What the heck happened to last year anyway? It was such a chaotic whirl wind of projects and ideas, heavy lifting and short deadlines, parties and broken bones, sound and fury. I am thinking it's possible I fell victim of the dreaded plague of the newly retired: late onset attention deficit disorder - so much time, so much to do, so many people depending on me, so many dreams deferred for way too long! It was overwhelming! By the end of September right after our big family reunion I hit the wall.

And the poor old blog had run out of steam. I had clear intentions starting out but somewhere in the chaos of events and expectations it had lost focus. It had become a chronology of projects and a bit of a journal - a combo plate that served no purpose well. So I've been letting it get some rest, letting it catch its breath.

This morning I noticed that the garden is just beginning to show some life. Chives are threading up from the cold soil, buds are forming on the hydrangia bush and crows are loud in the fir tree. Certainly winter is not through with us yet but there is every hope it's loosening its hold. Perhaps it's time for the blog to emerge from hibernation?

A Month of Downward-facing Dog

(My first class as a Yoga-Fit Instructor: "The Writer's Workshop Warm-up". Barbara, Mary, Darlene, Peggy, and Miki. Missing from photo are Judi, Betty and Martha. That's me on upper left. The dog is Miki's guide dog, Tiger, who does an authentic downward-facing dog pose.)
This month I became a yoga instructor! Quite a departure from everything I've ever done. Back in high school I was the girl who pulled a sicky rather than go to p.e. class. The most "athletic" I ever got was aqua-robics a few times a week at the local pool but that was the eighties and nineties. Never felt the need to get all sweaty in a gym.

Then I got oldish. Funny how it sneaks up on a person. One day you're light and lithe - next day you drag your creaky carcass out of bed, realize that sometime during the night everything has shifted south and your joints have all the flexibility of a crow bar. Adding insult to injury your adorable general practitioner (the inimitable Doctor Amos Shirman) drops the triple bombshell: overweight, high blood pressure, high cholesterol! And the battle is on.

So a year ago I signed Mom and me up for Low-Impact Yoga at the local community center (of course telling myself it was primarily for Mom) - to my surprise I got hooked on the stuff! Bought myself a mat and a yoga dvd to guide me through some stretches at home between classes. Soon I was on the yoga mat an hour a day doing downward-facing dog, cat/cow, tree pose, warriors 1 and 2, plank, cobra, moon-flower/sun-flower, triangle, child pose etc. etc. etc. Couldn't get enough. It was fun and I felt great! Even better, Doctor Shirman stopped scowling at my numbers.


Something else was going on while I was firming up and getting my blood pressure under control - I began to notice I wasn't the only one fighting the good fight against decrepitude. The class was packed with other Boomers intent on doing themselves the favor of getting and staying healthy. After all, what's the sense in having a longer life span if you're stuck in a nursing home for the later half of it? My generation isn't willing to settle for less than full participation in life. We want to be able to climb a flight of stairs at 100 without a crash cart standing by.

So this Spring I decided I would help fellow seniors be the best they can be in this amazing time of our lives - I would teach yoga for seniors. Since then I've been going to school and doing my practice teaching at the Community Center, as well as substitute teaching in the Low-Impact class where all this started. I finally know what I want to be when I grow up! Pretty exciting isn't it? You bet! And the best part? All the wonderful people I've gotten to know on the mat. What a fabulous, enthusiastic bunch - sweet, loving, supportive of each other. Can't wait for my next downward-facing dog. Namaste!

(Shadow and Shimmer)

Thanks to the poet Barbara Cornwall for challenging our Writers Workshop to write acrostics! Here's mine:

CAT-CROSTIC
Caught in a sunbeam, immobile
as web-snared moths,
the tigers sprawl across the deck,
Shimmer and Shadow
nose to nose, whiskers
an arrangement of filaments
pulsing with each languid breath,
paws relaxed, striped flanks
iridescent with sleep, while
nearby in the ash tree squirrels
gambol and chitter, jubilant
in shady branches, safe
now for the moment from feline
threat, free as hummingbirds
hovering at the begonia baskets,
each animal in its own mind
something special in a nurturing
universe, one with the loving
nature of the summer sun.

