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21jan22
I got to yoga late this morning – not so late that I missed the start of class or anything, but late enough that I ended up front & center (literally). I don’t mind front but center always poses a problem. I usually use the wall when I begin tipping over and it absolutely helps me during balancing postures.
Today was Fun Friday Flow and as I said to Sue (our teacher) after class, her definition of fun is wildly different than mine! It was a challenging class partly because I had no idea what was coming and for my MS body, that’s a real challenge. But in its own weird way, practice was fun. Because I was fully present. I couldn’t not be. It was just me and my mat and sweat. For seventy-five minutes. And that was glorious.
Sue began by having us think of an intention, and I didn’t so much have that as I had a thought. Nine years. That’s what I kept thinking when I was wobbling or unsure. When I needed to center myself and come back to the basics. When things felt too hard, or impossible.
As of today, I’ve been diagnosed with MS for nine years, And I can still get on my mat and I can still practice. And some days are better than others but they are all better than those first two years of Lydia(my cane) and losing the ability to write and sliding helplessly down the slope of disability. I can walk and I can think and I can – if I’m disciplined – do more than one thing a day and survive.
I’m healthier than I ever was as an adult without an incurable neurological autoimmune disease. That’s a certainty. I eat better and drink better and sleep better and exercise better and think better than young, ‘healthy’ Gwyneth ever did. I’ve learned a lot in nine years. I’ve felt loss and I’ve felt despair, yes, but I’ve also felt joy and accomplishment.
MS is hard. It’s hard for many reasons, but a big one is that I don’t look like much of anything should be hard. I look like a healthy forty-something. And I am, but I’m also not. It’s weird and uncomfortable living with that juxtaposition.
But I’ve been doing it for nine years. Like I’ve been saying all day – wild.
Xoxo, g
20jan22
Life is wild.
It snowed this morning. It was beautiful.
I also got the awful news that a friend – a dear, beautiful, powerful, funny, sharp, successful, vivacious friend – has breast cancer.
Juxtapositions.
Surgeries and disease and stress and angst. Broken furnaces and agoraphobia.
But also snow and hitting financial goals. Second homes and new trucks. International flights booked to see family.
Life is wild.
Xox, g
17jan22
A day can contain so many things and yet, seem insignificant in the grand scheme of life.
We drove home today. It was flurrying when we left and snowed intermittently along the way. The mountains hazy in the distance – gray and snow filled, black trees against stark white. The gas station that serves as our midway point was only accepting cash (a temporary issue per the papers posted to all the doors) but we luckily had some so we grabbed some food. It was necessary. Moments when small things – like the twenty stuffed in one of our wallets – becomes vital.
The truck glided down the road, moving faster than it felt, humming quietly but not raging. A much different experience than the Jeep Truck (who remained unnamed) and Bucky before him. We giggled as we discovered new ‘secrets’ – the way the wipers worked and the lumbar support built into both the driver and passenger seats. But we didn’t talk much – it was one of those drives. Gray and quiet and steady. Strangely familiar but also new. Comforting.
The joy of our second house is that coming home doesn’t mean massive loads of laundry and hours of unpacking. It usually means taking Lucy for a good walk and unpacking the cooler. Today we eschewed working out for resting – curling up and watching some movies while eating a homemade dinner.
We watched the end of “The Tender Bar” (begun before Ben’s last game but unfinished because after four hours of painful football we just didn’t have the energy to finish it) and “Coda.” Both movies so simple but so powerful. I watched the climactic scene of “Coda” and memories rushed back – of the day I sang in an audition, years and years ago. What I wore, the fact that my mother and I drove through a snow storm to be there… or maybe it was to get home. I can’t remember anymore and it doesn’t really matter. My heart squeezed thinking of those moments – long forgotten but now fresh, of how my mother supported me and my dreams. How she willed most of them to come true. How she was always right about the ones that I shouldn’t have pined for. How she was always right about most things.
It was just a day among other days, filled with small details and routine actions. And it was a testament to the life John and I have built and the people we used to be who grew into the people we are now. That’s how life shapes itself in my mind now. Tiny building blocks growing into new and unexpected things.
Singers who no longer sing. Writers who long to write. People just being people to the best of their ability.
Xox, g
16jan22
There’s snow on the forecast for tonight. We’ve run our errands – and most importantly of all, gotten coffee. And more sparkling water (we realized last night we were down to our last four cans … which for us is danger danger low). So now we’re home, about to take Lucy for a nice long neighborhood walk and get settled in for the snow.
While we were out and about (basically driving around some back roads while we sipped our hot beverages) we got on the subject of Baker. Baker is one of husby’s closest friends and I have known him since almost the beginning of husby and me. Last summer I finally met his wife and she’s amazing. Of course she is, she couldn’t be anything else. I joked for a long time that she didn’t exist because it was over a decade before I met her but she does and she lives up to all the hype. Of course she does. She’s Baker’s other half and he’s just a really great guy.
Anyway. Husby ended up calling and we chatted for a little. Hopefully we will see them soon — the house in Bellefonte is (obviously) much closer to Pittsburgh than Downingtown ever will be and it makes seeing our Pittsburgh friends easier.
It made me think about friendship. Mine, husby’s …. Ours.
