I had been so looking forward to therapy dog training for Sophie. In my imagination, it was a combination of the classes we enjoyed in Arcata, plus some of the approach and style from one of my favorite books on dog training, Through A Dog’s Eyes, (<–affiliate link) by Jennifer Arnold, who trains service dogs.

In reality, not so much.

I took an online personality test recently which was somehow related to branding, although I can’t find it again. As I hit Return on the final question, I confidently expected to be told that I was a people-pleaser, highly motivated to get good grades and approval from other people. Literally, I’m the kind of person who pats myself on the back when my car insurance app praises me for my good driving. Instead, the personality test told me I was a rebel who didn’t like following other people’s rules. Whoa! Everyone I’ve told this to in real life has laughed, I think in agreement with the test. And, in fact, with a little more thought… well, yes. It is perhaps more apropos than I would have guessed.

It’s relevant, because the therapy dog classes are heavily obedience-focused. Dogs must obey. I felt not great when they were passing out prong collars as class began — okay, it’s one thing to say that people can use them for a little while, another entirely to provide them. When a dog was whimpering and crying behind me, I felt more not great. It wasn’t my dog — obviously, the moment Sophie is whimpering, I’m absolutely done — but still…

And then I obsessed about it all weekend. I didn’t do any of my happiness certification training, I didn’t do any of my branding and marketing research, I didn’t write, and I wasn’t happy. I kept thinking that I needed to give the classes more of a chance. That they were for Sophie and that I should see whether she enjoys it before making any decisions.That I’d already paid for the first month and all the accoutrements, and so I should at least stick it out for a few weeks. That I need things that get me outside of my house and opportunities to meet people, and that Sophie would just make such a good therapy dog, and she also needs stimulation…

Sunday afternoon I had to force myself to go to the writer’s group in downtown Sanford that I loved in November and December. I kept telling myself that I really liked it before and it’s not like I could just do it later if I didn’t go, but I was just in such an off mood. I wanted to crawl under the covers and be grumpy. But I forced myself to go, and within the first ten minutes, someone said something that triggered the thought, “Trust your instincts.”

Trust your instincts.

Have my instincts been wrong before? Maybe, but I don’t remember a time. Have they been right before? Absolutely. Multiple times. The moments when I knew something felt wrong but I did it anyway. Sending R to summer camp once, ugh. 

This therapy dog training program feels wrong to me.

Also, trying to make my dog “obedient” is not how I want to spend my time and use my energy. I’m not convinced it makes sense, either — why does a therapy dog need to be a perfect loose-leash walker? Why is a good “heel” the priority? Why should dogs walk in circles and be forced to sit? It’s a “do what I say because I say it” attitude, when Sophie, and my relationship with Sophie, has thrived on trust and communication. 

So, yeah. I suspect that Sophie is not going to become a therapy dog, at least not through this program. I did do some more research on other dog training programs in Orlando — my whole goal was for her to have fun and stimulation, because she loved the classes we did in Arcata and was learning so much, and doing so well — but, unsurprisingly, Orlando seems to lean a lot more to the obedience, discipline, shock collar schools of thought. It is just not me. 

Anyway, on this cold gray Monday morning, I am extremely over-tired — my brain was running in circles through most of the night, it felt like — so I am not going to make any decisions today. But I think it’s probably not going to be much of a productive day either, which is a pity because there is so much I could be working on. So many things to learn, so many things to do. But they’ll all still be there tomorrow. 

 

 

Ta-dah!

Yep, goal number one met. I am officially a certified life coach.

I’m not quite sure how I feel about it. It feels fake, in a way, because I haven’t worked with any real clients, i.e. people who pay me money to help them with their life. On the other hand, those years of counseling school, and the binges of self-help reading, do mean I’m pretty far ahead of the game in terms of knowing everything the class covered. Plus, I breezed through many of the exercises because they were things I’d already done. I was super amused by one exercise that had me thinking about passion and purpose in life, because I spent the last two months thinking about just those things. If I hadn’t already done that work, I wouldn’t have been taking the class!

