this journey is my own

It's been a wild couple weeks.  On December 5th I officially started walking again.  It was a lot of lurching at first!  Monday, December 7th we took the last wedge out of my boot.  And then, after a week of walking and lurching, Robert and I took off for Minnesota for the third time this year.

This time had nothing to do with the Mayo Clinic though!  After twenty years of trying, Robert managed to score us tickets to see Sara Groves, who is one of my favorite artists and someone whose music has literally changed my life.  When I started college in the spring of 2004 I was alone in a new town.  I started playing tennis with another student, Scott through a tennis club, and we became tennis buddies.  We didn't talk much but at one point mentioned the schools we were going to and discovered we both attended church alone.  We started taking turns going to each other's churches each Sunday and sometimes going to both.  We played tennis and we went to church together but were very much painfully alone.  Loneliness nearly ate me up as a kid and going to college was not a magical cure.  I recognized he had his own issues with loneliness, but we did not talk about how alone we were or really anything of any substance.  We were tennis buddies and provided each other company when going to church.

One day he lent a CD to me.  It was Conversations by Sara Groves.  Naturally the CD got stuck in the CD player in my car, and I was so mortified!  Even though the CD was stuck in my car, it still played, and I listened to it nonstop.  There were a handful of songs that were very reassuring at that time in my life and helped me feel less alone.  Eventually I was able to get the CD back to Scott.  Shortly after that he said he was going to Russia after his graduation to bring a bride home.  Seriously!  It was his decision, and I didn't feel it was my place to say anything.  I didn't even really consider us friends.  Outside of church and tennis we led different lives and didn't talk much about those lives.  So I didn't say anything.  And he disappeared.  We sent emails initially, but his emails stopped suddenly, and I never heard from him again.  I didn't think we were friends at the time, but he let me borrow a CD that very much gave me the strength I needed to survive a tough but soul-shaping couple years of my life.  

One Sara Groves CD led to another and another, and with every new album there are a handful of songs that help me feel less like a stranger to myself.  

Robert knows all this, understands how much her music means to me, and has tried to get tickets the past twenty years.  Sara Groves sings at churches, women's conferences, and other semi-private events.  The closest Robert got to getting tickets one year was by pretending to know someone in the church's congregation, which was the requirement for that particular concert.

The concert we finally scored tickets to was at Art House North, which is owned by Sara and her husband and located in their St. Paul neighborhood.  It's a place that supports artists of all kinds and is appropriately in an old church.  Robert bought the VIP tickets which included a Q&A with Sara Groves while enjoying pie and cider all while sitting together in pews.  The Q&A was incredibly personal and also sad due to Sara Groves losing her father a week prior to the concert.  One person in the audience asked Sara Groves if she was writing a song about her father, and she played us what she had composed thus far.  Because this concert was a celebration of the 25th anniversary of Conversations, Sara Groves had forgotten some of the music.  She even ran home to get some of the music!  She played piano, had her fabulous band backing her up, and shared her vocals with her daughter and two friends.  She played the entire album, made a few mistakes, told stories behind the songs, and even invited the audience to sing one of the songs with her, which is a moment so precious I will take it with me for as long as I live and even past the grave.  

It was brutally cold with piles of snow everywhere in St. Paul.  Plus the church had stairs.  I went from barely walking to tackling icy sidewalks, snow drifts, and stairs all in the matter of 24 hours.  I walked into PT Monday and was not at all surprised to learn I was officially transitioning to a tennis shoe and wearing the boot only at night.  My physical therapist said I may need a crutch the first few days of transitioning to a shoe, and I was like, "Dude I got this!"  I had no issues the first day but the next day I was in the worst pain I've been in thus far on the achilles tear journey.  I didn't use a crutch though and made it through a ten hour day at work.  It's been tough but doable since then.  I broke down and bought yet another pair of shoes though.  I am wearing heel cups for the moment, so the tennis shoes I wore prior to the injury are way too tight with the heel cups in them.  I bought a wide in my size, and the pain is better now.  I hope nobody I know ever goes through an achilles tear, but I've been taking notes for ways to make it better if anyone asks.  

