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2 mars 2023
I keep thinking that I will somehow get my life organized … tomorrow. But then, tomorrow arrives and everything is still hectic and busy and I’m still digging in Tupperware containers trying to find a shirt *I know* I own and yet cannot find … and then tomorrow and another tomorrow and all of a sudden it’s March and life is steamrolling along and I’m getting whiplash trying to keep up.
It is not for the faint of heart.
I think of my mother often, and how she managed to move us every few years, just packing and unpacking and also driving us to sports and activities and smiling and listening … and I feel overwhelmed with a fatigue that seems deeper than MS fatigue (which I did not think was even possible).
A few days ago husband and I were in Philadelphia for an appointment at Fox Chase Cancer Center and we also had to take the Volvo to the dealership for service (the dealership near our new house closed and the closest one is two hours away so … West Chester it is). And somehow, our timing worked out and we snuck up to KoP and into the Apple Store to look at iPads.
I didn’t really know I wanted a new iPad until I realized that my computer is about nine years old and my iPad not much younger, and all I craved was tech that reliably worked for the things *i* needed it to work for — not husby, or work, or what I read online somewhere. But actually, truly, what I was needing. A place to write that travelled with me. That allowed me to watch a movie or two if I so chose … it sounds trivial and small and something I could figure out with any of the other devices I owned. But for some reason, a new piece of tech, that was all mine, for my use purpose — and not a computer that I was given by work or an iPad that was re-homed when hubs got a new one …. It felt too intriguing to pass up.
And so today, I am finally sitting down and typing away at my new iPad. No, I didn’t get a laptop. I don’t need a laptop. I need something that’s easy to use and a keyboard that is comfortable to type on and something that has a bit of memory for everything I’m not storing in the cloud.
She’s beautiful and I love her and I look forward to many years of happy companionship between my iPad and me. And now I have written a bit, even though it’s trivial, and I have marked the occasion. So I feel at peace.
Now, off to see Creed III.
Xox, g
03322
We went to see ‘The Batman’ tonight and it was very good. I wanted to write ‘surprisingly’ or ‘actually’ before good but neither are necessary. There was no indication that it wouldn’t be good and the trailers were cleverly deceptive. The mood was noir and it was incredibly well cast, beautifully shot and had an intriguing story. We both enjoyed it immensely.
My headache is receding and medicine is tomorrow. We’ve decided to stay home next week instead of going to Bellefonte and while it’s a relief I also feel sad that John isn’t going to get to do as much fishing as I know he wants to do in the new streams.
I have some things I’m working on and I’m excited about them. As I get into them I’m sure I’ll write about them here. But for now, life feels okay at home and I am going to sleep without searing pain. So I am grateful for that.
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
10jan22
There are themes that repeat in my mind, ideas that I chew on and spit out and then come back to, still curious, still baffled, still unable to solve.
I guess that’s the problem with being super type A/OCD and wanting, almost needing neat and orderly explanations. My chiropractor has been teaching me the same lesson for years – sometimes there is no cause and no solution. What is just is. And I desperately struggle to find peace in that.
For the past … well, many days, we have been falling asleep to Fellowship of the Ring. It is a movie that John and I both love, but it is also a movie that we came to individually, long before we met each other. I found it on a snowy afternoon when I was in search of anywhere to be but my new room in my new house in State College. I went for a walk, bundled from head to toe against the biting cold and wind. I walked slowly because even then, when I could still feel my legs and my feet, I was cautious and every street downtown was wind blown with snow over a thick sheet of ice.
Back then, there was a movie theatre between College Ave and Beaver Ave and I’d decided that I could spent a few hours warm and alone before returning to a ‘home’ in which I knew no one. The only movie playing within two hours was LOTR. For me, it began there.
I’ve been watching it ever since. And it’s funny and strange to me that this year marks twenty years since that freezing cold day in my life. When I slunk into a seat near the back of a tiny theatre, resolved to fall asleep for a bit before returning to my new digs but was instead transported to Middle Earth.
Time and truth. The ideas that I work over and over in my mind and cannot solve. Time stands still – Bilbo and Gandalf and Frodo and Sam. Time slides by – Ian Holm and Christopher Lee have died. The film quality feels fuzzy. Twenty years. So much has happened and yet, it always takes me back to that moment, that breath of peace I found upon my return to Penn State after nearly a year away. After Italy and 9/11. A lifetime in less than 365 days.
Time is tricky.
Fellowship of the Ring is not. It is comfort and familiarity. It is soothing in an unsettling time.
Xoxo, g
5jan22
There’s snow in the forecast. And I am so deeply happy.
About the snow. Otherwise I’m feeling a little off – tired and irritable and pulled in a million directions. I woke up tired and the whole day unfolded without whim or care to what I’d hoped it would be. Days like today can be soul-crushingly disappointing. Or they can just be ‘one of those days.’ I think it depends entirely on how mentally strong I’m feeling, how disciplined.