Overall, there were not a lot of surprises for me. The biggest area that I didn’t know much about was neurolinguistic programming, aka NLP. Me being me, I immediately started doing more research, and while NLP is a hot topic, there’s not a lot of science to back it up. There’s nothing in it that’s dangerously far out there, IMO — I’d put it in Law of Attraction territory for being maybe helpful, maybe just wishful thinking — but there’s nothing that says I have to use it with my future clients. I’d really rather spend more time talking about how we can improve their sleep than working on hypnosis-type strategies for changing their thinking, although I guess those two areas could easily intersect. But it definitely won’t be my focus.

There was one cool exercise, though, where you visualize as emotion as a physical object — with a color, a texture, a location in your body — and then you start to spin it, and transform it. At the end, the emotion doesn’t feel the same. You’ve changed it. I found it surprisingly effective in the moment, and would definitely try it again or recommend it to someone who had some unpleasant emotions to work through. Again, though, not really going to be the focus of my future “signature program.” (Instagram has just been flooding me with ads and sponsored posts about coaching, so I am quickly getting up there with the jargon.) 

Apart from the life coach certification class, which was fairly intense because I was doing it quite quickly, I’ve been looking at branding and marketing and video creation. I spent hours yesterday working on logo design, because before I can really start creating content, I need to figure out what it looks like. <– And the moment I wrote that, I realized that’s a stupid idea. I don’t have to know what the cover looks like before I write the book. And I don’t have to create my website before I start putting my ideas together! Well, that’s… a thing to think about, I suppose. I do still feel like it’s an obvious first step, but maybe I’m rushing my fences. It’s enjoyable, but I definitely reached a point yesterday where I felt stressed out, and anxious, and like I was spinning my wheels, going nowhere. Fortunately, Miss Sophie Sunshine suggested that it was time to play, so I walked away from my computer and by the time I came back, I felt better. 

Last night was the first class for her therapy dog training. She didn’t get to come to that one: it was the introductory class to meet the instructors and talk about how the whole thing works, ie the goals, the process, the requirements. I am… reserving judgement, I guess. I spent $90 today on the required stuff — a harness, Therapy dog badges, paw treatment lotion, a first aid kit, wet wipes, nail clippers (she has to have her nails trimmed, which she is just going to love <–not) — so I’m committed enough to be investing.

But they allow prong collars up until the first AKC certification test (although not after) and they don’t use treats, so I am going to see how the training actually goes. I think Sophie will like it — it involves a ton of outings to a lot of different places, and a lot of learning, which ought to please her. She is a girl who likes to be busy. But if anything about the training makes her unhappy, I’ll quit. The whole point is for her to be having fun, so if it’s not fun for her, she will not become a therapy dog.

But I do think she’ll like it. It’s a lot of work, though! I knew it was 90 hours of training, plus a bunch of testing, but I didn’t really factor in driving time in my mental  estimation of what it would require. Last night’s class was an hour away, started late and ran long, so it was four hours, not the one hour I expected. I don’t expect every one of those 90 hours to require another 2 hours on either side — the training takes place in many different locations — but it’s definitely going to be keeping me busy. Also getting me out and meeting people and doing things, all of which is good. We’ll see how it goes. Along the way she’ll have to pass 3 AKC certification tests, too, including some things that I am not at all sure about, ie calmly stay with a stranger for three minutes while I leave. So maybe she’ll fail! I guess that would be we’ll fail, since I’m the one responsible for teaching her. But I have no idea how one teaches a thoroughly attached dog how to be okay with being left with a stranger, so… yeah. I repeat, we’ll see how it goes. 

Plans for the rest of today: a trip to the grocery store, some work in my Happiness Coach Certification class, a little more time watching my video class, and tonight, writing with my friend, J. I’m looking forward to the last the most, obviously! I’ve been quite happily doing all my stuff, but there’s a dragon in the back of my head, tapping her foot impatiently, and I don’t want to leave her alone for too much longer. Who knows what kind of trouble she would get into? 

 

 

 

 

 

Two thoughts for this fine Monday morning.

The first, someone else’s goal for 2024: to create more than she consumes. I read that and it was like a delightful bolt of lightning. What a great idea! She wants to create more meals, more art, more ideas, and more experiences, all of the “more” being “more than she consumes,” not the perpetual hamster wheel of just “more” in general. So less scrolling, watching, and reading, in order to create more space for her own doing, imagining, and creating.

I’m not going to adopt this idea, because I’m very busy with my own Focus and Fun right now, but I wanted to save it. Maybe next year!

