Bee fell off, the cross country course where they both galloped up a hill with huge smiles on their faces as they realized they could indeed do this, that same show when Bee took a jump without stirrups because she lost them, Bee's senior teen chapel when she talked about all that he taught her, them cantering in the rain after we moved to Huckins and Denise made it clear to Autumn that he was going to behave, GMHA and watching him and her master the 3 phases, those hours of watching her and him work hard and develop into a single unit, her saying at their first show "Where do I get off sitting on top of a 1200 pound beast and thinking I can control him?", a picture we took of him in the trailer after that show stretching out his lips and showing his teeth, and on and on and on . . .

He was supposed to retire to Coniston with us. We talked frequently about where the horse barn and paddock would go.

But as my aunt told me "We cannot write the script."

This is a week that I will never forget and it is very familiar. I felt like this after Joe died and I felt like this after Daddy died. I wondered how I could ever feel vaguely normal again. I wondered if I would ever stop crying.

I think the hardest part of this week has been watching my child and husband go through such a loss and realize that there is absolutely nothing I can do to help or console them.

We are staying home this weekend when we would normally be at Coniston. We need some peace and quiet and time to grieve. We need to light the candle at First Parish Lexington.

St Patrick's Day - different traditions - what was yours?

Growing up in Colorado and Vermont, on St Pats day if you did not wear green you got pinched. Kids can be pretty mean to each other. I just assumed that this was a universal tradition. However, sharing at work just now, 2 folks who grew up in Boston did not have that tradition, but a mid-westerner did. One of the Boston folks, who is Italian said they used to wear orange on St Pats day. What is that all about?

So in the spirit of the name of my post I am wondering what traditions others had on St Pat's day? Pinching or orange? or something else . . . ?

Please share!

Shields and non-violence training

Our community stood in unity and solidarity on Friday when the WBC came to town. 340 of us formed a line for 45 minutes, in front of the HS in a "shield of loving kindness". Halfway through the spewing of hate and disgusting language shouted through the bull horn, we all turned our backs on the protestors and faced our youth who were getting out of school. On our backs were bumper stickers "Power of Silence".

We stood in silence for 45 minutes, holding hands, in two long lines between the spewers and the students. We had been trained in non-violent action. During the training for 2 minutes we had to not react as another role player screamed at us, in language that was similar to what we would hear during our non-violent action. The training was actually worse than the event.

WBC is very punctual, they arrive when they say they will, and leave when they say they will. We remained silent in our lines, while the 8 of them got back in the mini-van.

As they turned the corner away from the HS there was a quiet cheer among the participants.

What I realized about 10 minutes into standing there, is that every muscle in my body was tense. I was on high alert. As soon as I realized this I relaxed my muscles. 3 days later my muscles, from being tense for those 10 minutes, are still sore.

This is a bit of a rambling post, but being trained in non-violence is really good for the rest of my life. I am more able to listen to people without reacting, and I am able to wait until they are done before I form a rebuttal. As I consider difficult conversations, I am able to listen, and look right through the person who is speaking. I am able to just not react. This will take lots of practice.

It really was a gift to participate in this silent action. The non-violent response is a shield I carry with me going forward.

Walking with my iPod is meditative

OK, not everyone will understand my point of view, but this is what works for me. I needed to write something up tonight and while I was on my walk after work, the way to structure the document came to me in a split second just at the end of my walk.

Crick used to say that he would think about a paper over a few days, and be composing it in his mind and then sit down and write it. That is sort of what happened to me today. I wrote some stuff down last night but is was pretty disjointed. I had writer's block about how to proceed.

Mind you, I was walking the dog, listening to my iPod and it seems that this is what calmed my mind enough to focus. Some people get their best thought in the shower, I get my best thoughts when I am doing something else.

While I am checking my email and facebook is when I create my to-do list for the day. Neurons fire while I am checking them, that help me figure out what my big rocks for the day are. Honestly, I don't think sitting down and focusing on my big rocks is as effective.

I could be totally fooling myself, but I have enough data that through distraction I get more focused.

It is hard work for me to meditate during yoga, and it is easy for me to meditate while walking with my iPod.

Today during yoga, the teacher at the end said "Are you thinking about your task list for the day?" Really????? I cannot stop myself from thinking about what is ahead of me for the day, as I lie there quietly.

OK, on to the next distration . . .

MBTI - the language is so important

2 times in the last week, I have gotten into trouble because I have not listened carefully enough. Not BIG trouble, but misunderstanding trouble.