Today ended up being ‘one of those days’. Despite trending hard the other way early in the day. I did a longer than normal Peloton ride and John cooked up the last of our leftovers (someone — ahem, me— will have to grocery shop tomorrow. Which I love. So YAY!). We watched the season finale of ‘Yellowstone,’ lit all our candles and snuggled on the loveseat. Tomorrow hubs goes back to work and life begins again in 2022. I have medicine on Friday (likely to be interesting as our usual commute into the city is prime predicted snow time). Dora comes on Saturday (thank Jesus because the house is in dire need of better cleaning than I’ve done the past few weeks). And then Monday will roll around and we’ll be back in a rhythm — Lucy nosing us awake and our days taking their new normal shape.
Tonight we’re falling asleep to Fellowship and it’s painfully comforting. We speak it to each other, the lines so familiar, so known, that it’s like our own love language. I guess that’s thirteen and a half years of falling asleep with the same person. The other half of my soul.
Xoxo, g
2jan22
I sort of love the new Matrix film Matrix: Resurrections.
In anticipation of its release, husby & I watched the original trilogy. I confessed that I wasn’t sure I’d even seen the last film and couldn’t be sure I ever finished the second. We watched them anyway, because why watch a new film, years in the making, often denied even possible, if I didn’t understand the mythology that was the original Matrix? Film 101, right?
The first Matrix film is dated, obviously, but I know how revolutionary it was and I certainly respected -and quite enjoyed – its philosophy on life, its vision of the matrix we are all caught in. What it said about free will, control and power. The second two were less impressive to me — less philosophy and a rumination on the Matrix, and more a sci-fi story about a city in danger. I wasn’t sure — after watching them — that I would be up for the new film, but it’s me, so I knew I’d watch it regardless.
And then I began reading the articles. Interviews conducted with Lana Wachowski over email, Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Ann Moss discussing what brought them back, what intrigued them about re-entering the Matrix.
I was in.
Because I knew what it meant to lose someone and wish for them back so desperately, so intensely, that the grief never seemed to dissipate; it just clouded life, colored it in a new, inescapable way. I knew the comfort I’d found in early 2019 when Avengers: Endgame was released and -even though it was universally agreed that it wasn’t as good as Infinity War – I identified with its theme that anything —no matter how bad it was — could be fixed, reversed.
I wanted to see how Lana brought Neo and Trinity back when she couldn’t bring back her parents. I wanted to see how her grief informed the story of Neo & Trinity re-entering the Matrix. I wanted to see how she used the film, and all its perspectives, to help her cope with overwhelming loss.
I was not disappointed. I like its quirky self-awareness, the strategic re-casting of key players. I like the new additions and the new observations made about life and living. About energy and belief and faith.
Is it as revolutionary as the first Matrix?
Nope.
But to me, that doesn’t matter at all. It’s such an enjoyable ride, such a beautiful love story and tribute to characters, to a world created and destroyed and created again.
I’ll watch it a lot before it leaves HBO on January 21.
Xox, g
Day 136
It’s been a minute.
To me, the last time I blogged feels a lifetime ago. As though so much has changed that those days are nearly unrecognizable. But that’s life … that’s sort of how everything seems to be. Hard to remember, as though so much living has occurred between then and now.
A few days ago the mask mandate was lifted by way of the CDC releasing a statement about the efficacy (or lack thereof) for vaccinated people. It didn’t take much more than that for businesses to change policies, for gyms and studios and restaurants to re-open their doors, their tables.
Whatever my politics may be, it *does* feel like a relief. I don’t want the world to necessarily “return to normal” because what does that even mean in the wake of Covid-19, George Floyd and the civil reckoning that has become part of American culture? It shouldn’t be dismissed or forgotten. We’ve learned things- whether we like it or not. We’ve had to face things, whether it’s comfortable or not. And it isn’t over — it can’t be over. Even if there is a strong contingency of this country who would prefer to turn a blind eye. So no, I don’t want to “return to normal.”
But I would like to move through life without a mask, without the fear that every touch, every breath, could kill me. There is a relief in that, albeit small.
My second vaccine shot wiped me out – took the breath right out of my lungs. But it’s been over two weeks since then, so I am now vaccinated and able to move around again in the company of strangers.
I know that not all people with autoimmune diseases feel the way I feel. They are angry at the change, worried for their health. I understand that. But I can’t live my life by anyone else’s rules but my own. I have to feel comfortable in my own skin. I don’t like being in-authentic. So I feel how I feel. And I am glad to be able to practice yoga in a studio without a mask.
And that’s where I am today. On the eve of a beach trip and fully vaccinated. Looking forward to Black Widow and F9; The Fast Saga. Falling asleep with candles lit for my mother and my brother-in-law, husband doing research and Thor: Ragnarok playing in the background. Lucy snurfling in her bed, dreaming of squirrels and rabbits and sniffs in the long grass of spring.
