New Vistas and Perceptions

Walking with Michael opens new vistas. This morning, we saw a balcony with a crack in it above us. That is, I saw a crack in a balcony; he was calculating the amount of force it must have taken to create the crack and what sort of vehicle could have done such damage. It reminded me of a bucolic drive through the Alabama countryside near sundown on a gorgeous day, where I was admiring the contours of the landscape, the metal roofs in such pretty colors and watching the clouds. As I remarked on something or other, Michael’s response was, “yes, and it must be garbage day tomorrow.” While I was looking at the sky, he was noticing that all the houses had hauled their garbage cans out to the road. Or the time I was telling him about the really cool car I’d seen (it was blue) and his first question was whether it had the upgraded wheels available on that model. Although he’s explained it to me several times, I am still not all that sure what upgraded wheels are.

As we walk, we see a lot of people walking their dogs. Most of the dogs here fall into the portable dog category, and they always make me wonder about what it is about our dogs that we love so much that feels like it wouldn’t be available in a portable dog. Michael pointed out that our dogs are big enough that they can get their own heads into our laps for affection and then move away, but that doesn’t seem to capture it to me. Surely, the loving, happy personality would be available in a smaller package?

The dogs here are also virtually silent, which I don’t understand at all. How do you get dogs, especially with people packed in this density, not to bark all the time? Yet while I sit outside for much of the day, I hear virtually no dog barking, and I know there are many dogs around here. One of our neighbors, who spends time in Spain as well, says that the dogs there bark all the time. It’s a mystery.

I got lots of comments about my worries about the self-absorption of blogging. For now, I’m going with the suggestion from Doug that I treat this as a letter I write him and generously share with others. The writing is still helping me process and organize, and as Kearney points out, she likes to be able to keep tabs on me. Another incredibly useful comment that came in delicately suggested that maybe the recovery is not the problem with writing, it’s just that writing is really hard, and reminded me of the basic easing-into-it and self-rewarding strategies of setting either time or length limits and abiding by them before taking the reward. I started doing that this morning and it seems, so far at least, successful. Maybe it is just that writing is hard and not that I’m broken? We’ll see. In any event, I managed to write a bit this morning and it isn’t completely embarrassing, so I’m going to keep plowing on.

We bought the plant in this picture at Ikea when we got the desk chair. I don’t know what it is, but it’s cool. It puts out its lovely purple blossoms one at a time, up the outside of the big pink part. And I don’t know if it comes with upgraded wheels.