ellenspictures

Category: Optimism

  • When I was little things seemed a lot bigger…but my world was actually rather small.

    When I was little things seemed a lot bigger…but my world was actually rather small.

    I have moved to different places to live so many times, I’ve lost count. I would need a spreadsheet to categorize how many places I have lived, when, and likely, there will be a few more before I leave the planet.

    As I have gotten older, and wanted to see if places I have lived still look the same, I have gone into “Google Maps” and located the place my parents were living when I was born. We drove by this old house back in the fall of 2020, so that I could see if it was still there. It was. It was built just after WWII ended, and was a “GI” house – made in the tradition of using cinder-blocks on a slab, then putting the siding up – probably some insulation, and coated paper underneath… I remember it being light color. Likely, over the years, people have updated it and so it looks a bit different from what I remember.

    In my earliest memory, from when we lived in this house, it was of my bedroom, and of the living room-dining room and kitchen. I sort of remember my parents’ room. I remember it had two bedrooms, and small-ish. Of course to little me, it was a lot larger than this picture shows, which is the actual size of the house.

    This is the back yard. Another one of my earliest memories was going out back, to play in the water hose, which I did in the summer because it was West Texas and it was hot as hell. There was a frog, probably attracted to the water, and I guess I didn’t see it, but I stepped on it – squished it – and it bled – and I got very upset and started screaming and crying.

    Another memory is of me being with my Dad, around his workshop – the building to the left in the photo above – he always gave me blocks of wood to play with, probably so I would not get in his way or get hurt. There were lots of loud noises coming from his wood working tools in the workshop. He was a maker.

    Dad’s workshop – what’s left of it
    Very little me with my Dad. I didn’t get into much trouble back then.
    I was a Daddy’s girl – and in this shot, I’m not sure who was taking the picture, but Dad looks dubious…

    I am pretty sure I was a “mostly happy” kid until I we moved and I left my safety net – my grandparents

    I remember spending a lot of time parked at my grandparents’ house. I loved being with my grandmother. She taught me how to do a lot of things like cooking, baking, sewing, and playing cards and other games. She was from Kentucky, and carried many traditions from her home state such as recipes and her idea of decorum and etiquette. She had been to “finishing school” after high school graduation, which was in Boston. Her dad was a merchant of “fine goods”. He passed away when my Mom was a little kid.

    However, my great-grandmother, remarkably, I do remember, as she came to live with my grandparents, and did until she passed away, when I was almost two. She was kind to me, and seemed just very fragile and old, which actually, she wasn’t that old – but maybe since she had health issues, it just seemed that way. I was just turning two years old when she died. It’s amazing to me that I have memories of that time.

    My great-grandmother, Mom, me, and my grandmother when I was about one-and-a-half years old

    I remember sitting with her outside in my grandparents’ back yard, swinging in a hammock. That was one of my favorite things to do at my grandparents’ house when I was small. Where they lived in west Texas, it was pretty dry and

    Back at our house, I usually played by myself. I was an only child, so if we didn’t have one of my Mom’s friends with their kids at our house, it was me, myself and I. I remember that I had an “imaginary friend” that came into my life pretty early – maybe age three or four. Her name was Minnie. Later, another one came into Minnie’s life – Mannie. Minnie and Mannie. They were always up to something that got ME into trouble. Only children with imaginations like mine generally need imaginary friends to share the blame for mischief!

    I also remember deciding one day that I was going to school. I got my crayons, and coloring book, and got myself ready to walk out the front door. My Mom said, “Where are YOU going?” I said , “to school”. She said, “NO YOU ARE NOT!”, and seemed somehow offended. That surprised and upset me. Each day, I saw kids that looked about my age, walking by on the way to school. We lived just a short distance away. In my mind, I must have thought that all it took was for me to get my clothes on, grab my crayons and coloring book, and go out the door to join them.

    So, because Mom was upset and I was crying by then, she got sort of shouty and we got into sort of an argumentative exchange whereby at the end of it I got a whack on the behind and got sent to my room. I look back on that and think, “why was my mom angered by me doing that?” Maybe she thought I was slipping out the door. Maybe it scared her somehow. Maybe she felt a loss of control. Who knows?

    When my kids did things like this, normally, I had to hold in my giggles. I think I would have burst out laughing and thought it was really funny and cute, if one of my kids did that – but with my Mom, you could never predict how she would react. Mom was kind of unpredictable, and kind of scary at times.