Second thought, sort of related: if you knew you would live forever, what would you be doing differently today? There is no death, no impending old age, no limits on your time. Life stretches out before you, endlessly. Groundhog Day, in fact, although you still need to earn a living and exist in the world as it is — ie, no foreknowledge of what the next day will bring and no guaranteed bed/roof/meals. Would you spend your time feeling bored, drinking too much, doom-scrolling, playing endless rounds of solitaire? Or would you start making plans to do the things you’ve always wanted to do? Would you look for a new job, think about going back to school, start saving for a big trip, learn a language or an instrument? I think we’d all probably take climate change a lot more seriously — we’d be the ones paying the price for our choices — but beyond that… well, I think it’s a really interesting question. The “what would you do if you knew tomorrow was your last day?” is one I’ve heard and thought about, of course, but the “what would you do if you had forever?” is really just as interesting. 

(The #1 answer for me would be to get back to yoga and do a lot more of it. If I was going to live forever, I’d want to be doing it in a strong, healthy, capable body, one that could climb some mountains and swim in some oceans.)

Other things: I had a really nice, much too brief, visit with my brother on Friday, which included going to the DMV and taking care of various paperwork, including getting a driver’s license and registering to vote. So I am officially a Florida resident again. I feel more than okay about it. Some sadness, but really, there’s nothing like a seventy degree day and some sunshine to cheer me up.

I’m on track to finish my life coach certification this week, but was right that I wasn’t going to get it done by today. Still planning to finish on Wednesday, but I suspect it’s going to be Wednesday evening. That’s okay, obviously! I’ll start the happiness coach certification program next.

I’m having trouble deciding on a name for my new business, though, which is delaying me on next steps. I was thinking “Choosing Happiness Coaching” or “Practicing Happiness Coaching,” but I keep searching for better options. It would sort of make sense to use Practicing Happiness Coaching, because then I have my van life memoir as a foundation, but that book would have been really different if I’d anticipated using it for something like this.

I think, anyway. But maybe it just shows growth? And maybe it’s an opportunity, because anyone who’s read it and wants to work with me as a life coach knows what they’re getting. Or at least who they’re working with. A lot of other good names are either already in use or have connotations that don’t work. (Hope, it turns out, is a very Christian word. Not my target demographic, I suspect.)

Hmm, I think I may have talked myself into Practicing Happiness Coaching. My first course is still going to be Choosing Happiness, though, because that’s the starting place, whether or not it’s the name for the business. Anyway, thoughts, opinions and suggestions are welcome, but I should get back to work! May your Mondays be as productive and happy as I intend my own to be 🙂

Side note: Wednesday will be my first class to start Sophie’s therapy dog certification. It’s a six month program in which she’ll get to make lots and lots of visits to fun places. Along the way she’ll get three AKC certifications, in Canine Good Citizenship, Canine Urban Good Citizenship, and Advanced Canine Good Citizenship. It’s a pretty long course — six months — but I’m so excited to see where we will both be six months from now!

 

 

In 2023, I chose the word “playful” to be my focus word for the year.

It was not a playful year.

Oops.

Realistically, when I think back on it, there were plenty of playful moments in the year. Most of them were with my brother. We went to Tucson and Phoenix for a few days in February, and had a great time (good food, wonderful hikes.) In May, he came to visit me in Arcata and got to meet Sophie Sunshine, who immediately adored him, and we travelled up the Oregon coast and across to Bend. The weather wasn’t great, but the food and company was. We went to Oregon again in late September, and then had that crazy cross-country road trip in October, which, despite everything leading up to it, was actually a highlight of my year. It was lovely to be with him, lovely to feel safe and loved and cared for.

With the rest of the year, playful was never the word of the day.

If I can pick one incident to categorize why, it would be when we took the dogs to the beach for my birthday, and Suzanne decided that Bear was too excited and stayed in the parking lot with her while Sophie and I went to the beach alone. Yes, dogs aren’t supposed to get excited apparently, and if you could hear my tone of voice, you would know exactly how snarky I feel about that.

But 2023 is over, 2024 has begun, and it’s time to let go of the past and look for a new focus word.

Or maybe two of them.

At first, I was just going to choose Focus for my focus word, which feels a little ironic. But if you’ve been following along, you know that I need to make some serious choices about what I’m doing with my life. Some focus would be very good for me.