I feel buoyed from the concert and ready to finish out the rest of the holiday rush at work while amping up my physical therapy.  I've been told this next part is going to be difficult, but I think I'm in a good place to do the hard work.  I also finally received confirmation that I graduated on Friday, which is a relief.  I think I can finally heal from the library trauma now that I'm not constantly peeling back the bandaid so to speak.  I chose not to go to the graduation ceremony.  I really only have Robert to celebrate this small achievement with, and we haven't done the cap and gown thing at our other graduations.  Also, the night of the commencement ceremony Robert I were on our way to Minnesota!  I can't think of a better way to celebrate than seeing Sara Groves and hearing the songs that convinced me to keep trying.

I also made it back up to my office this weekend.  I still need a chauffeur AKA Robert to climb the stairs, but I was thrilled to finally be in my special place where I can continue to sort, reflect, celebrate, accept, and unwind.  Whatever art happens moving forward is going to have a lot of extra joy, hard work, intention, and striving going into it.  

nonfiction winners

I just finished two more books worth checking out.

The Miracle & Tragedy of the Dionne Quintuplets by Sarah Miller (Teen or Adult nonfiction)

I enjoyed Miss Spitfire, Caroline, and most recently Hick by Sarah Miller. All three of these books were about women who interested me. After reading Hick I looked through Sarah Miller's remaining books to pick out the next book and nothing really stood out to me. I said the heck with it and went ahead and put one on my to-read list any way. And I'm glad I did. Sarah Miller has this way of completely capturing your attention and writing about characters in such a way that you end up caring immensely about them whether you want to or not.

Prior to reading this I hadn't heard anything about the Dionne Quintuplets. This book is heartbreaking. The entire family ends up being messed up in one way or another (though there are a few characters I think were messed up before the quintuplets were born). The whole thing is appalling. The parents were put in an impossible situation. Nobody knew how to handle five babies being born at the same time (totally fair) and everyone's dark side came out. It was a complete train wreck. I couldn't stop reading and was once again ensnared in Sarah Miller's wealth of research and narrative nonfiction prowess.

There's nothing new to read here - families are messed up, humans are flawed, and emotions rule us despite our best efforts. But Sarah Miller will have you on the edge of your seat wanting desperately for not just the Dionne quintuplets to thrive, but for all the Dionne children to get the hell away from their childhoods and parents and have a fighting chance.

This is Orange by Rachel Poliquin & illustrated by Julie Morstad (nonfiction picture book)

A celebration of the color Orange. The cover is immediately arresting, both delicious and powerful. With marbled, creamsicle end papers, an otherworldly, scribbly cantaloupe, monarchs flying from the pages carrying the souls of loved ones, and a colored pencil spread that deserves to be framed, the illustrations alone carry the celebration, history, and importance of the color orange. There's nothing special about the text, but this tiny book delivers a punch. From the linguistic journey of the word Orange to the roles Orange has played in defining itself, art, culture, history, literature, architecture, religion etc. There's nothing untouched by Orange. I'm ready for Poliquin and Morstad to write about the rest of the colors!

2025 Music

Music is fuel for me, so when Spotify and Apple share my end-of-the-year stats, I get pretty jazzed about it.  I listen to both.  I have my monthly playlists in Spotify.  Each month has whatever floats my boat.  The first song I like each month begins the new playlist, and I delete that month from last year.  Apple has all of my longer playlists, and also all the music I've ever owned from records I've converted to discs I imported to spoken word albums I also imported.  None of the hard-to-find stuff ever shows up in my stats.  I will forever be gobsmacked by how much music is out there that Apple and Spotify do not have.  It's one of the reasons I still look at cds when I see them in the wild.  

Here are just a few of my favorite moments from this year:

Needtobreathe is always in my top five.  This year they were my top artist in both this year.  They have some incredibly profound moments in their lyrics.  I'm excited they're at the top, but I'm ready for a new album from them!    

