MaryAlice Musings and More

My daughter's 35th Birthday is tomorrow, well actually she is in New Zealand so she is celebrating her Birthday today. I have had such a good time today remembering her birth, birthdays, so many of her Birthdays were such a wonderful day for me. I had completed one more year of being a parent. It seemed miraculous. She is such an amazing adult, a mother, a nurse, a very good friend, a devoted wife, a fine daughter. I like her, I love her, and I am hoping she is having a great birthday. It was always a joke each year, beware of the Ides of March, because the next day is Sasha's birthday - so get ready. I am.

Last weekend as I was beginning to feel like I might actually be well again sometime in the near future, I got bit by another kind of bug, or maybe it was a bird. Not only was I feeling the rumbling deep down within the earth, I was also catching the spring cleaning movement. I started with my bedroom (or more accurately for the past few weeks - the sick room). There was clutter, and I could almost see the crud bugs battling with each other to take up permanent residence. So I slowly, with many breaks tossed, cleaned, sorted, folded, rearranged, and just plain cleared the decks. The bedroom is great. So I have moved on, during the week, I started with drawers. I am a great keeper, and drawers just fill up with things I somehow can't bear to throw away or recycle or gift onto someone else. My very first "altered book" is called the Book of Drawers, almost everything within the pages came from drawers in my house. This is amazingly satisfying, I still get to kee...

I know that it is boring to talk about the weather over and over, but it seems bigger than life right now. We are having sundogs in mornings, temperatures 20-30 degrees colder than normal, moon dogs (very very rare)....full moon, brilliant sun. The wild amazing March madness. Each day seems to just be roaring by, the month is filled with city council campaign events, legislative committees, great art events, some basketball games, good music, lots of meetings. It seems as if everything is just a little bit cranked up, recovery and stimulus dollars, old news, visions of a new way, our new president, getting rid of old regulations, allowing science to continue, taking "them"on. All a part of the in like a lion out like a lamb March.

It is March, wild March, one day I am waxing on and on about the earth moving, the birds singing, the next (and today is the next) day I am sitting in the pitch black darkness just before 7 a.m. still shivering from picking up the newspaper on the front porch. The snow is crunchy due to the cold, the the temperature is -2 (that is -2 below 0 real temperature). So I am glad that I have a vase of wild, wonderful huge yellow mums on my dining room table! They are a reminder of what is and what is to come. They are singing out their beauty, their color is delicious, their green stems are bold and strong. They are thriving. Hang on still much more to come in the wildly amazing show of nature in the month of March.

Today was my first full day at work in the last two weeks! It felt good to be a part of the workforce again. I was tired at the end of the day, but have energy, and the light was still strong when I left work. No more leaving work in the dark, you can feel that the sun is winning out as it always does, that winter is on its way out, the equinox is coming. You can almost feel the movement deep down within the earth. Then there is the light, it is shimmering and the rays are higher, and the sun rays bounce at angles that make me appreciate every little light beam. And of course it is the month where anything can happen, rainstorms, blizzards, freezing rain, bright strong sunlight heat, big swings in the temperatures. All teasing, coaxing, reminding us that we just stay present in the day, in the light, in the steady, certain beat into spring.

Saturday night I got more more salvo for my trying to recover body, a 35th Anniversary Concert of Sweet Honey in the Rock, and they were rocking. It was a sold out house at St. Catherine's College (my daughter's alumni) and the music and sign language interpretation was amazing! They just keep getting better and better and better. They have for 35 years been telling stories and touching our souls. They lifted us up proclaiming the "miracle" of Obama's election, then reminding us as if Mother Earth was standing over us all, that he is just ONE man, and our work too has just begun. Their song Greed was so profoundly haunting and beautiful, and such a call for us to make different choices. They sing of a world of justice, of appreciation and love and care of all our children, of the earth, of each other. A reminder that we will all cross over to the other side, and what kind of life do we want to have lived. I was still without a lot of energy but it felt so ...

The good news about being sick and thinking about being well, is there is a new appreciation of recovery. I do know I am recovering and that is more than I can say about our economy. It will happen too, but I know I am going to recover before our nation does. I am on a second round of antibiotics, bronchitis is bad, but no pneumonia or asthma so all and all --- I am grateful. And I am going to be really happen when I have some energy. This morning I had a a follow up appointment with my eye doctor. I had a yag and it really makes my eyesight clearer and better, and next wednesday I will have the second yag done, then never again, my implanted lens will work great for who knows how long, i think longer than a lifetime. We were in the 40's today, and this morning the birds were singing, chirping, making lots of noise that felt undeniably like spring. The check out gal at the grocery store was trying to convince me that it felt like summer. I was not ready to just toss awa...