Down to 2

Big thanks to neighbor Dave
for recycling so much pottery to the curb this weekend.
Love this pitcher!

It's a funny time for me right now, beautiful and broken at the same time, perfect and yet filled with longing. I love this part of the spring so much, the first real go at the planting, everything manageable still, the space between rows in the garden boxes clear. By July, the garden will be packed with vegetation, and I will feel more pressure to stay on top of it all, to re-seed and eat, not let all that effort, ours and the plants, go to waste. At its peak, it's glorious and ultimately exhausting, so that the fall is always a sweet time of shutting it down, recovering from all of that busy.

But I'm getting way ahead of myself.

Right now, like I said, is funny.

I suppose what I mean is that it's novel to be just Joe and me, just the two of us. We spent pretty much all weekend together, from Friday at 6 until now, Monday morning, with just two little bits of apartness.  It was bliss: we drove to Sebastopol and picked up our new bees Saturday morning, set up two hives, one at home and one at the shop; puttered around the garden; went to a friend's birthday party; turned and harvested compost; amended a garden bed and planted; went out to dinner last night and saw Jane Eyre.  Delightful.

In the more than two decades that we've been together, the time we've spent à deux has been the rarest of commodities.  Our life together has always included a child, now grown, and, for the last almost-14 years, a dog baby.  It has also almost always, and particularly in the past 5 years, included activities that kept us busy with our separate hobbies and friends, training and racing for Joe, yoga for me.  It has never been just two.  And with Joe injured now and off the bike, it has only rarely been just two, home together, moving at the same speed.

Believe me, I'm not complaining.  It's possible that the many conditions of our lives that have made it rare for us to be alone together are the very reason why, when I see Joe, even after just being apart for a couple of hours or a day, I still wag with my whole body.  I look at him even now and still can't believe my good fortune.  

As we approach our 22nd First Date-iversary, I wonder truly how much time we have spent alone together.  Would it even add up to one year?

It's remarkable how sweet the time in each other's company is, how grateful I am for it, even now.  It's as if we're embarking finally on a new adventure, down to 2, with everything we need.  Truly lovely.  Deeply sweet.

Sweetness: it's been 5 weeks and my heart is still broken

I went on the Neighbies walk this morning.  I felt restless at breakfast, so decided to go out and walk around the neighborhood taking the well-worn path that Jasper and I always took.

Before leaving, I stopped by Jasper's stone (aka, Jass Stone) and left him a little bite of bagel just like old times.  I left it sitting there, after wishing Jas good morning, in hopes that soon a squirrel will pop down and snatch it up. We'll see.

So the walk was maybe not such a good idea.  Let me just say that maybe it's gotten a bit easier but this still hurts just so much.  I miss him so much.  I realize now that I always saw our neighborhood through the mist of Jasper's cuteness.  Without him, it's just not cute at all out there.  Nowhere close.

I am trying to honor his memory by being happy.  I am trying to honor his memory by taking interest in everything in the way that he did -- that inconspicuous shrub over there might have a great message to impart, a really good smell, too!  that bird walking on the grass might have something to tell me, let me just run over and find out! -- but it's hard to walk with his ghost, to turn involuntarily looking for him over and over, walking this groove that we grooved together for so long.  

Yes, I admit that I cried pretty much the whole way, relieved the garbage men who knew him so well didn't ask me about him.  But a face full of tears does serve to keep people away, and communicate the loss loud and clear so that the question becomes unnecessary.

From this point in the day, kind of low and sad, I'm going to try something else for the rest of the day, to do his prancing tail-high trot, like when he'd found something delectable that filled his whole self with pride and joy, like the day he found the rabbit or the giant rawhide bone or a really good stick at the beach.  Like that.

Walking with his ghost and honoring his memory, missing him so terribly, loving him so much.