  

I love most kinds of trap.  It's the genre I listen to the most.  I never heard of it until about fifteen years ago, so I feel like I'm making up for all the time it didn't exist in my life.  At first I had to buy these trap cds that weren't sold in our country.  Thankfully, it's a lot more common right now, and there are gobs of sub genres.  The past couple years I've been listening to quite a bit of Hanzo, who is a music producer from Germany.  It's about as intense and imaginative as trap gets.  The best example of this is their song, Invasion, which is about aliens taking over.  Other than the PSA announcement at the beginning, there are only a few words sprinkled throughout, but Hanzo uses the music to tell us exactly how the invasion is going down.  

I listened to a lot of Latin music last year.  I wondered how that was going to show up in my genres.  Spotify has some crazy genres!  Last year our neighbors tore down their house and have been building a new house.  This is a common thing in my city.  On my street right now we currently have four tear downs/rebuilds in various stages of destruction/completion.  As the walls were going up at the neighbor's house in October of last year the framing crew listened to El Alfa nonstop.  The sound of it blaring from the cavernous shell of the home is something I'll never forget.  Every spare minute I had was spent on the porch listening to El Alfa blast from that shell.  Even though nothing could come close to that same quality of sound, I started listening to El Alfa even when I wasn't on the porch, and this opened the doors to all kinds of Latino and Brazilian music thanks to both Spotify and Apple doing such a great job recommending similar music.

  

I always get a huge kick out of seeing my stats at the end of the year, and I really enjoy seeing others.  My Arizona brother's top song was a Bluey song!  There have been some interesting posts and articles about parents and how their kids have taken over their Spotify Wrapped.  There are ways to fix this of course, but it's always a delight to see my Arizona brother's top songs of the year peppered with the music his kids listen to.  I hope he doesn't fix it! 

enjoying the calm

I feel like I'm in the eye of of the end-of-year tornado.  Mostly caught up at work.  We're managing to stay just barely on top of things, but that will do for the moment.  Yesterday was the first day I didn't work past the point of what I had to give, and we got home at a decent hour.  I've been managing to still take Sundays off, which have been devoted to school work.  Robert hasn't been so lucky.  He's working today.

Next week we meet the other side of the storm.  Teetering piles of things to do at work.  I also have PT twice, a dentist appointment, a doctor's appointment, a get together with my poetry friends, a holiday party, and a special concert Robert and I are traveling to St. Paul to see.  Mostly good things.   But today it's like my brain and body know about what's to come.  Though I didn't finish as strongly as I hoped, school is done.  It's my first Sunday with nothing on the schedule.  I have decided to hunker down and start a new embroidery project.

I just wrapped up this piece, which feels like a meadow reprieve from the gray and cold of December.

I like to include progress pics, but there aren't that many for this piece.  It came together quickly and was easy to get lost in.

cliffhanger

I've had a lot of books let me down recently.  Right now I only have five minutes here and there to read, so I'm not even sure it's any book's fault.  When I was working at the library I worked with a lot of brilliant people.  A few people had these elaborate book rating systems, and over the years I eventually developed my own.  It's pretty simple.  I have only a few categories, and I simply rate them on a scale of 1 to 5.

My categories are characters, language, details, illustrations (if applicable), delivery/clarity of message for nonfiction, conflict/resolution/story for fiction and narrative nonfiction, and two categories that are pretty squishy.  First, if it's a book written for children I make sure my old self is thinking about it from a child's perspective (tricky and squishy).  Second, I rate my gut feelings.  Sometimes I love a book that has completely appalling structural and/or grammatical flaws.  Sometimes the book chips away at my soul but the audiobook narrator's delivery stays with me (The Stranger in the Woods).  Squishy but's that what gut feelings are.

I love getting through my rating system and being completely surprised.  The latest book in the Witches of Brooklyn series surprised me.  I don't like mega cliff hangers.  I recognize it's a perfectly acceptable thing to do, and the author doesn't need to humor my lack of patience.

Witches of Brooklyn: Curse & Reverse by Sophie Escabasse (juvenile graphic novel)

Folks, number five in the Witches of Brooklyn: Curse & Reverse ends with a mega cliffhanger.  It really doesn't wrap up anything at all.  It ends during the super murky outcome of a life and death duel!  I was super miffed after finishing.  I couldn't even rate it for a while.

