BIRTHDAY MONTH

Well. It's September. It's birthday month. Time to celebrate for 30 days. This is good. This even makes me happy. This is a happy making, good thing even if I am coming across a little subdued. So many many good things happen in September - ordinary scheduled good things like oh - back to school - which for this gal was always something to revel in, with its new notebooks (yes. I have one) and sharp pencils, new clothes, (Yes. have some of those too). It's also the season of HOLIDAYS - starting with Labor Day and flowing through birthday, Columbus Day, sister's birthday, Halloween, Veterans' Day, Thanksgiving, on up to that peak of Holiday Frenzy'n'Joy - Christmas - with a final kick of New Year's Day just in case you haven't had enough festivity. 

So yes. September. Great month for this Virgo. 

Even if - and perhaps also because - the anniversary of Mama's death is rolling around too. If I am honest - which I try to be most of the time - I'm a little glad that if I had to lose Mama it would be during my Birthday month. I always thought that would be really sad - I remember a precious Virgo boy I knew who's brother died the week of his birthday and he told me he'd never be able to be happy on his birthday again.   Well - they were both teens so the pain was coupled with the unnaturalness of early death. My mother was ready to go home and I am actually not sorry for her at all that she left me a year ago. I'm kind of glad, actually, that she can go on to the Next Thing. Keeping her with me would really have been such an act of selfishness - had I been given the opportunity - and she would have let me keep her, too, because well - Mama. Most giving woman in the world. 

So I am glad for her that she's flown off to joy and newness and more and next. And I'm even more glad that she did it in my birthday month. And every year I'll be able to add the anniversary of Mama's freedom to my celebrations - and ya know? - that's a really good thing. 

And for us Virgos - Jupiter has come to stay with us for a whole year. How nice is that? He's bringing a whole basket full of goodies for my party and I'm going to be so durn busy I probably won't have a moment to reflect on things for a while. How like Mama to give me a year to grieve and then send Jupiter to cheer me up when that year is over. I mean - she could have gone away this year or next - when I'd have to wait 12 more years to frolic with Jupiter again.  I'll be what? 75? hmm. I'll be glad of that too when it comes, but in the mean time - I am ready for some bounty and some joy and somehow, today, I can feel Mama's arms cuddling me close to her. I can hear her whisper laughing naughty funny joyful tender admiring beautiful sweet love words into my ear.

Thank you mama. Thank you for my Birthday Month. I hope you are having total fun in your Next Good Thing.

It's Birthday Month Again!

Yes my friends. It's that time of year again. It's SEPTEMBER - and time for TheQueen to celebrate her BIRTHDAY!

 

I have a lot of stuff I'm thinking about - including some knitting thoughts - and some drawing thoughts and all sorts of Other Good Things - but I've been fooling around on the computer this morning for hours and just now getting around to TheBlog. So I'll just post about my early birthday gift today and put out the rest of my September Plans as the week progresses.

As for the early birthday present - well - there is, as in all good posts from TheQueen - some back story:

I have been longing for More Active Play in my life. I set the goal for Summer 2014 to Find a New Sport.  I knew this would be both fun and enriching. In July I took a long bike trip in a state park and oh my goodness did I ever love it. ThePrince and I actually came home thinking we'd like to buy some bikes but after a day or so reality kicked in.  Since I live at the end of a long dirt lane, at the end of a long dead end paved road - I would either have to bike over the same 8 miles every time I wanted to go someplace or I'd have to load it on a car and take the bike someplace.

Uh. I know this. If it involves getting into a car and going somewhere ... it ain't going to happen.  I wouldn't even go to my beloved gym if I weren't already in town for working or grocery shopping.

I will still go on bike trips but they will be on trails where there are bikes to rent.

So. What else?

Ahh - well, remember, I live on a river. Or rather, I live up a little gut that's up a little creek that's on a river. That means I can walk to the water. WALK; that's important. I will walk almost anywhere. Walking through field and forest ( or city or town, or even shopping mall) is my favorite form of active play. I love the idea of feet as transportation.