This morning it has been exactly two months since I began the much-delayed kitchen makeover. The cabinets have been stripped and repainted, the gleaming new hardware sparkles in early light. There is a new coat of paint on the walls and the shabby old Formica counter top is now a gentle cocoa brown. It has been an enormous amount of work with so much remaining to be done - a new sink to come, new floor tiles, back-splash and counter edge molding . . .

For months I have been totally focused on each minute aspect of the project, taking time out only for yoga practice and writer's workshop, every bit of creative energy directed toward the goal of a reborn kitchen. So many other concerns sitting on the back burner - this blog for one. Today I will restore balance by sitting quietly in my geodesic dome noticing each turn of leaf, each shift of shadow as Summer sun turns the Japanese maples into stained glass panels. I won't go anywhere near the garage where a stack of mill-work awaits my attention. Or so I say over my second cup of tea. We'll see.

RENEWAL

Since last month my kitchen has been an impossible disaster as I strip forty years of ugly paint from the cabinets. It's a task that has niggled my mind since I bought the house back in the last century but before this summer I managed to find a slew of excuses for not plunging into the process.

Oh sure, it would be SO much easier to just demo the entire room down to the studs and start over. The DIY cable shows make it look like a piece of cake: bring in a crew of brawny guys in muscle shirts to heave the shabby cabinets into a boxcar-sized Dumpster, hang the pretty cherry boxes, fit shiny granite counter tops and gleaming sink and faucet. All the fixin's. In a day or two the old kitchen is an unpleasant and distant memory.

But that was not how I was taught to do things. Back in the 1940s my parents bought a Victorian Era farmhouse in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains and almost immediately started tearing it apart. It started innocently enough when they discovered that the "foundation" of the house consisted of wooden blocks - which were disintegrating to mush. Dad figured that was a good opportunity to add a basement. Just dig a huge hole under the house, pour concrete walls and floor . . . well, that was the general idea. Next came adding an edition with three bedroom and a bath, then removing the second story. Followed by building two enormous sandstone fireplaces by hand (We kids learned masonry that summer). Tiling the bathroom. Building a deck. It went on and on, year after year - always something in the works.

Have to admit I resented growing up in that chaos. We kids couldn't have parties or sleepovers because the house was a construction site. I couldn't invite friends to my house for fear they'd kill themselves falling over the stacks of lumber. My bedroom in the attic had no walls, just rafters. When I whined about how crappy my life was all I got was the promise: "When the house is finished it will be beautiful, perfect. You'll have all the parties you could ever want".

I grew up and moved out without seeing that happen. When Dad died in '78 the house was still not "finished". When Mom sold it a few years later the new owners brought in a crew to complete the renovation. Yet now from the vantage point of old age I realize a few things. The experience of watching (and helping) my parents work on that miserable wreck of a house provided me with an unparalleled education in self-reliance. I learned to hang wallpaper, drive a nail, run a floor sander. I know what a two-by-four is and how to mud Sheet Rock. I am not afraid to get dirty or put in a new light fixture. I absolutely LOVE painting! Nothing makes me happier than repainting a shabby room. Such a feeling accomplishment!

And a lesson in how to live - the importance of continual renewal. Nothing is ever "finished". Living is a process - as soon as you complete one project there is another on the horizon to engage your attention, spark your creativity. Get your juices flowing. The minute you decide there's nothing left to do is the minute you die. It's as easy as that. Maybe not physically - at least not right away - but dead in your own dusty attic. Once you are not creating, or re-creating something in your life you have left life. Knowing this, I keep tearing things apart and putting things back together - better, brighter, cleaner, more efficient . . .