Focus alone, though, feels a little bleak. I do not want to suddenly become an ambitious, hard-working, driven, goal-oriented automaton. I want to continue practicing happiness. In fact, I want to continue choosing happiness.

In the morning, when I think about how my day should unfold, I want to be sure that it includes sunshine. Not necessarily literal sunshine – that’s obviously out of my control— but metaphorical sunshine. Well, and plenty of Sophie Sunshine, too.

I want 2024 to include, along with Focus, Fun.

Yes, I want to have a fun year.

I think I will, too, because I made a big decision in the last couple of weeks. Yesterday, I wrote myself a new job description. Ready for it?

I’m a certified wellness coach specializing in depression recovery through lifestyle modification, using habit formation strategies and gamification. Basically, I tell people struggling with depression that their parents were right, and they need to eat their vegetables, go to bed on time, and walk to school, and then we work on systems to help them develop those routines while also having fun.

Yes, I want to make depression recovery fun. (Also, “walk to school” is metaphorical — walking and learning are two parts of my theoretical recovery program, but I am not assuming or planning on working with actual students.) 

Also, yes, I am not that thing at the moment. I’m not certified in anything, so my first step this morning was to register for the life coaching classes at Transformation Academy. I’ve been doing my research, and their program felt like a reasonable fit. I’m a little ahead of the game, given that I was 2/3rds of the way to a Master’s degree in counseling ten years ago, plus I liked their unpretentious attitudes. I’ll be starting at the top, and working my way through as many classes as possible, so I anticipate most of the month of January will be given up to that task. Actually, I anticipate I’ll be working on that task all year long, but I’d like to be certified, with at least a couple of the specialties, by the end of January.

I’ve also purchased two new domain names, so I have two new websites to build, and lots of plans for potential products to sell, beyond my own personal coaching services. I spent a while yesterday researching sticker books, which sadly look fairly complicated to create, but I’ve definite plans for a card deck, a workbook, a tracking calendar, a course, and probably a book itself, or maybe two. I’m thinking of January as a learning month, February as a heavy content creation month, March as a design and content month, and by April, I hope to start some intensive social media marketing, probably on Instagram.

I’d like to be earning money at it by June, which might be optimistic, but doesn’t seem outside the realm of possibility. I believe that there is a need for these services and products. I’m even, in fact, being kinda trendy — “lifestyle psychiatry” is one of the first things I’ll be writing about on my future blog, because it’s a relatively new trend in psychiatry and encompasses exactly the kind of stuff I want to talk about.

But what, I hear my horrified readers asking, about your fiction? Honestly, I think I will produce more and certainly be much happier as a fiction writer when it returns to being a hobby. I loved writing until I started caring about how much money I could make from it, and whether I could make money from it, and how to make money from it, and since then, it’s been oppressive. I’m much more interested in having my income be based on how I’m helping people than having my income be based on whether my imagination will produce the stories people want to read instead of the stories I want to write.

(And that’s not even fair. The real issue as a writer is discoverability. I’ve got umpteen hundred books on my Kindle about marketing and advertising and selling books, plus multiple emails a day about the same sort of thing, and it’s simply not work that interests me. But it’s the only way for books to be found in the absolute ocean of titles that exist online these days.)

All of which is beside the point. I’m definitely not giving up on fiction writing, but I’m hoping to return it to the pleasure it was when I was writing A Gift of Ghosts (<-affiliate link) in stolen moments between classes, a full-time job, and life as a single mom. And honestly, if writing returns to being something I can only give 30 minutes a day, I will probably be just as productive as I have been with my relentless, never-ending wheel-spinning while trying to write full-time.

Meanwhile, is this new job description/plan ambitious? Out-of-the-blue? Doomed to failure? Going to be a money sink for months? Yes, only sort of, absolutely not, and maybe.

Yes, it is ambitious, but I feel inspired and optimistic about it.

Out-of-the-blue — well, about thirteen years ago, I invested a lot of time and money into becoming a therapist. If 2011 hadn’t been such an awful year, that’s probably what I would have been doing for the past decade. This is obviously along the same path, but with a focus and clarity that I didn’t have a dozen years ago.

Doomed to failure? Nope. I have my moments of pessimism, of course — by one estimate, 90% of people who want to be life coaches fail, so what makes me think I can succeed? Answer: passion and faith and enthusiasm and knowledge and a willingness to work hard at something I really believe in. Plus, writing skill, web design competence, graphic design judgement, curiosity, the ability to learn new things as needed, and a reasonably minimalist lifestyle with few responsibilities. (I’m going to have to come back to that list when I get discouraged over the next year.)