Xox, g
Day 65
I was thinking about M&Ms tonight.
We’d begun Birdman yesterday and not finished it. So we began it again tonight and after dinner, John poured me a tiny bowl of M&Ms.
I don’t know why, but they symbolized something somewhat … illusive to me.
When I was a child, I loved M&Ms. Just plain ole milk chocolate M&Ms. (Although when I was young, there were only two options … plain or peanut … I didn’t have the myriad of choices that exist in the M&M universe today). I liked the simplicity of M&Ms and the crunch of the hard candy shell around the smooth milk chocolate.
As I grew up I drifted away from them, discovering Junior Mints, Caramello, Starburst and Creme Eggs. And then the much more sophisticated desserts of the restaurant industry … chocolate mousse and creme brûlée and tiramisu and so many others my head spins.
But there’s really nothing more comforting to me than a plain M&M. So now, as I curl up on the couch on a Saturday night, my husband next to me, I don’t need all the fanciful desserts garnished with spun sugar or pickled fruit. I just need the candy that inspired magic in me as a small child.
It felt like a full circle moment …. the beginnings and the journey far away and then the return. To the things that delighted my young, innocent mind. The mind that hadn’t been jaded and beaten and defeated.
Because there’s nothing quite as magical as eating some plain M&Ms while watching a movie on a Saturday night.
Xoxo, g
Day 63
I have always loved Leonardo DiCaprio.
My age has a lot to do with it. I was seventeen when Titanic was released and I saw it six times in the theatre (I love movies). How any 17-year-old didn’t fall a little in love with him is beyond me … he was downright irresistible.
And my love and respect has spanned all these years as he’s fought his pretty boy image and taken role after role in search of his illusive Oscar.
Let me tell you that I don’t usually miss the live Oscars broadcast, but ironically, my old boss scheduled a “team-building” dinner the night Leo finally won, and I was devastated to miss it. (Just ask John, who had to hear me complain about it leading up to it and then deal with me missing Leo’s acceptance speech … not my best self).
I share this because I have recently been reading a book dedicated to the mountain men of the early 1800s American West and I read some tales of Hugh Glass. His bear attack survival, but also just …. his life, in general.
The Revenant doesn’t really do him justice. The man was a legend in his own time. (To be fair, many of the mountain men were … and also, effing insane, but that seems to be the trend of the time).
I sort of love that Leo won his Oscar portraying Glass. It seems fitting to me.
But, in case you were curious, the true story of Hugh Glass is better than the story that is told in The Revenant. And if you want to hear a good interview about it, you can find it on the Meateater podcast; Steven Rinella talks with the author of the book The Revenant. And gets very candid about his (many) beefs with liberties taken in the movie regarding Hugh Glass’ life. It’s really interesting.
So yeah. That’s what’s on my mind tonight.
And PS. Titanic holds up. In case you were wondering. John and I watched it at the height of Covid last year, and were actually impressed with how well it held up. (A movie that doesn’t =Zorro with Antonio Banderas & Catherine Zeta-Jones. I was shocked at how it DID NOT hold up. At all).
Xox, g
Day 41
There are certain things that I find absolutely comforting. Porridge with cream and raspberries. Soy chai lattes from Starbucks. La Traviata on vinyl. Good skincare.
And, among other things, pretty much any Marvel movie.
Marvel really began it’s domination in 2008 with Ironman. I remember buying it on DVD at a Seven Eleven near John’s apartment in Manayunk and watching it with him on one of our few shared days off at the beginning of our relationship. I remember going to see The Avengers on July 4, 2012 — the day my MS began to rear its ugly head. I remember randomly watching Captain America:Winter Soldier during our apartment days and seeking it out to watch again. That was the hook for me. That movie, that character.
My love has only grown over the years (yes, I ordered tickets for Avengers: Endgame at eight in the morning nearly a month before the movie came out because I’d marked my calendar).
This past year I have found infinite comfort in Tony Stark and Steve Rogers and Thor and Nebula and Bruce Banner and Natasha Romanov and Carol Danvers …. When WandaVision finally debuted halfway through January all it did was give me more content, more things to ponder about the vast universe Kevin Feige is deftly building in film.
We fall asleep to Thor:Ragnarok a lot. We both know most of the lines. We both love this version of Thor and of course, Loki. And Valkyrie. Plus, it’s the turning point for Bruce Banner and the Hulk and it’s brilliant. It’s funny but also clever and important in the development of Thor & Hulk’s characters. It stands alone but plays beautifully into the arc of the narrative. And it’s not quite as heavy as Endgame (my other favored sleepy-time movie).
When I’m tired, when I’m scared, when I’m struggling … I always find comfort in Marvel. And maybe that makes me pedestrian. Maybe I’m not a film connoisseur, but I’m okay with that. Because life is too short not to find the joy.
Xox, g
D5 Creation