Now - we have boats here - even boats that I can handle - with effort. But they're really more Big Strong Guy sized boats.  Our canoe is an 18 foot Grumman aluminum ship - and if I'm the only person in it - the bow comes out of the water and has no steerage. I have to either take dogs - who move around and even jump out - or fill up buckets with water to hold the bow down.  Like Goldilocks, this boat is Too Big.

And there is a kayak - but again - guys have altered it, taking out the seat, so here's another Goldilocks allusion:  It's Too Hard.

And then - there is always the fear that the most darling, wonderful ThePrince in the world, will try to dominate me if I step into his hobby. He's the Boat Guy.  He's extremely bossy.  He has a powerful, intense personality. I love that vividness. I would crush a lesser personality than his. Often his exuberance is funny and I just laugh and make faces and ignore him - but when it comes to his areas of expertise I tend to yield. And loving him as I do - I don't want to resent having yielded my pleasure to his instance.

Still and all there was this little voice inside me that said "You are always sniping about people who live on the water and never go out on the water ... and You Are No Different From Them!"

Yes. There was a spiritual component to all of this. There was almost a spiritual duty to connect with the river. When I go out with Other People - while I love it, love them, love sharing .... I am coming out as a tourist. What about getting to know my water - my marshes - my little birds and dragon flies and marsh roses? When am I going to go out and honor the blessed gift I've been given?

So I began to make kayak murmurs. Then I tried someone else's kayak. Then I talked about kayaks to TheBoatGuy - who immediately leapt into action!  He looked up every dealer in Virginia. He made calls. He read articles. He had a list. He tempted me away from work early on Wednesday so we could go look at a shop. And he took me to Fredericksbug and  the Virginia Outdoor Center where I could try some out.

I had an idea I'd like the Old Town Vapor 10. It was small (important to me) and seemed comfortable enough. Best of all, VOC has some. I tried one and liked it. Very stable. Very easy to paddle - though even an 8 foot paddle knocked against the gunwales. It was good. If one bloomed in my yard I'd probably think it was the best of all. I tried a Heron, another, smaller Old Town Kayak. No thanks - wrong shape for me.

Then the owner brought down an Old Town Loon 11.1

From the moment I stepped into it I knew this was a different experience. Even the launch felt different. It was narrower and slightly tipsier.  I don't really mind tipsy because heck - I go on the water expecting to get wet. But it wasn't very tipsy - just slightly more so. Then I sat down and shoved off. It clove through the water like a fish. The first try to cross the current in the upper Rappahannock was a success. I shot across like an arrow.

This did not feel like a boat. It felt like an extension of my body. It made me think of my sister, a dressage horsewoman. When you see her sitting a horse, you can't tell where she ends and the horse begins. This was what I was dreaming of but hadn't realized I would find.

I had to get back in the original Vapor and then back in the Loon and after that - well - I didn't really need to try any more boats. I thought I ought to, after all, there are other kayaks in my price range, at several different places around VA. This was just my first stop.

We drove all over VA to look at boats. We went to Farmville and the Appomattox River Company where there are scadzillions of kayaks. I didn't have much fun there, though. The staff wasn't very friendly, with the exception of one salesman, who also does the repairs.  Perhaps I ought to say it was just the owner who was the problem. He couldn't believe I wouldn't just pop the $780 for his starter kayak - without ever trying it out!  Sheesh! Even a car dealer lets you take one out for a spin. I'll just say - he's one boat dealer who will never see my $ even if I do end up some day ponying up with the big bucks. I'd go someplace else. Or order on-line. The repair guy salesman, though, was more than helpful. He suggested I go up to James River State Park where I could try out the Wilderness kayaks he was showing me.

Which we did.

But the memory of feeling like I was a boat, instead of I  like was in a boat, sat in the back of my mind whispering "You already know - you already know". So at the end of the day I told ThePrince "Look - I have seen enough boats. I know what I want"

I still had to give Other Good Reasons for not looking any more ... because I was with a man with Boat Fever - On A Quest.