Going to be a money sink for months? Well… probably. But not a particularly high-level money sink. Hundreds of dollars, not thousands. There are some investments that I’ll want to make eventually, but I won’t be starting with them.

What I will be starting with is Fun and Focus. My words for 2024!

Happy New Year!

 

On Solstice, Greg built a successful fire; Christina made it magical with the addition of colors; M and J and I all oohed and aahed appropriately. We all, I think, appreciated the evening and the weather and the colors and the light, while we laughed about the pieces of paper we were burning. Sticky notes instead of origami, but the symbolism remained the same. A metaphorical burning of the dead past, releasing the regrets and the grief and the anger; a kindling of a living future, inspiration and hope and wishes for positive change and transformation.

One wouldn’t want to toast marshmallows over that fire, but it was lovely for gazing into and thinking profound thoughts of the future and past.

A highlight of the evening was the opossum who visited, sending the dogs into such major derangement mode that they had to be put inside, so the opossum could placidly wander the fence line. The opossum flat-out did not care about the dog hysteria or the people taking photos.

This opossum did not care about us at all.

Post-Solstice, we held Early Christmas and it was the first time I’ve had a classic Christmas in… a long time. Christina called at 5:45AM to say Christmas was beginning so Sophie, J and I hopped in the car — we were all awake already! — and joined C, G, Riker, and M for present opening, breakfast, and stockings.

The dogs got presents, too, of course. Sophie’s favorite is a big alligator.

If I am so fortunate as to have another Christmas with the same excellent companions, I am going to have to step up my present game, because wow. My favorites were not the biggest: C gave me a magnet that says, “It took me halfway through to realize my life story has an unreliable narrator,” which I adore, and G gave me a candle labelled, “Smells Like a Best-selling Novel” (that actually smells like the ocean), which ditto the adoration. (Also cookies, a game, socks, candy, a t-shirt, a Disney MagicBand+, eyeshadow… an abundance of unwrapping fun!) And J basically listened every time I mentioned missing something left behind in California or needing something in our current kitchen, and gave me all of it: cookie sheets and salt scrub and small bowls and a microwave popcorn popper. I gave him a book. A good book, that I think he’ll enjoy, but yeah. Fingers crossed that I’ll have a chance to do better next year!

For breakfast, J made a delicious GF cross between a quiche and a shepherd’s pie, and G made home-made GF bagels that were the best bagels I’ve had since a trip to NYC in 2017. Mmm, I want one now. Maybe for lunch, because I might even have the ingredients (flour and Greek yogurt, basically).

My bagels, so delicious.

In the evening, my dad and step-mom joined us for an extremely classic Christmas dinner: prime rib, mashed potatoes, green beans, cassava rolls (which are the best GF crescent rolls I’ve ever eaten), and two types of pie. I ate way, way too much — I’m pretty sure I was five pounds heavier the next morning — but I enjoyed every bite.

It felt like Christmas was over, but actually, it was yet to begin.

On Christmas Eve, I sat next to my dad for the candlelight service at his church, listening to the sound of his voice — so familiar — as we sang the same Christmas hymns I’ve been singing with him since I was a child. On the other side of me, my step-nephews tried to smother their out-of-nowhere giggles while they took turns poking one another with pens. I would never have predicted that moment: I will remember it forever, with gratitude that I got to experience it.

And on Christmas Day, with Christmas officially over, J and G and C and I played games and ate gluten-free pizza all day long. Seriously. All Day Long. I had pre-made the pizza crusts from a new-to-me recipe site, and we took turns making pizzas with them, so mine was goat cheese, tomatoes, basil, and spinach, while J’s was sausage, mushrooms, and onion and G’s… well, okay, I forget. The crusts were not as good as Christina’s Brazilian cheese bread pizza crusts, but they were a lot easier to make. I think the recipe maybe gets the timing of the cooking a little wrong — I’m going to be experimenting with longer & lower times & heat — but I suspect that I will enjoy every experiment. And I’m definitely going to try other recipes from that site, too.

J’s pizza, because I forgot to take a picture of mine. I was too eager to eat it!