But it still got a high score, and it's really because the series is just so spectacular.  There's so much world and character building going on.  I love the characters and care about them just like they're my family.  The illustrations are incredible.  I got so lost in the spreads where the writer/illustrator depicted the passing of time.  There's a fine blend of comfort and adventure, which is important for me.  I like action just as much as anyone else, but please include a movie night with friends or a mini nail painting party!  I'll accept the cliffhanger with only a little grumbling but only because I adore this series.  And when I talk about it with others, I will highly recommend waiting until the sixth book comes out!   

One wedge at a time

There really hasn't been much to blog about and not a lot of time to blog.  Last week I took out wedge #2 of my boot.  Two more wedges to go!  I have been working weirdly hard at cutting back to one crutch for about half the day.  Between half of me not knowing what to do if it doesn't have a crutch, not being blessed with coordination, and the wound gremlins waking up sometime in the afternoon, the one-crutch journey has been a hot mess, but I'm proud of those half days of one crutch.  I've been told I'll be walking without crutches by December 13th and I may be out of the boot by January.  I've been doing some absolutely ridiculous workouts, but I can almost do crow pose due to the extra arm strength.  A crow in a boot!

Last week was our first week without J, the graphic designer who worked at my shop fifteen years.  It was just me and new employee #1 and Robert running around doing all the errands.  Robert successfully switched over the scratch engraver software to a new computer and mounted the computer on the machine.  This allowed us to get rid of the desk the monitor was sitting on.  We brought in a new old machine, an old Gravograph that my first new employee plans to use for some of the trickier engraving jobs.  We have two new desks ordered, one to replace the much-too-big table our cutters sit on and another one for our next new employee, who is starting December 1st.  Robert put up the rest of the shelves in the back, ordered a few more, and we're on track to finish much of the renovations by the end of the year.  I plan to do a mega post of all the work we've done in the past year once it's all done.

I turned in the last assignments for one of my three classes and have the list of things I need to fix on one of my two final projects from another teacher.  I doubt I will hear anything back from my other teacher.  I've heard of so much tragedy in the last few months, all people I barely know, and I feel such a weird mixture of horror, gratitude, shock, sympathy, and doom.  One of my teachers hasn't been present much this semester and she finally shared a terrible cancer diagnosis with us.  Each bit of bad news easily eats me up some nights, which is when I'm most vulnerable to anxiety.  Sometimes there's nothing anyone can do.  It's interesting how we know this, but there's still a part of ourselves that thinks we should be able to do something.  I'll take my achilles injury over every single piece of bad news I've heard recently.

I graduate soon.  Work is terrifically overwhelming at the moment, but I still enjoy going in each day.  I haven't been making too much art or poetry lately, but I've also been sleeping when I have spare time, and I've decided I'm ok with this for the time being.  Life is surprisingly good in this new chapter of whatever book of constant change we've been living.  Heck, there's a chance the furniture may arrive before the Thanksgiving break, and Robert and I can put it all together during the four day weekend (there's a surprising amount of shit I can get done just by waving one of my crutches around).  But we'll take all the good things we have going right now, furniture or no furniture.  

survival, humor, and absolutely packed days

Naturally, now that I am using the scooter only when absolutely necessary does Josie make friends with it.

Margo on the other hand, continues to only have deep, deep loathing for it.  Look at that glare!  How dare this rolling demon monster be in my way!

There's not a lot to report here.  Just survival, humor, and absolutely packed days.  Two of my three classes have final projects, and as of today I have submitted my rough drafts of each.  Now I'm just waiting for feedback so that I can finish them.  My other class has only been discussion posts about the plethora of library services out there for older adults.  I imagine there will be some larger assignment at the end, but it hasn't been posted yet.

I have officially hired one person, and tomorrow I am hoping to hire the second person.  Both will be responsible for graphic design and production, and I think it will help to have two people sharing that load.  In the meantime, I have been learning the bare basics of graphic design, ensuring I know how to run all the machines enough to provide basic training, thinking through all the ins and outs of training, and learning how to onboard two employees with their own unique schedules, skills, preferences etc.  I'm nowhere near ready, but the person I have already hired has worked in personalization before and has loads of skills, humor, and enthusiasm.  He is also starting tomorrow!  And he'll have a week with our current graphic designer before she leaves.  