1. I can borrow one from Bill for a few weeks and see if I reallio trulio want one. 
2. I can get one used - so I won't be timid about dinging it up
3. I can save on the boat and spend on a better paddle
4. I can sell it easily if it turns out I don't really use it 

And So

And so on Sunday we called up our friend who owns one and I borrowed a lime green Old Town Loon 11.1

And doesn't it look like fun?

And don't I have a lovely place to play?

It's Just Different, Somehow

Once again the earth has rolled around the sun till it's back in September - the Birthday Month. The Cricket Song Month.  The New Beginning Month.

But somehow, this year, it's different.

In fact, the whole summer was different. It feels as if it's been different for a long time. I've been trying to figure out how long it's been different and I think it's been more than a year really - but certainly it's been different since the warm weather began.

First off there is the drying up of my creativity. The lack of art, craft, and creation has been a little painful and a little relaxing. With the retirement of The Doing and The Making has come The Reading - but it hasn't been productive reading. Not the Good For You stuff. It's been escape reading into murder mystery novels - a harmless enough activity, I suppose, but certainly not particularly creative. And even that has been different this time around. BD and I are both reading the same author, Michael Connelly and discussing his books - their underlying ethics, the particular characters, and most especially the literary style and skill he uses. Hmmm. Well. Perhaps that part is the productive bit. We never read the same books unless we're reading out loud to each other. This is a first for us and it's author specific. We've tried to branch out to a few other authors and haven't gotten past chapter 1 with any of them.

I am not horribly unhappy about this inartistic un-productiveness. I know that creativity sometimes needs to sleep, to store up energy. Besides, I don't create out of duty. I do it out of joy and love. But it does feel strange to be so in-artistically unproductive. It just, somehow, feels different.

There is also the unease I've felt over the whole shake-up in our local government. It isn't panic. It's almost anxiety, but not quite. The changes were long overdue and they'll make things much better - they even satisfy my Virgo soul, with it's love of order, routine and stability. But there will be some fall-out and the library will have to revisit a lot of its statistical data in light of Someone Else's now-revealed inadequacy. It's always a pain when you have to clean up somebody else's mess - even if it's only a part of someone else's mess.

So yeah - work feels different. And I made it feel really different by pushing through a software platform change from a pretty intuitive, easy, almost childlike program to a more geeky and sophisticated and, I still believe, better program. That sort of change is always a climb up the hill - a hill that feels steeper, the older the climber is and I'm sorry to say - I am the youngest employee at the library right now. Yeah. Gonna be 61 years young.

So yeah. It feels different.

And then there is the different feeling in the house right now. I am so sad to say that our beloved Captain Jack Haile, our good health talisman dog, slunk away in the night last week and was hit up on the highway - the 4 mile away highway. I found him as I was driving to work and we buried him beside Topsy. I will write a loving tribute to him one day soon. He was too fine a dog, to special a dog, to wonderful a dog to not memorialize him, but right now the pain is too sharp to write about it.

Poor little Callie is very disoriented - when she is reminded of it, that is. She is a dog and as such she lives in the now. A run. A biscuit. A romp with the string toy is always going to get her attention but the rest of the time she's hugging close to our ankles. The thought of her being canine companion-less bothers me a lot and BD a good bit as well. I think we will find her a playmate pretty soon.

And so.

And so now, as the days begin to shorten, as the mornings fill with misty dew, as the crickets begin to sing and the black gums begin to revolve from green to red, I begin the Birthday Month feeling, somehow, a little different. Not necessarily bad. But surely different. 