As for the games, I think the best was Abducktion, which we only played once, but which I’d like to play again. We also played Tokaido, which was… pleasant? I enjoyed it, but I don’t think any of us are going to be rushing to play it again. Our third game was the Princess Bride game and it was long, fun, and probably aimed at a younger, less strategic audience. We had only one moment where losing seemed even remotely within the realm of possibility, and even then we course-corrected quickly and wound up with an efficient win. I can think of a couple ways that we could make it more challenging if we wanted to play again, but I think the chances that we will are probably pretty low. We still have a couple new games that we didn’t even get to try so there’s another game day in our future. Yay! (Links are affiliate links, because I’m trying to up my blogging game.) 

Speaking of upping my blogging game, I’ve been spending a lot of time researching social media and marketing in the past few weeks. I got to Florida two months ago, thinking that I would find myself a “real” job, given my need to pay real rent. I started looking and fairly quickly realized that maybe ten years of self-employment, spent more or less 24/7 with an extremely active dog, wasn’t setting me up well for a routine 9-5. I mean, I think Walmart would probably hire me — I’m not unemployable — but what it would cost me in doggie day care for Sophie would probably equal my paycheck. Example, I could be a dog-training apprentice at PetCo for $12/hour, while spending $33 to keep Sophie busy. Um, probably not efficient.

And then once I’m back to sitting in my room at my computer all day… well, doesn’t it make sense to do something that I will enjoy? Feel good about? Obviously, it also needs to be something that will pay the aforementioned rent and ideally set me up for a more secure future, but I think I’m more suited to being an entrepreneur than an employee. So I’m spending my work days mostly learning right now, with a lot of contemplating of my options and planning for the future. It won’t change this blog — this is going to stay entirely personal, my own record of my memories of my life — but my business blog might get more active with publishing related posts, and… well, I’ve got some other ideas, too. But I’m not quite ready to write about them yet. I’m feeling optimistic and cheerful, though. Eating my vegetables, being strict about bedtime rules, and trying to walk more, too. Those things are connected, I know!

I’m planning to post again on New Year’s — the classic looking back/looking forward post — but if I don’t get it together in time, I wanted to thank you for reading — as I close out 2023, I’m so grateful to know that you’re rooting for me!

Have a very, very happy New Year!

 

Things I’ve done in the past ten days: visited the Magic Kingdom, wrote with my friend J, hung out with my friend L which included going out for Mexican food with Sophie, listened to Christmas music at my dad’s, ate shaved ice at a downtown Sanford food truck event, went to the local writer’s group (excellent, again!), had a delicious gingerbread latte from G, tried a couple new grocery stores (still searching for the right one), and played a lot of ball in the backyard with Miss Sunshine. Like, a lot.

Things I have not done: written anything worthwhile.

I bought a book from Amazon recently, called, “Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times”  (<-affiliate link), and I have barely started it, but I think I might be wintering. Conversely, I might just be dealing with some seasonal and situational depression. Or perhaps it’s a little of both.

Things I am doing: eating my vegetables, pushing myself to take walks, working on setting myself up for sleep success. The last is still the hardest, made newly more challenging by sharing a house with other people who live on different schedules. The beep of the microwave at midnight is almost the only way I know that one of my housemates is still living here — he and I are on completely different schedules. I assume he can hear the sounds of me making coffee at 5:30AM, and wishes he couldn’t. So it goes. I do try to be quiet, and I think he does, too, but it’s a small house.

More things I am doing: pushing myself to get out, pushing myself to reach out to people, contemplating possibilities for my future. And really trying hard not to worry or ruminate. I had a slight setback on the ruminating when Suzanne sent a package to my brother’s house; he forwarded it on to me and it turned out to be a plastic bag containing old earrings of mine that I’d given her when I decided I was not going to wear earrings anymore. And a rock. Um… ??? Yeah. I have no idea. I’m trying not to ruminate about it anymore, helped by my housemate saying, “Well, that’s weird!” when I told him. Right! I thought so, too! I guess I needed the validation, ha.