A full day of work, work and more work

I woke up with only a smidge of a headache this morning which was a definite improvement over the last two weeks of having a headache every single day upon waking.  It was worst in Tahoe, since even that slight altitude makes my head pound.  I don't remember having this problem earlier in my life, but I can scarcely remember the earlier part of my life anyway, so I could be wrong.

But by the time if got to be 8am, I was really conflicted - go to work or stay home, and stay home won out.  It's good to have paid time-off, paid sick time, and even better to access it when you need it.  It's not like I was contagious, just generally feeling funky, and also overwhelmed by the amount of stuff on my home To Do list. [Problem is the work To Do list probably only got longer in my absence, but I am picking my battles.]

As a result I literally spent from 8:30 this morning until just now -- 4:45 -- working through an enormous stack of work for the family business, a couple-of-months-old back-up that was really bothering me, waking me up in the middle of the night, and just generally contributing to an overall sense of unease.  No good!

But the truth is that to stay on top of everything in my life -- not just my own little pet projects, and yoga, and reading and writing -- but to be the Business Manager of our life and the same for our business, means that I need AT LEAST one full week-day a month to plow through the work and have enough time to plan ahead.  I really can't accomplish this by devoting time on the weekends and in the evenings after work, which always seems like a sacrifice where taking a whole week-day to do it seems like a treat.  Hunh, wonder which one is the right choice?

Of course I feel moderately guilty that I was home working instead of at work working, but truly as funky as I did feel throughout the day, I would have been pretty miserable at work.

Funky but productive, when all is said and done, looking back from the vantage point of 5pm on how diminished the piles are at the end of this day.

It went by so fast though.  I can't believe that any minute Joe will be home from work, and the whole dinner operation will begin.  Wait: didn't I just wake up?

Everybody writes now

I'm reading a new-ish on-line magazine, YogaStar, and simultaneously loving and hating that everybody (including me, natch) writes now.  Everybody has a blog.  Everybody has a website.  Everybody has status updates.  

And most everybody has wretched grammar.

But mostly everybody is funny and thoughtful.

I'm sharing this excerpt from the second issue of YogaStar because I love how it's written, errors notwithstanding. I'm trying to get over my grammarian bullshit, since really, who cares? What matters is self-expression and celebration.

Lighten up, over-edumacated yogini!


Some yoga info, demographics & such.
Yoga Star sees the possibility of the Yoga arts being in the forefront of everyone’s awareness & daily doings.

Out of all the super tons of money spent each year in the U.S. a $6 billion chunk of that is spent on Yoga Stuff. That’s more than I make in a week. Yoga stuff is: classes & products: equipment, clothes, retreats & media (DVDs, videos, books & stuff).

Around 7% of all grown ups (16 million-ish) people in the U.S. alone take part in the Yogic arts. Of non-yogi folks about 8%, or 18+ million say they are interested in and by Yoga.
Stats:
• 73%-ish are ladies; 28% are dudes.
• 41% are 18 to 34 years old; 41% are 35 to 54; and 18.4% are over 55.
• 28.4% have been performing Yoga for around a year, or less; 21% have been performing for one to two years; 25.6% have practiced two to five years; and 24.6% have practiced more than five years.
• 71.4% are college edumacated. Those are some smart Yogis, eh?! 27% have postgraduate degrees. those are some super smart Yogis. Yowza!
• 44% of yogis have household incomes of about $75,000 +. You could pay for a lot of Yoga classes with that kinda cash!; 24% have more than $100,000. Buckoo-bucks. Hey, Will you pay for my classes?
Lots of people start yoga for lots of reasons. I started Yoga because I thought it would make a cool party trick to be able twist into a pretzel. Girls would think I’m fancy and extra cute! Ten years later...!

According to my sources (which I mostly swiped from a Yoga Journal survey taken in 2008‘) around 50% of the above mentioned folks started performing yoga to improve overall health.

Not only do many Western type doctors recommend not eating triple bacon Cheeseburgers deep fried in-between two donuts like a sweet delicious, greasy bun, they are also recommending, get this, meditation and Yoga as a way to stay healthy, happy and holy. Well, the first two anyhow! That is Suh-weeeeter than
any donuts I’ve ever eaten!