    Mom holding me in front of my grandparent’s side entrance in their wonderful back yard

    It was, for me a bit confusing, living with her, not knowing if she would be nice, or mean – and not knowing what I was doing to cause her to be one way or the other. I am still not too sure, looking back, if she felt like I was cramping her style. She was very social, and was working part-time – and likely, me being there at home with her was holding her back or something. She eventually enrolled me in “Miss Harvey’s” which was a pre-school-kindergarten kind of class. I think that I was four by then.

    I remember just ahead of one of my birthday parties, Mom was scurrying around trying to get ready to have people over, including some of the kids that were her friends’ kids that got invited – kids I played with occasionally. I was so excited about the party that I barfed, right in the middle of the kitchen floor! Well, Mom got mad. She spanked me and sent me to my room to wait until the party started. I remember feeling confused, and crying a lot, and my face got all stingy.

    I remember that when my grandmother got there, she came in my room and hugged me, and took me in the bathroom and put a cold wet washcloth on my face. To this day whenever I need to “de-puff” my eyes, or face, or make a headache feel better, I put a cold wet washcloth on it – and remember my grandmother. She always had some way of making things okay.

    We moved out of that house to another house just before I started first grade. We next lived in my grandparents house, because they decided to move back to New Mexico. That was the beginning of my next chapter. I loved living at my grandparents house because it had all these cool places to play and great trees to climb. That one, shown below, was at the time, to me, a really big house. It probably isn’t that large, but it had a great yard and lots of space in the house to play and get into trouble!

    Tree I climbed when I was a little kid.
    Now the yard is fenced across what used to be open – that was a great yard and place to play when I was little and later on, a place to take a nap in the hammock or read a book in the shade, when I visited my grandparents before they moved away from this place.

    Moving to the big city almost two days drive away was quite the change. My Mom had to adjust to a new set of friends. She also had to figure out how to get around and navigate the city. My Dad worked downtown, and it took him almost an hour to get from our house to his work. It was definitely different from the small town in west Texas where I was born and we had been living since then. My Mom and Dad met there and got married there. My Mom was actually born there, which was interesting. My grandparents moved in and out of that town several times in their lives. Clearly, they loved it and felt it was their anchor in Texas.

    I think about change and how as we move through life, every day has small changes, and then there are some big changes that happen, some unexpectedly.

  • Pandemic Version 20.22? Entering Year Three…

    Pandemic Version 20.22? Entering Year Three…

    Favorite old phrase from a Neil Young song title… “Here we are in the years…”

    2022 kicked us off with one of us having a moderate case of COVID-19, Omicron Variant presumably. The rest of us were either mildly affected briefly, then asymptomatic. Some of us got tested and that is how we determined that we actually had the virus – else, our symptoms would not have driven us to be tested. That was the vaccination effect – according to our doctors, that is what the vaccinations do for us. Our moderate case likely would have been more severe, and could have become a hospital case, without the help of the vaccination immunity boosts.

    We didn’t lose our taste or smell, thank goodness, and our lungs were not impacted. The rest of it was headache, cough, sore throat, fevers and chills, and brain fog – then the residual tiredness that you hear about, that comes on suddenly and says “whoa, stop and rest…”

    The asymptomatic of us never lost energy, had fevers or chills, or were impacted any more than having a sinus headache and itchy eyes for one day, then a bit of stuffiness – but at the same time we had a high pollen count alert, due to the warm weather – so, who knows? We had both.

    It’s difficult now to say how to approach this. We continue to mask-up, avoid large crowds, don’t eat out unless it’s outside… We go outdoors and that is our haven. I find going into stores extremely stressful. I come out and am relieved to be out of there. People are weird and rude and it’s just a strange experience. Some without masks look defiantly at those of us that wear them. But, it’s hard to tell.

    We have the attitude that we will still do what we can, because we believe that we could get infected again. It’s like I feel about the flu – even if you had your shots, you may still get some variant that wasn’t in the shot. Vaccines for COVID-19 are different, but the main thing is to keep your immunity up as much as possible.

    If you think about it, it’s grim – but, there are those of us who try not to lose hope…

    We haven’t seen some our family for going on three years. One of us has parents, still living, that are advancing into their eighties. We have missed birthdays and will miss a wedding. My mother-in-law is very sad and breaks out tearily, but tries not to upset us, but this actually does bring on the emotions that are being kept inside.