September 12 in 12

Yes. A Brand New Month - and Birthday Month at that - and I'm still thinking I can add another good habit to my life. I've been trying to make small step improvements to an already good situation all year. Looking back, I remember it was hard to come up with 12 habits given the criteria they had to meet:

• take little time 
• be done every day 
• make my life more fun, happier, better

 Of course I'm always enthusiastic about New Years Resolutions. I simply adore the idea of things being better tomorrow - at Tara or at home or on the job. I love progress and movement and the joyful spiral of Better Things. Habits, the experts say, are formed when one does the same thing for 21 days in a row. The trick is ... if you miss a day, those same experts say, you have to start all over again with day 1. So perhaps I did not, in fact, create new habits in all cases. Truth is - I am not a metronome and can neither tick nor tock with perfect consistency. But since the real aim is improvement, progress and Better Things, (after all - should I achieve perfection, that would mean the end of Better Things, right?) I am okay with my B+ efforts Since the October board meeting is when I report on the status of the 5-year plan I think it behooves me to add this one to my life in September.

 5. Read my 5-year play every morning - because it is so durn easy to forget what I'd planned to do until it's review time and then I have to confess to all the things I failed to do! (a corollary to this is - have each of my staff read it at least once a week too - but that's another list)


Wise readers might think I ought to have added this much earlier in the year - and perhaps I could have but there were Other Things I wanted more.  Also - most of these habits were not things I had never done before - were not steps into entirely new directions - they were things I sort of did slap dash, hit or miss and now or then. The idea was that if I did them more consistently, made them daily habits, I'd make More Progress and have Fewer Moments of Horror when I realized I was late for something, missing something, about to crash and burn. In short - I already did all these things sometimes. I just wanted to do them more often.

Also, I put this one off so late in the year because I feared I would get bored with my plan. I needed to figure out how to go about reading it. It's actually a pretty lengthy document, full of definitions and explanations and ... well ... words.

Maybe too many words. Maybe it needs to be given a serious overhaul. Or maybe it's a really good plan. But whatever - I am going to focus on it with deep and concentrated thought from now on - not just because it is Good For Me, but because I'm moving into a late stage in my career and it's time to think about succession - and about what must be done in the next few years to make a smooth transition from now to a post TheQueen reign.

This is not to say that I haven't looked at my 5-year plan since last January. It just means that now it gets daily attention, sharper focus and more time. And if September will be to study the 5-year plan, October will be to begin making daily steps towards fulfillment of that plan. It all fits in with the Back-to-School feeling of autumn.

And should you be curious about how well I am doing with the Other Habits - well here's an update:

 August - draw 20 minutes every day - which I did - and watched my skills improve.  A+ for me

July  Charles Schwab List - August grew very fractious and difficult and though I'd make the list every day ... I didn't always follow it the next day. I will just say, I did my best and got through a rough month as lightly as possible.   A- for me

June  One Step Towards a Big Life Goal ah well - See August. Because a BLG for me is to become a better artist. So that's a pro forma A for me.

May  Compliment someone at work each day -  Why this is so hard to do I don't know. I believe I am kind and thoughtful - and I certainly DID compliment someone sometimes. But I always felt that little moment of "Ah Ha" whenever it happened. This is not a habit yet. But I am aware of it when I do it. I'd say ... D+

April  Exercise - well. I love me some exercise and I get in 4 days a week almost every week. On other days I am just active period, so I give myself an A on this one.

March Water .... Yup. I'm good with this one too - perhaps not perfect - but certainly I deserve a B++

February Prayer ... daily prayer. Here I have to admit that with a month as difficult as August was I am sure I prayed Every Day - if not many times a day. Of course - I believe the idea was to pray thankfully more often than I prayed supplicatingly. I can't give myself an A since I only acted in deed, not in spirit. I shall, instead, give myself a fat C+ and try a little harder this month.

January Journal my food - another A for me here - I am, if not the perfect weight, at least aware of how I got where I am. And I'm close. And my dining is healthier and better and I feel better for it. In fact, I wonder how I would have made it through Awful August without being nutritionally strong.

And so it is Labor Day. If I labor at all it shall be on cleaning the house - which I may or may not do. It's humid and rain is in the forecast. I may choose to be labor-free today and werk harder tomorrow. At Tara.