1. I didn't start a new book today. I continued to let the stories and the unnerving revelations of Blazing Eye Sees All sink in. Debi Mc's comments on my blog were an affirmation to me of the joys of a wide reaching spiritual life, an openness to various traditions, and being spiritually grounded in particular foundational practices and ageless wisdom.
2. Gibbs started scream barking and hopping and scratching at windows and then I heard the sound of leaf blowers.
Ah! Ethan and his workers arrived to give Jane's, Christy's, and our yards a spring cleaning and a first mowing.
The yard workers were here for quite a while blowing, mowing, and fertilizing -- well, and talking -- all human actions that Gibbs wants to protect me from!
Luckily, if I simply put Gibbs on a leash, he calms right down, even jumps up and sits on my lap or beside me in a living room chair.
Copper?
I think he slept through it all, unfazed by the noise and activity, unbothered by Gibbs' cries of alarm.
3. For the nearly eleven months now that I have been (beautifully) recovering from the kidney transplant, the transplant team's emphasis has been on protein in my diet and I've enjoyed eating fish, beef, pork, and chicken. This weekend, however, I was in the mood for vegetarian meals. I fixed myself some bacon at breakfast today, but I fixed vegetable stir fries for dinners, served with couscous on Saturday and with basmati rice today.
I supplemented these meals with nuts by the handful to up my protein intake.
These stir fries really hit the spot and while I enjoy eating a variety of foods --I'm an omnivore -- I enjoy variety! -- , I have enjoyed the pleasures of vegetarian cooking for over forty years and enjoyed my weekend of cauliflower, broccoli, mushrooms, spinach, celery, yellow squash, green salads, and other vegetables both cooked and raw yesterday and today.
For me, vegetarian eating is not only delicious, but it's (I'm not exaggerating) profoundly nostalgic and brings back happy memories I treasure, memories of decades in the past and the many times in recent months and years that I've cooked vegetarian meals.
When I was in my thirties and forties, especially, vegetarian cooking was source of stability, a reliable source of pleasure and calm. Much else in my life was not so stable or very calm, but things were always reliably even keeled in the kitchen with vegetables.
A post script.
Tonight, before I turned back the covers to crawl into bed, I sat up on the bed with Copper for a while and I wanted to go back to 1983, a turbulent and ecstatic year, when I was loving teaching but outside the classroom much of my life was in chaos.
I wanted to feel some of the elation I felt during that year of my inward life being so polarized, so I went to YouTube and retrieved two different videos of Joan Armatrading singing, "Drop the Pilot".
That did it.
Forty plus year old invigoration returned, I beamed and I remembered how I used to fend off guilt and confusion and my deep sense of failure by dancing without inhibition alone in my apartment, often to Joan Armatrading.
The second video ended. I turned to Copper, pet his welcoming head and spine, and re-entered the world of April, 2025, stretched out under the covers, and, with a hand resting on Copper, let his deep purring put me to comfortable sleep.
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