The Magic Kingdom was fun. And also hard. I spent so much time there with R when he was little. Adult R probably doesn’t even remember most of our time there — he would have been too young — but we used to go straight to the Dole whip place and have pineapple ice cream for breakfast, then up the Swiss Family Robinson treehouse, which he loved. Eventually, we’d make our way to Tom Sawyer Island. He didn’t like rides much until he was six or so — or maybe five, just turning six? I went to a conference in Orlando in October 2001, and afterwards spent a couple days with R at the parks. We camped at the campground in my parents’ RV, and rode around on a golf cart, visiting all the different playgrounds and swimming pools. That year Disney was empty (9/11 had happened about six weeks earlier and people still weren’t flying) and we had a day in the Magic Kingdom where we went on ALL the rides. On Goofy’s Barnstormer, the little kid roller coaster, we went three times in a row. After our second time around, the person running the ride just let us stay in our seats and ride again. I would guess that R doesn’t remember that at all. I do, though.

By happenstance, though, my day at the Magic Kingdom coincided with the visits of two sets of… well, people in t-shirts. The folks in the red t-shirts were there with the Gary Sinise Foundation’s Fallen Warriors project. In other words, they’d lost a loved one in the military. The folks in the green t-shirts were with Make-a-Wish. There were a lot of red shirts, not so many green, but plenty of both, potent reminders that loss is part of life, and that we’re all allowed to be happy and have fun despite our losses.

Still, Florida in general is far more filled with reminders of R than California was, unsurprisingly, and so I’m experiencing those feelings of loss again. Which isn’t to imply that I’m not always experiencing them in some way, but they’re more intense here. It’s the holidays, too, of course. Grief is always more pronounced this time of year, no matter how much you think you’ve recovered. The last couple of years, S & I did a solstice ceremony of lighting a flame and burning origami cranes and snakes, representing the things we were hoping for and letting go of, which I guess will be a reminder of loss now, too, if I try to continue it on my own. I might anyway, though.

Moving on!

The holiday event at my dad’s included live music, tons of people in colorful sweaters, Christmas cookies and candy canes, a nativity scene with live goats and a cranky baby, an angel moving in slow-motion, Victorian carolers… but also a Grinch, I guess for the people who weren’t quite in the holiday spirit. I am doing my best to get in the holiday spirit, helped by lots of plans for upcoming fun events, a real Christmas tree for the first time in eight years, a Harry Potter advent calendar that my housemate is sharing with me, and presents needing to be wrapped. And I’m not going to be a Grinch. I’m going to be grateful for all that is good, eat my vegetables, take good walks, and get plenty of sleep.

J, my new housemate, told me I was a good influence the other day. I laughed, and simultaneously cringed. My immediate internal reaction was something like, “Oh, no, I’m so boring!” That was not what he meant, I know, but I’ve thought a lot about it since. I’ve also written a lot about it since, but I keep deleting everything I write. Apparently my feelings on the subject are quite complicated.

That being so, how about a post with a lot of pictures?

I’ve always had a tendency toward indecision leading to inertia when it comes to things like putting up photographs, but I’ve been really determined to make my new room cozy and homey. My two recent additions:

The big nesting event of the weekend:

On Friday night, Sophie and I went to downtown Sanford’s Christmas tree lighting event, with Christina, Greg, and J. That was fun, although the music was surprisingly… okay, well, a polite word might be jazzy, but the honest word would be Muzak-y.

Afterwards, we went and hung out on the patio of a nearby bar, and planned future fun events, like a trip to the Magic Kingdom (taking place tomorrow), and a game-movie-pizza day for later in the month. Sophie roamed a little, but mostly hung out by the table, peaceful but alert. It was so nice to be sitting outside, on the first day of December, with my most lightweight hoodie tied around my waist because it was too hot for it.

Apart from some pictures of food, that about covers it for my photographic adventures of the past week or so. In life without photos, I also got to hang out with my friend Joyce one night — we wrote, but also visited thrift stores — plus I went to small business Saturday in downtown Sanford, plus the farmer’s market, plus… hmm, maybe that’s it. Well, plenty of walks with Sophie around the neighborhood and a lot of time in the backyard throwing the ball. I’ve been researching local jobs and thinking a lot about what I want to be doing with my life. But that’s getting into “good influence” territory again, and I have literally been working on this blog post all day long — it’s now 7:20 PM! — so I’ll save those thoughts for later.

Tomorrow, the Magic Kingdom!

Wednesday, back to Cici. I swear I will get her out of the pickle she’s in someday. Someday!

 

 

 

I spent a good long while last week struggling to find out why pieces of my website were breaking. The commenting feature had been misbehaving for weeks — I couldn’t even leave comments myself without getting error messages! — and the RSS feed had stopped working sometime in August.