Yoga includes everything! Do Yoga and be complete!

Facebee: soon adding 20,000 new friends

location, location, location:
nectar right across the street

Next weekend finally, we pick up our packages of bees at the darling Beekind in Sebastopol.  Inside each little wooden box, we will have 10,000 new friends and a new queen, which we'll pour into their new homes.  One package we'll install at home, in the garden, the other at the shop, in the Canal.

At home yesterday, we spent a little time moving and leveling the hive boxes in their new spot for this season and beyond.  As we did so, it was in the company of wild bees, busy working over the Pride of Madeira, the apple blossoms, the borage, the Pawlonia.  They are beside themselves with busy-ness right now, heavy with pollen, so filled with purpose.  It's so great to have them here, to know that there's such abundant food for when the new bees arrive.

Since last July when both our hives died, it's been way too quiet in our yard.  Abruptly last summer both hives, the one we'd purchased the year before from Alan Hawkins, from whom we took a course at Green Gulch in 2009, the other a swarm we caught within days of completing our beekeeping classes, dropped dead, seemingly overnight, the ground in front of the hives covered with little corpses.  They'd been thriving, busy at their work, coming home laden with pollen, a little defensive of our hive-checks but healthy and strong.  And then suddenly, gone.

I found out just a couple of months ago that a neighbor two doors down had a thriving wild colony of bees under his deck commercially poisoned right around the same time as we lost our hives.  It doesn't seem so odd now that our bees died, possible victims of second-hand pesticide. It's such a shame to kill bees like that, I can't even believe anyone would do it in this day and age, particularly when there are dozens, if not hundreds, of avid beekeepers ready and willing to extract those bees and either keep them, give them away or sell them on Craig's List.

At any rate,  after this long period of quiet and a long, wet winter, I'm so glad to be introducing new residents to our yard.  Soon, once again, we'll reap the many benefits of their presence, not least of which is the simple joy of sitting by the hive, smelling that sweet smell of wax and honey, watching them flying in and out of the hive, spinning the bounty of the nectar-flow into gold of their own.

Grieving Ratter

Long ago, before Harry Potter even, we were wild about The Golden Compass in this house.  That was way back in the days when I would read books aloud to The Kid, but really it was to all three of us, four of us once Jasper came along.  

So it went with The Chronicles of Narnia, with The Hobbit, with The Lord of the Rings, and then with the Dark Materials trilogy.  We didn't have television in those days, which was fine by us, so books it was.

As a book lover, that was a dream. As a children's lit lover, even more so.  I've never gotten over, forgotten, the books I loved as a child, and still re-read them now, marveling at how they grabbed me then and still grab me now.

The Golden Compass was new when we read it, and a revelation.  I'm not sure how I found out about it, but in the years that have passed, I have re-read it five times.  Which means that I'm now on my sixth reading, as I prepare to make a gift of the book to a young reader-friend but mostly as I grieve my lost dæmon, Jasper.

We had the good fortune to see Philip Pullman when Book Two: The Subtle Knife was published.  The three of us trooped down to Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books at Larkspur Landing on a school-night and sat mesmerized as the author himself talked about and read from the book.  Must have been 1997 or 98, I imagine, so The Kid was 10.  He and I had already logged hours and hours at that bookstore by that time, at Story Time on Sunday mornings (which held me much more rapt than him) or just generally browsing, stretched out on our stomachs companionably in the children's section, leafing through books.  It was a bit our library.  Since there was a cafe in the bookstore, I could imagine myself living in there -- all essentials covered.

Reading The Golden Compass aloud, I'd always pronounced dæmon "day-mun," probably as a way to differentiate if from dee-mun, using sound to make it clear that dæmon is not demon.  Imagine our surprise, then, when Mr. Pullman himself pronounced it dee-mun.