I haven't made any huge strides with my injury.  I think the next big moment will be taking out another lift in a week or two  I definitely feel more comfortable with the crutches though, and have started enjoying pointing at things for Robert to do with one crutch.  He absolutely loves this btw!  The biggest hurdle I have right now is just how unbelievably tired I am.  If I had the time right now I could easily sleep 10+ hours a day.  I couldn't sleep when I was on bed rest, but now that I'm up and about, I'm ready to sleep.  Isn't that how it always goes?

I can finally see some time to slow down on the horizon.  It's definitely a ways off, but the outline of it is there.

Margo's big feelings

It's been all about Josie lately, but Margo would like to say she's recently had some great moments too.

Margo dressed up for possibly the last time for work, and it was an adventure.  Since Margo started going to work at my shop, she has had a soft spot for J, who is leaving soon.  I've never tried to dress up either dog, but when J said she wanted to dress up Margo, I said why not.  Margo loves J, so I wasn't too surprised she let J dress her up a few times for our social media.  This last time was a riot, because Margo was just as patient as ever, but we couldn't keep her wig on.  Margo loved the attention, everyone had some great laughs, and Margo got a toy out of the deal.

Can you guess who Margo was for Halloween?  

If anyone guesses Wednesday Addams, you are correct!  Margo has a dark sense of humor, so the role was a good fit for her.  Her toy Thing is her new best friend and just like her toys at home, she uses the squeak sound to express when she's having big feelings.  Thing's squeaker is kinder to the ears than Hamburger, which lives at home and has long, squalling, shrieking squeaks.  I've tried to hide Hamburger numerous times with no luck.  When Margo is having a big feeling, her hamburger radar goes off, and she can find it anywhere.

We recently installed a gate for Margo at the shop's front counter.  Robert and I have been back and forth about whether to get a gate since the beginning.  She's so well-behaved and listens to commands.  But she is also a leaner who wants to be the first one to greet customers.  Some customers do not want a dog leaning into them or laying on their feet.  So Robert and I got her a gate, and it's been wonderful.  She can be the first one to greet customers, and the customers who want her in their business can open the gate.  I'm just waiting for the day Margo brings her Thing to the gate for a customer!  She has squeaked it from the back a few times when customers come in, but if anyone hears it, they are too polite to inquire.

Margo is the best leaner I've known.  The perfect dog to take on a long walk or sit with on the porch for hours.  She is not big on cuddles.  But yesterday, after making some successful strides with my two big final projects for school, Margo cozied up to me.  We were at Robert's office so he could get some work done while having his support team nearby.  Unlike my office, Robert's office has a couch, which is where Josie hangs out when she goes to work.  I knew if I sat on Josie's couch, she was going to cuddle with me.  But after a while she left, and Margo decided to jump up and do some cuddling herself.  She stayed up so long we thought we were going to miss dinner and have to stay the night.  It was such a rare moment we didn't want to ruin it.  

Hares & Trains

Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton (Memoir)

After finishing this remarkable book I've been in a slump for several days.  I think I'm experiencing some kind of book grief.  I was so fully immersed in this book, coming out of it was like closing a world I had gotten so comfortable living in.

What I appreciated most about Chloe Dalton's unique journey is that she did something I haven't really seen before in the animal memoirs I've read.  She didn't forever keep the animal.  The hare wasn't injured, so there was no need to keep it.  But Chloe also didn't just shut the door on the hare once the hare started to leave for extended periods of time.  Chloe did the opposite.  She put in a hare door so that the hare could always come inside whenever it wanted to.  

Because Chloe didn't turn the hare into a pet but also didn't put up a clear division between the wild beyond her garden and the safety of her house, it created this strange world that gave the reader an opportunity to truly experience the magic of living alongside a wild animal.

Aiding this experience are Chloe's observations, all the sacrifices she made for the hare, and the strength of their bond.

I took many notes but will share a few:

* I loved that Chloe discovered what to feed the hare through a poem written in the 1700's.