The first was Friday night. Rod was driving and I was putting his password into his Blackberry. His words and his actions were perfectly clear to him and unperfectly clear to me. Both of us were being ABSOLUTELY clear. It was pretty funny. We talked through it and will never understand each other, but I think we understood the disconnect after our frustrations with each other faded. Rod?

The second was, 2 member of our covenant group were planning the next session during a church potluck. They asked a question, which I understood one way, and they meant another way. Both of us had our own reality of the elephant in the middle of the table but I was touching the trunk and describing it one way, and they had a firm hand on one of the legs and were perfectly accurate in their description.

No matter how well I know the theory of MBTI, it still trips me up, ALL THE TIME.

I would love to be perfect and not get so frustrated, but both of these events provide me 2 more stories to use in my workshops. They were classic.

This is SO Spring in New England and EDT

Yesterday was beautiful, sunny 60 degrees, some snow left and lots of mud. I actually only wore a coat at 9:30 at night, when I picked up my car from the "Park and Ride" at Fidelity in NH.

Today, waking up an hour earlier than I was supposed to, coz of EDT, there is snow on the ground. Wet slushy snow still falling.

Everyone I know at work has an EDT hangover and combine that with a snow, has really slowed things down here. I have met several people at the coffee machine, moving in slo mo, getting another cup of coffee.

We live in New England because of the change in seasons, right? Well this last 18 hours there has been a lot of season changing. I know that the sun will be around later than usual tonight, and it might still be behind those snow clouds but it is there.

Happy Spring, Happy Winter, Happy Spring, Happy Winter . . . repeat rinse

Too many deaths make me numb

Ok, contrary to my previous post I stayed for my full yoga class today and spent a full five minutes in meditation. I lost 2 dear friends this week. The first was Gail Reed who was our next door neighbor for all of my teenage years in VT. The second was Toby Wood who is a Old Shoaler from Star Island. He kayaked out to Star last Friday, and was never found after his return trip to the mainland. His yellow Kayak was found north of his predicted route.

Gail was my friend BUT she was one of my Mom's best friends. Mom lost 2 other very good friends within the last 12 months. Growing up, all three of these friends' of my parents were incredibly involved and influential on me and my siblings.

Gail painted a picture of my horse Pandora, for the birthday that I got Pandora and it still hangs in our study. She was very creative. In their family room were collages of pictures of their family. That was part of the inspiration for the collage we gave Mummy and Daddy in the early 90s. I wanted them to have a collage of members of all of our extended family.

Frank was my Dad's pal and my Mom's friend. He gave a eulogy at Dad's funeral that I still cry when I remember it today. Frank used to love to lob the tennis ball and always caught me going the wrong way with his lobs. Mom gave a wonderful eulogy at Frank's funeral. I do not know how she does it. She gave one at Dad's service, talking about what Dad would have said about all 7 of us, and she was spot on,

Ernie was a musician and was most comfortable with his fingers on the ivories. Many hours were spent singing while Ernie played.

Toby . . . I cannot talk about Toby yet . . .

While lying there in my 5 minutes of meditation, I realized that I have not cried about Toby yet. I am very sad, but I have not cried yet. I heard about him and Gail within 48 hours and I have not cried about her yet either. I got closer as I lay there and I think that I have gotten a bit numb this year with the deaths that have happened to me. I got really sad and quiet which is how my day is going so far.

So, if I had jumped up and not done the meditation, I would not have had the time to reflect about death and friends. All of these 4 were friends of mine at different levels. I thought a lot about Mom who has lost 3 of her really good friends in less than 12 months. I thought about my grand mother who lived to be 90 and often talked about how hard is was to get old and have your friends die off.

Reading Rabbi Kushner's book is really helpful as I process the grief of losing these 2 friends; "Overcoming Life's Disappointments"

When the student is ready, the teacher appears

"How beautiful it is to do nothing,and then to rest afterward."-- Spanish Proverb

Just now on twitter, I read this quote. This was exactly what I was thinking about in yoga this morning. The hardest part of yoga for me is the meditative, restful part at the beginning and the end. Often, I will sneak out with 5 minutes to go, and miss the restful part. Today, I found myself at the beginning, during the initial part of the practice, just lying there, saying "OK, when are we going to start moving?"

My growing edge is to do nothing, say nothing and just be. For you followers of my blog, I don't need any feedback just yet on this. I will let you know.

This quote says it all for me. DO NOTHING and THEN REST. HUH? Ok, I obviously have not internalized this just yet. Intellectually, I understand it. Maybe if I spend more time "doing nothing", I will get it! Don't know, coz I have not practiced that very much.