    All sorts of prickly emotions happen these days. Adapting since early 2020 has meant more isolation, and less socialization, which really plays with how you interact with people. It’s very tough on some of us.

    We hear news that gives us glimmers of hope for what may be opening in six months – but that, we know, is really too far away to make plans – we now know that something could emerge in a short period of time that could change everything.

    Coping is Hoping

    What we now do is try to anticipate hopeful times. There are countries where this virus variant is just now arriving and spreading. Let’s say that we were third, maybe fourth in line… that leaves many countries at risk, and the virus will ravage their unvaccinated, and leave behind the vaccinated and those who would never get the virus or not know that they have had it – even though science says that most everyone will.

    We have to cope and anticipate what we have to do differently with every wave that comes along. We believe that this will be versioned and each version will require a slightly different surfboard to ride the waves – hopefully, we can still do that without falling off.

    Hope for 2022?

    • That our coping mechanisms will be refined.
    • That we will have better structures and rules to deal with this that can lend us the ability to travel confidently again.
    • That we will be able to travel to see family and friends more.
    • That we will be able to understand how better to bring fun into our lives, rather than the doldrums of work and everyday routines.
    • Anticipation of every visit from our grandchild, or friends who are brave enough to venture out and socialize with us.

    By this writing, we are still here. We hope to be here. I have health on my agenda. I swim every day that the weather permits. I try to eat healthy and do other things with my time towards health – because it’s up to me to do that.

    -Hope Never Vanishes

    January 24, 2022

  • adapting. it’s not dark yet.

    adapting. it’s not dark yet.

    Watching our church service via Facebook is an interesting adaptation to using technology to keep with a routine – to gather with people online – of course it is one way, streaming, but there is a capability for sending messages to everyone. It is Lent. Jesus is a healer. “I once was blind, but now I see.” Famous story. This is a very key story for now. It contains a number of paradoxes. It involves faith and struggles – questioning in the midst of something that people do not understand.

    We are blinded to understanding. We must have faith to continue on. We are all in this together. The outcome is not ours to control. We must try not to fear because fear disables our abilities to think clearly. It does not mean that we should not be aware and react. It means that we need to keep calm and have faith that if there is a solution, it will come because good smart people are working on this, diligently, and with as much haste as is possible. If there is not a solution, it is for a reason. That is quite a different kettle of fish. It would be the life of the world to come.

    So, it’s not dark yet here. We wake up still and we are OK. The dog is barking and doing her usual routine. She doesn’t know that there is something threatening out there – the unseen, but known threat is microscopic and she cannot sense it. She can sense the squirrels (her always top named threat), and all the people and dogs going in front of the house. She comes and visits to check on me and get a treat – and to bark at the people who pass by my window.

    There is a great weight that is pressing on all of us that reorients our thinking. We are not focused on what it was that we focused on a month ago. A month from now, if we are still able, we will focus on whatever it is that we are dealing with then. For now, be here now.

    Every day I wake up and try to have a good attitude about all of this. Reading the news of the world is a double-edged sword kind of exercise. It can be scary. It can be anxiety producing. On one hand, it underscores the ramifications of the poor choices that our past election put into motion. Whether this was the hand of a foreign manipulation doesn’t matter. It is what it is. Congress can’t do anything right now except try to figure out how to act without him disabling them.

    November elections are coming. If he continues to drift as he has been into spewing nonsense and meddling in stuff he shouldn’t be meddling in, it will seal his one-term fate. We can only hope that the country is not destroyed by his actions any more than he has already destroyed it.

    Enough of that. We watch helplessly hoping that a solution comes soon – in the meantime, it’s all about “flattening the curve” the now pervasive motto that many have adopted. It’s down to the individual to behave to help this, no matter how hard it is to do this. We will all be sacrificing something in order to keep alive and keep well.

    Complacency is what we reach when there has not been a huge disruption in our lives. If you have ever lived with an underlying, “always there in the background” threat, you understand what it means to be alert to signs that something might be happening. Something that will disrupt. Gut level uncertainty. Some people have more acute sensors than others. We all live on some sort of scale as we are judged by others. For some of us complacency has never been an option. Ever. When we near feeling that way, the switch gets flipped to worry mode. That’s just how it is with some of us who have lived life with certain experiences.