Unfortunately, there were no flashing red lights on the dashboard, saying, “This! Here! This is what’s gone bad!” Even the error codes weren’t much use. Eventually, though, I found a Q&A from around five years ago that attributed the specific error code I was getting to a plug-in problem, so I started deleting plug-ins. This is… well, undesirable. My web site is not fancy, so all the plug-ins that I use are serving a purpose. I did eventually find the one that was causing the problem (I think), and uninstalled it, so fingers crossed I’m done with that waste of time.

Sadly, if the problems continue, the only plug-in left to delete is the one that lets me send posts via email. It would be nice if I could save the addresses, and reinstall either that plug-in or some other that does the same thing, but if you’re used to getting my posts in your in-box and you stop hearing from me for… well, some length of time greater than a couple weeks, because I do try to post every week… you might want to come back to the actual blog and see if you need to subscribe again.

It did feel like a waste of time, too. I tried to convince myself that my blog is useful! Fun! An important part of my business model (hahaha)! But it’s closer to a waffle-maker than a car in terms of practicality. No one needs waffles. They’re just kinda nice sometimes. Whereas if your car breaks…

Speaking of cars, we had some torrential rain several days ago. If I’d been in Serenity, it would have been one of the fun maraca days, where I felt like I was living in a musical instrument because the rain made such a powerful set of rhythms on the roof. As it was, I mostly ignored it, and never once, not even for the slightest half-second, did I wonder, “Hey, did I open the back car windows for Sophie when I last drove the car? Could I have left them open?”

That was a mistake.

Yes, I could have left the windows open. Yes, I did leave them open!

There were puddles in the car. Literal puddles. The mats on the floor of the back seat were full-ish, the little receptacles by the door handles on the interior of the doors were overflowing. Ugh.

Fortunately, my housemate, J, found me a tiny space heater, a long extension cord, and a bunch of towels, and I spent the greater part of a day drying out the car. I was nervous enough for the first hour or so that I checked on it every ten minutes, but as it became clear that I was not going to set the car on fire, I’d give it a half an hour at a time or so, and then move the space heater to a new location. It worked surprisingly well, actually. The car is dry and there is no smell of mildew, whew.

Still, what a waste of time! Also a waste of time — the literal twenty minutes I spent reading about the parts of car doors, trying to figure out what the heck those receptacles are for and/or actually called.

But moving on, I read a fantastic book this weekend. Not a waste of time, at all: Reasons to Stay Alive, by Matt Haig. (That’s an affiliate link, since I have recently been reminded of the impracticality of my blog.)

It is probably not for everyone. But if you struggle with depression and/or know and love someone who struggles with depression, it is a combination of a memoir about depression and a self-help-ish guide to recovery from depression. It’s definitely more his personal story and his personal advice then anything overly prescriptive: his advice on drugs is basically ‘if it works for you, you should do it, but I didn’t go that route,’ which obviously resonates with me, since I also haven’t chosen that route. But I picked it up mostly because I’ve been researching how exactly people go about writing memoirs, having been struggling with my own for a year now, and yet once I started reading, I just kept going. A totally worthwhile use of time, IMO.

And now I’m going to try to use some more time in a worthwhile way and get back to Cici. I’ve been super stuck and I finally realized while walking Sophie this morning where my wrong turn came about and how to fix it. So nice to have a plan instead of just a blank accusing page in front of me!

… a tiny little Sanford story.

I took Sophie to the downtown farmer’s market. Lots of people, lots of sunshine, lots of other dogs. She was being her usual delightful self, a little curious, a little bouncy, but very good in a crowded place. We were waiting in line at the hummus stand (excellent hummus), behind a guy with a dog that was probably a yellow lab, maybe mixed with some golden retriever. Not the super fluffy kind of golden, but a nice-looking dog, who was also waiting patiently.

A young woman walking by spotted the dog ahead of us in line, and crooned to him, “Aren’t you the cutest thing ever?”

I cleared my throat.

She glanced over at me, looked down at Sophie who was looking back at her, head cocked, turned back to the yellow lab, and said, apologetically. “I’m so sorry. You’re the second cutest thing ever. Which is still very cute!”

I laughed, the guy with the yellow lab laughed, she laughed, and on we all went with our days.

But days later, it still makes me smile.