And truly, of all of the wonders Mr. Pullman creates, the dæmon reigns supreme.  Yes, I love Iorek Byrnison and all of the other panserbjorne (armored bears).  I love Serafina Pekkala and all of the other witches.  I love the parallel universes, the cities visible in the Northern Lights, but most of all, I love the dæmons.

As I re-read the book now this sixth time, it's with particular appreciation for how the story gradually unfolds the meaning of the dæmon, the rules for how this part of that world works.   As always, I hunger for a dæmon of my own, for that special relationship that the humans have with their external animal-shaped souls.  It's like a familiar but better.  Like Jiminy Cricket, but oh so much more sophisticated and multi-dimensional.  When you have a dæmon, you are never alone.  Your dæmon both amplifies and reveals the essential of who you are. 

My sister has just been reading The Golden Compass for the first time, so I have also been appreciating her joy in the story.  It's been so helpful to share this point of reference, so that she can now remind me that a large part of my grief at losing Jasper has been because he was like my dæmon, or as close to one as I am likely to get, in this lonely dæmon-less world we inhabit.  It's so true that throughout my life with Jasper, all of which was in the post-Golden Compass part of my life, I wished so fervently that he and I were as connected as human and dæmon, that he was with me everywhere and always, our minds and hearts truly interpenetrated, inexorably linked.

Over this morning's first coffee, I cried and sighed my way through Chapters 12 and 13, in which Lyra, Pan and Iorek find and bring back Tony Makarios.  This is truly the very heart of the story, and the part that is for me the true-est to how I've been feeling about Jasper lately, the deep cut and sharp sense of loss.  Like Tony, I keep asking, "You got my Ratter?"

I'm relishing this 6th time around with Lyra and Pantalaimon and the rest so much more, as I hold Jasper's memory close.  Feeling very grateful to Mr. Pullman, indeed, for the deep deep solace this represents.

XX

This is us today

Slept in this morning, woo hoo, til 6:45, didn't get out of bed til 7:45, didn't go to class til 10. A very different kind of Saturday morning than usual.

Almost didn't know what to do with myself.

It's gorgeous out today, and of course, I'm missing you-know-who, He Who Can Not Be Tamed. But we're enjoying the spring, too, being alive, having each other.

Here's my sweetheart, sling and all, riding the trainer.  

Joe has been robbed by the accident sustained two weeks ago, robbed of fitness and strength and feeling good, robbed of time on the bike, robbed of time in the garden and beekeeping.  It's challenging as hell for someone who does not have a taste for idleness (unlike myself) to have movement limited to maybe-i'll-sit-on-the-couch-propped-up-on-this-mountain-of-pillows or maybe-i'll-sit-on-the-bed-propped-up-on-this-mountain-of-pillows. You know I'd be kicking it with a pile of books, delighted to be still and quiet and adventuring in my mind.  For Action Man, not so much.

Let's be clear, riding the trainer is a challenge.  Poor right lung!

I went to a really great class with KK this morning, KK who is just such a supreme delight, like incarnated fizziness, bubbles made flesh.  Absolutely delightful, and so clear and so funny, direct, skillful.  Wow, we are so blessed with Anusara teachers around here.

Class was great, and now I'm home, a bit stunned at how late it is, and about to leave for the nursery on our quest for red ferns to plant around Jasper's little grave site.  Oh missing him so much today.

Since the accident two weeks ago, we've been keeping a little notebook.  OK, I've been keeping it, either interviewing Joe or making notes as I observe things or he says them aloud.  Keeping track of the many impacts on his happiness and life of that stupid car turning directly into his path.  It's our Pain and Suffering log, all of ways in which he, and we, can't live our lives to our usual fullest because of the injuries he sustained.

And there are many impacts.

Still, as usual, we're plugged into what's important.  I am so grateful that Joe is OK, that he's recovering and that although he is extremely constrained by his skeletal and organ damage, that he's himself.  That he's him.

That's a lot to be grateful for.

XX