* Each time Chloe talks about the care she takes to live alongside the hare is incredible:

"As time went by, I went to increasing lengths not to disturb it as it slept in the house. It would not have been the end of the world to startle it, but the sight of a hare asleep at the foot of the stairs was so captivating and improbable that it seemed no trouble to accommodate it."

The first moment the hare takes off on its own:

"All the features I'd admired up close - the blunt tips of its ears, and its rough, crosshatched pelt of many colours - served to conceal it.  The field developed and reclaimed it."

And after going through all the emotions of watching the hare leave, so many emotions, Chloe describes the hare coming back:

"But just before dusk, the leveret appeared in the open gateway, a slender silhouette against the tall wooden posts, its ears raised to the fullest extent as it listened intently, so that it seemed more ear than hare. For what felt like an age, it waited at the very edge of the divide between the two worlds, and then slipped into the house."

I won't give away much more than that or how the ending also makes this book a gem.  But I will share one more thing.  Chloe raises several important questions towards the end, questions that have the potential to change the world.  The reader weaves in and out of these questions with Chloe, feeling  all the pangs from the silence on the other side of these questions.

"If it is possible to create robots and drones to reap our fields for us, could we not use technology to detect the presence of leverets, and fawns, and nesting birds, and could reasonable efforts not be made to relocate them, rather than simply leaving them to be crushed beneath our machines?"

Big Boy 4014 and the Steam Team by Marsha Diane Arnold & Adam Gustavson (Nonfiction Picture Book)

This special book manages to provide interesting details and not be too wordy at the same time. The best spread for me is where the steam team has Big Boy 4014 on a turntable to take a look and a splendid paragraph about taking the train apart - "Test those bolts. Check those rivets. Grab the torches. Grab the welders. All new valves. All new pistons." It's such a delight to read.

I'm not sure if anyone else does this, but when I read important dates I think about family members who were alive or would have witnessed these big moments in history. For example, the author's note tells readers that Big Boys were built between 1941-1944. My maternal grandparents were teens and my dad was a toddler during this time. The Big Boy featured in this book was taken out of service in 1959, which is the year my mom was born. It really adds perspective when I think about historical events this way.

I enjoyed learning more about the Big Boys and the steam team's journey to not only get one up and running again, but the months of research that went into preparing Big Boy 4014 to go on tours and be enjoyed by many people. The illustrations are completely harmonious with the story. The majesty of Big Boy 4014 is brought to life from several different angles with so much depth and rich colors. The crowds enjoying Big Boy 4014 are so well done too! I read through this book several times - the first time to enjoy both the story and the Author's Note, the second time with my husband, who is a train nerd, and a handful of times to enjoy the illustrations. It's a tough book to give back to the library!

Balancing

My first week of crutches has been challenging, but I haven't had any spills so far.  I started out putting weight only on the tip of my foot, which my physical therapist said was ok for the time being, but that I needed to be able to plant my entire foot with each swing (25% weight-bearing of course).  I tried for three days and the heel pain felt similar to being socked really hard with a blast of stars and electricity spreading.  I was so disappointed and wondered if I needed to fight through it but decided to keep trying each day and wait until Friday to talk to the physical therapist.

Today when I swung and lightly planted my heel I felt absolutely nothing.  Only toward the end of the day did I have some of that pain.  I'm hoping I'll be ready to take a wedge out soon.  I've also started up my workouts again with an emphasis on the exercises from my physical therapy.  I feel a little more connected to myself, which is even more important during this big change at work.

I've been setting up interviews left and right, learning as much as I can at work (I officially know how to measure fonts, make trapezoids, and have been learning to use the Bézier tool like a ninja, a slow slow ninja), and still tackling my classes (though much of my enthusiasm, life force, and effort have been consumed elsewhere).  

All is well for the moment.  It helps so much that my healing is evident, we have interviews lined up, I've got Robert's support, my school assignments have been manageable, and I'm getting some of the graphic design basics down.

If there wasn't enough proof that I'm healing, Josie has gone back to mostly snuggling with Robert at night.  He is, after all, her favorite, so I expected this to happen.

Thankfully, she still occasionally picks me.  

Look at that smile!