    My experience with family members and poor health outcomes has influenced the way I live, to a certain extent. It has painted boundaries around some of my habits.

    For instance, certain members of my family think I am a “health nut” — just because I practice, by and large, eliminating certain food elements from my diet, because I have a genetic predisposition to heart disease. I have tried to explain, but they still give me a look, and we just move on. I think, “you had to have been there…”.

    For them, it is likely a foregone conclusion that just doing whatever they want in terms of their diet gets them an outcome that they accept. Live for the moment. I envy that. I’ve tried it. For me, it hasn’t worked, yet.

    I think amongst them, I have been labeled. Here’s why I think this — I’ve been given “vegetarian” cookbooks for gifts. I’m not a vegetarian, but someone must think that I am. I don’t eat a lot of meat, and prefer fish and chicken, but I do eat meat occasionally – and I insist on good cuts of meat, not just any meat…

    I have one friend who always makes sure to bring “gluten-free” items to my house (for me). I’m not gluten intolerant. I don’t eat gluten-free on purpose, but sometimes what I eat is gluten-free. I don’t think about it when I buy those items. I don’t know why this assumption was made, but to my knowledge, I’ve never indicated that I was that. Yet, now, I hear it from others in our community of friends that they assumed I’m gluten-free.

    I just try to cut certain things out of my diet. I don’t make others do this. However, I get heavy pressure to “splurge” a little, when there are fat and sugar laden goodies, fresh from the oven. Over the years, I have relaxed some, but definitely guard against forming habits. I go back to cutting those things out of my diet as a norm. I can measure by the five pounds I gain whenever I am around that stuff how it affects me. The other aspect is that I don’t get as much activity in every day at those times. Blood work results tell the tale, as well. That is an example of my situation and how I manage it. I know what works for me.

    I guess, with me, I observed people smoking, eating unhealthy food, and not being active, and saw what happened. So, beginning in the mid-1970’s, I went to Weight Watchers, lost 50 pounds, and embarked on a journey to not be obese. Unfortunately, as we have learned, you struggle not to gravitate to that highest weight for the rest of your life. It messes with your metabolism, big-time.

    But, I still try to eat whole foods vs. processed ones, and I try to perhaps over-correct for my genetics, hoping that I can eek out a few more years than my predetermined estimated life span – that predicts I’ll be around until my late-70’s to mid-80’s. I still have conditions that are likely inherited, that I have to vigilantly manage.

    These are tiresome tasks. Yet, I know by experience what happens if I give in and give it up.

    But despite best attempts, there will be existential threats that will overcome any prevention that we’ve tried to put in place. Like now.

    Despite doing my best, I know that something else could prematurely push me off the planet, and this all is within a “risk set”. Rogue viruses and such are within that risk set, along with being killed in an accident, murdered, or as a victim of a wide-scale natural or human-made disaster.

    This virus we are dealing with right now is likely a combination of a natural and human-introduced disaster. In my opinion, eating strange (to us) animals, not inspected or certified to be free of disease, is a human-caused disaster, again that is in my opinion.

    Here – in most places there are cautions against eating raw meat – fish – oysters – any of the above that have been inspected… Might be re-thinking this… But, we know that bats and this critter called a pangolin that kind of looks like an armadillo cousin, are where this virus crossed over to the human side. Bats have been implicated in the past. Now, I know that we all laugh about road-kill chili (throwing in some armadillo meat), but nobody does that. Armadillos are known to carry diseases, so besides in zoos, people tend to keep their distance from our world famous armored local mammals. People shoot squirrels and rabbits, and make stews out of them, but they cook these at high temperatures, never eating them raw (unless a person is on drugs or hallucinating or something).

    Not to play the blame game, but if… if… wishes were horses, we would ride away… and we wish that whoever ate that raw wild animal and was “patient zero”, had thought better of that. Likely, they are not around to tell the tale.

    But for the immediate and near future, it is about watching for that day when we see the sun rising up over the trees – when we realize that just maybe we are going to see this pandemic come to an end. Then our task is to get ourselves collectively better prepared to handle the next one – and there will most assuredly be a next one.

    It’s going to be awhile before that day arrives. Looking at the numbers, and still not understanding what the scientists have concluded as they are still learning… yes, it will be our new normal. We are adjusting. We will adapt. Just like after 9/11. We had to adapt. And, it’s not dark yet.