I have several amazing female friends but I don’t have many. I used to feel self-conscious about that because shouldn’t I have more? Wasn’t friendship like life — more is clearly better? But the older I get and the more time I notch on my belt in this life, the more I inherently understand that the friendships I have — with my husband first and foremost but also with the women I call sisters — are what make life sweet, worthwhile and full. And I don’t need a million of them, I only need a few really good ones.
Both husband and I are very lucky in our friendships. With our chosen people, the ones we share our time and our thoughts with. They are our family, our people. Our safety net. And we are very lucky.
I’d write more but I have gotten interrupted a million times (Lucy is very persistent) and now I’ve completely lost my train of thought. Ooof.
Xox, g
14jan22
Some days play out exactly as you think they will. Others … not so much.
Today was a bit of both for us. We had a plan, we knew the objective … but life wasn’t feeling super cooperative, so things didn’t go exactly as we’d envisioned.
I’m not always very good about being super aware in the moment, but today – for some strange, unknown reason – I took a beat. I realized that in the end, we would arrive at the same conclusion (back home in Bellefonte, new truck). And that the way we got there might not have been what we’d anticipated, but wasn’t that the quirky nature of life?
I even had the crazy forethought to understand — as we climbed in the truck to head home —that I should eat something or risk being a complete bitch for the duration of the drive.
So our day was crazy. And we ended up not even making dinner (French fries and mozzarella sticks will do that). And then, instead of a movie or a show, we watched the Harry Potter reunion.
But it wasn’t bad. It just … was. I guess I’m learning that it’s easier if I let go of the expectations. Everything feels less intense, less dramatic and less dire if I just accept it as it comes.
I’m forty-two and that’s a really tough lesson to learn.
Xox, g
12jan22
There was absolutely nothing remarkable about today.
We did the things. Work and chores and dinner.
And I was nearly asleep before once again remembering I hadn‘t blogged. So I obviously have nothing to say and am very, very tired.
Life.
Snow on the forecast for this weekend. Significant snow and I hope it happens. I love snow.
Xox, g
11jan22
First, I need to stop blogging as I’m going to bed. Because by this time I’ve completely given up on critical thought and all I’m truly focused on is falling asleep (and staying asleep) for the rest of the night. But Stephen King wrote in On Writing that best practice for writing is to write … every day. So I’m here, writing every day. Like I did last year. Hoping it sticks better this year. Hoping at some point it stops being about getting it done and starts being about having something to say.
The truth is I have many things to say, I just haven’t found the personal discipline to sit down and put my thoughts to paper in a cohesive, understandable way. It’s much easier in theory than in practice. As most things are.
Husby and i have been watching the show “Station Eleven” on HBO. We are caught up and now anticipating the finale on Thursday. It has been a confusing, intriguing, layered, troubling, uncomfortable, enlightening series. As I watch it I wonder – do I have anything this powerful to share? Does my creativity hit this level of brilliance? … No one – least of all me – will ever know if I don‘t finish something. That’s the truth.
Anyway. It’s later than I want it to be but I’m going to bed now. I have written for today.
Xoxo, g
9jan22
Here’s the thing about resolutions — the only person who gives them any power, any weight, is the person making them.
This is what I thought as I lay in bed, so proud of closing my eyes before 9.45p (my designated bedtime) having accomplished all the things I needed to do before bed.
And then, as John and I talked about life and our upcoming week, and how lucky we are to have each other, and how much we love Fellowship of the Ring my eyes – newly filled with eye ointment – popped open and I said “I forgot to blog.”
A thousand things ran through my brain at once and I came to the sad and inevitable conclusion that no, while it did not truly matter if I blogged or not, yes, it actually did matter a great deal to me. I managed to blog most every day at the beginning of last year and last year’s beginnings were much more bleak than this year. If I can’t manage to follow my own prescribed discipline and my own rules, then what am I even doing?
So here I am, talking about nothing because today was a lazy day filled with football and spiralized sweet potato and freezing rain and strange television. And even if I’d had a brilliant blog post idea, right now all I want to do is stop squinting through my eye ointment, lie down and go to sleep.
But I did blog and even though it’s nonsense it means something to me. These words, this blog. It means something to me.
Xoxo, g
7jan22
Ten years ago, John + I drove to New Jersey and discovered the missing piece to our lives. Her name was Lucy (well, actually it was Betsy … ), she was six months old and she knew that we were hers just as much as we knew she was ours.
There have been very few things that hubs & I have done in our nearly fourteen years together that have been better than that drive to New Jersey and the addition of Lucy to our lives.
Happy Gotcha Day my baby girl. I will love you eternally.
Xoxo, g
6jan22
Tomorrow is medicine day.
I have a raging headache today because I’ve pushed myself too hard too many days in a row without resting. And with no real rest in view. Plus we’re forecast to get a lot of snow right about when we’ll be driving to the hospital. So, yeah. Yay?
It’s one of my least favorite new MS things, these headaches. I’ve been tracking them for about a year and the only thing I can find in common with all of them (other than their 3 day life span) is that they come when I’m ‘getting into a groove’. Aka working out a lot and feeling like a normal human (running errands, cooking dinner ….pretty regular human stuff). Anyway. I’m a little frustrated. I’m obviously exhausted.
But I’m wearing my tie dyed PSU sweats and we’re gonna watch an oldie but a goodie tonight. So it’s not a total loss of a day. Plus, Lucy had a spa day (mani, pedi, bath, teeth cleaning…. Basically the works). We’re doing alright.
Xoxo, g
D5 Creation