I'm in the midst of renewing myself as well. This past weekend I completed the second series of trainings toward becoming a yoga instructor. Today the muscles are still a bit sore but I feel I've come a long way in the rebuilding process. One thing yoga teaches is that a person is always learning, evolving, and becoming. As soon as you think there's nothing left to do or learn something falls apart, peels off the wall or shorts out and you're off on another project. And hurray for that I say! Drop on by and I'll hand you a paint brush.

Solstice

(Photo: sugar peas in bloom at Summer Solstice)


After nearly a year of "retirement" I'm wondering what ever happened to the silly notion that without a paying gig I'd have so much more time to write. Took a gander at my "Done" list. (That's the list of completed items from my "To-Do" list. I also have a "Maybe Someday" list and a "Not Hardly Likely" list. I'm big on lists.) In the past 12 months I have:

Re-covered the geodesic dome
Re-barked the garden (7 yards of medium bark)
Redecorated my office and the bathroom
Replaced all the bedroom ceiling fixtures
Re-stained the back deck
Polished the fireplace insert
Painted: deck chairs, umbrella stand, one wall each in kitchen and hall, two bookshelves and a file cabinet.
Repaired my bedroom window screen
Cleaned and organized the garage
Hauled 4 carloads of "usable items" to Value Village thrift store
Spread 10 bags of compost on the back garden
Set up a disaster survival storehouse in the garage (see previous post)
Renovated the front courtyard fountain . . .

That's not the full list but you get the idea. And somehow while up to my tushy in household projects AND full-time elder care for my mom AND teaching Friday morning writers workshop I succeeded in squeezing an hour of yoga into each day. What I haven't managed to do is fit in all that writing I envisioned I'd be free to do once I left the 40-hour-a-week grind. Really MUST put that on the To-Do List.

But right now I'm in the process of stripping 40 years of ugly paint from the kitchen cabinets. (Whoever painted the kitchen algae green in the 60s must have been on acid!) Figure it will take me another week before I get it repainted. Going to put up new moldings and shiny new hardware. Kevin, my next door neighbor, has promised to help me install a new stainless steel sink and faucet. It's going to be gorgeous!

In honor of Father's Day I bought myself a cool DeWalt orbital sander - 45% off! Just the thing to help with my next project: refinishing the hardwood floors.

As soon as I free up my calendar I'll get back to that novel I was working on last November. Promise. Of course it won't be right away because tomorrow I have CPR training and then there's yoga instructor training and after that . . . . . Some retirement this turned out to be!

In observance of the 30th anniversary of the eruption of Mt St Helens I revisited our disaster preparedness. Winter before last we depleted supplies during the big Hanukkah Blow storm. Power was out for a week. However since we had on hand plenty of candles, food, wood for the fireplace insert etc. we managed well when many of our neighbors struggled. (We did meet some very nice but cold and hungry neighbors that week - turned the disaster into a fun block party!)This past winter was fortunately mild or we would have been in deep doo-doo - I hadn't gotten around to restocking.

Then a few weeks ago Mom's church put on a disaster preparedness fair in their gym which nudged me toward getting serious about fixing things up in our garage "storehouse". I came away with renewed resolve and a binder full of checklists. Tuesday I hit the stores, lists clutched in my hand, debit card poised for action, virtue oozing from every pore. By afternoon SuzyQ the Subaru was jam-packed with groceries, the bank account was on empty, and I was exhausted!

Results: The garage storehouse is ready for action. In addition to filling the shelves, I packed a suitcase for each of us containing a change of clothes, shoes, snack food, bottles of water, first aid supplies, toiletries, flashlights - even a compass, pocket knife, duct tape, whistle - in short, everything recommended by the Red Cross in the event that we have to exit stage left on short notice. We have two wind-up/solar powered radios, a cell phone, and a small stash of ready cash. The cats are all set with a carrier each and extra food and litter. SuzyQ has her own big tote filled with emergency supplies tucked next to her fire extinguisher and little red gas can. All in all, we's ready for anything comin' down the road at us! It's a wonderful feeling. I highly recommend it.

Last night the weather forecast was for unseasonably fierce winds, thunder storms and heavy rain. I unplugged the computer and tv, shrugged and went off to bed.