Category: Uncategorized

Sometimes Howard and I go to the Hudson River to work. This is what we looked out on yesterday as Howard worked and I mostly goofed off. Very pretty, right? This is Manhattan. Life isn’t bad here and there.

I recently completed a course in Mindful Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). I did it because I read a study that found that it helped for “women’s troubles” (nod, nod, wink, wink). But it turned out to be this incredible thing that can be applied to everything you do. It’s essentially meditating and learning how to be “mindful” about your life. That’s it. Just a slight shift really in how you go about your day-to-day life. Never in a million years would I have thought I’d stick with meditating. I tried it in my twenties and it gave me unbearable, excruciating back aches. Never again, I said. I’m just not a meditating type.

Sure enough, I got back aches this time too, but they teach you how to deal with that and now it’s not a problem. Also, if you’re uncomfortable you can do it laying down or even walking, which I love. I’m a big walker.

Everywhere I go I read about MBSR now. It really does seem to be all the rage. That’s got to be because of two things: it’s not hard to learn and you get almost immediate results. The class is only 8 weeks long.

If you’re in New York City, I learned from Dr. Myra Weiss, and her name is on the University of Massachusett’s website, along with listings for teachers around the country. It was originally developed there by Jon Kabat-Zinn as a method for pain management, but there have been a ton of studies that show it’s great for other things, anxiety, etc. But if you’re in NYC, I can’t recommend Dr. Weiss enough. I’m not just saying that. She is warm, direct, and well, I’m taught, and if anything, I would say I went in there pretty skeptical, although I did want it to be useful, so maybe my two biases cancelled each other out.

Chris sent this to show that I am not the only one with a pet possessed by the devil. This is her dog Belle, with a haircut, and in the throes of demon infestation. Is that her tongue — oh no! It’s something she’s chewing on, right? But yes, I see it’s true. Belle is clearly evil. (Belle is a little tasmanian devil, actually. You have to see her. A little whirling dervish speed demon of a dog. It’s very cute. It’s like she is running on a motor of accelerated love.)

Jackie sent me a new banner. Thank you, Jackie! I am very happy with the new name. I love my little Satan’s Fur Puppets.

I just finished Willa Cather’s My Antonia, and that was a real pleasure I must say. I’m going to pick up some more Cather when I’m out today. There’s nothing like a new author to love.

Doesn’t this coming up week feel like a vacation week? Like we shouldn’t work at all, all week? It feels that way to me. Normally I watch the fireworks from my roof, but this year I think I might walk over to the river to watch, like I used to when I was younger, and wanted to be right there in the thick of it. Nothing else would do.

… I get the look of love. Except, there’s still a bit of the devil in that face, isn’t there? I’ve asked my friend Jackie to modify the blog banner to say: Satan’s Fur Puppets. That’s one of my favorite nicknames for Buddy and Finney.

The MRI was unnerving, I have to say. Two things made it okay. 1. They didn’t put me all the way in. From the knees down I was sticking out and that was enormously comforting. 2. I’m teeny. That space inside is VERY small. A lot smaller than it looks on TV. I got through the unnerving bits using MBSR which I have learned and I really have to post about.

Most people are braver than me, it seems. Life would be so much easier, I can’t help thinking, if I wasn’t afraid of EVERYTHING. (I saved a baby spider yesterday, but then later killed a big one because it was too scary. Felt terrible about it.)

Afterwards, I asked the MRI guy to show me the part of my arm where it hurts, because where it hurts is different from where the doctors says I’m injured. They say it’s my shoulder, I say it’s my arm. They say I feel it lower because pain radiates, but for me it hurts in a line across the top third of my arm.

Sure enough, all is darkness in the MRI until you get to spot where I say it hurts, and then there are two bright white lines going around the front of my arm, surrounded by a cloud of white and white spidery-looking veins. The guy says he isn’t really qualified to interpret and I say, “Could you just tell me, does everyone have two white lines there,” and he said no.

I’m worried that the people reading the MRI won’t look there. The prescription said to do the shoulder, and when I expressed my concerns about the location to the MRI guy he said, well, you’re so small we’re going to get that part in any case. But they might not look there.

In other news: The moth I photographed the other day is now dead. I felt terrible. (Again.) Maybe I should have tried to catch it and release it outside.

Poor monster moth. Tomorrow I’m getting an MRI for my hurt arm. I’ve never done this before. They always make MRIs look so scary on TV, and everytime I think, ‘but that doesn’t look particularly scary.’ Tomorrow I will know firsthand. Scary or no?

I came across this walking downtown. You can’t really see it in my picture here, but there’s a picture of Eric holding a bike over his head with this joyful expression on his face. Every day there seems to be a story of a hit and run. I don’t know if Eric’s killing was also a hit and run, but the hit and run aspect just takes these things into a whole other category of evil, doesn’t it? Someone can’t even be bothered to stop and help the person they just hit?? What if stopping could have saved them?

There is a tolerance for lawlessness from drivers in the city that is criminal. I know how insane and assholish pedestrians can be. I’ve been in cars in the city and I see how they just walk in front of cars, and then not only do they cross when they don’t have the light they take their freaking time about it, and so many bike riders act like the rules don’t apply to them period, but bottomline, the corresponding assholishness from drivers kills people. I walk all the time everywhere, and therefore have almost been hit by cars more than most. I’m not surprised by the number of hit and runs at all.

I would be happy with a general crackdown on all sides, but I wish something would be done about it already. It doesn’t have to be like this. I’ve been in other cities where everyone follows the traffic rules.