Monday, May 23, 2016

Hen? Rooster? Sixty minutes? Seventy? Who Knows? Not Me


When I went to the therapist who made me feel incredibly dowdy she recommended exercise for my anxiety. I told her that I was walking about an hour a day and she said that it appeared that for anxiety and women, the magic number of moments to exercise daily was something like 70 minutes. I could be wrong about that number.
I tried it for a few days. It seemed ridiculous.
If 60 minutes (plus the yoga I was doing then) didn't do the trick, why would 70?
Ah, lah.
The things we try.
But I do very much believe in exercise and more than that, perhaps, I believe in being outside for a part of the day and if one can spend that time in woods and fields, all the better. Sometimes I despair that it helps me at all and then I wonder if I would be so much worse if I did not do this.
Can't hurt, can it?

I went to the library today to see why my Overdrive account was blocked and to return some things and renew some things and check out some things and as always, I did not mind being in the library at all. The young woman at the tech desk was absolutely lovely and helpful. I remembered that Owen's school had artwork exhibited in the children's section and so I found his piece.


I really wanted to grab someone and show it to them and say, "My grandson did this!" but I didn't and honestly, it looked very much like all of the other kindergarten classes' Hungry Caterpillars although Owen had put food in there for the caterpillar to eat, which was a very nice touch, I think. And thoughtful. And he is a very thoughtful boy. 

And that was about the high point of my day. 

Here are two of the Barred Plymouth Rock teens. 


Aren't they pretty? I am thinking that the one on the right might be Luke Skywalker. His (?) legs are thicker than the legs of the one on the left (Mona Lisa?) and look at the different shapes of the heads. Mona's is rounder, Luke's is more elongated. 
And I could be completely wrong about all of this and seriously, I don't know shit. 
I am quite certain, however, that they both look like tiny dinosaurs. 

Tomorrow is my darling May's birthday and so this time 38 years ago I had been in labor for approximately forever and the midwives and a few friends were gathering in my little trailer about ten miles down the road from where I am living now. I will never forget that. I must have walked fifty miles that day, trying to get my baby to come on. I just took her cake out of the oven a few minutes ago. This year she actually wants a cake, rather than a pie and she knew exactly the one she wanted and I pulled out my old, yellowing recipe, cut from a newspaper a long time ago. It's a cocoa cake and has a glaze. It is deadly good as it has coffee as well as chocolate in it. We are all meeting for lunch tomorrow and I am so looking forward to that and giving her her silly little fun presents. 

And so it goes. We keep on going, we keep on living, we keep on walking whether to get the baby to come or to keep the life going as best we can. We notice the butterflies feeding and we mix the chocolate and butter and sugar and flour and eggs and vanilla, and we change the sheets and we remember to buy detergent and we read the books and we think about things or try not to think about things. We have dreams and we wake up in wonder and we drink our coffee and no matter the internal weather, we do what we do and there you go and here we are and it's always a mystery somehow, to some of us at least, and I suppose that as long as there is mystery, there is reason to keep on with it all.
The mystery and clean sheets. And cake. 
Something like that.

Love...Ms. Moon

8 comments:

  1. I've been thinking about chocolate cake all damn day. Mostly because I stepped on the scales and found I'm ten pounds up so fuck it!
    Omg I used to carry Frisk mints in my pocket for anxiety attacks. I'd pop them in my mouth and roll them around until they were gone and I'd say "You won't die while you have a mint in your mouth!" So I'd pop them and pop them and pop them until the anxiety would pass. I'd buy them by the case at Costco.
    The crazy things we try when we are fucked in the head! Xoxoxoxo
    Happy birthday to May!

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  2. Ya, those are handsome chickens! Even the rather forlorn wild turkey that keeps
    coming to my front door turns out to have some really nice striped feathers,
    seen up close. And I bet that's a good cake. Glaze is so much better than
    goopy icing. A happy birthday to your firstborn daughter!

    70 minutes? I recall a magic number of two hours. On a horse.
    In the woods, through the lupine, past the strawflower farm, near the ocean.
    It always worked.

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  3. I did NOT intend that weird formatting.
    I don't know why it happens.

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  4. my daughter's 39th birthday was last Friday, my 37 year old son's birthday is today. amazing how parallel our lives are in so many ways.

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  5. My doctor says 30 minutes of exercise like walking per day is great. I have not heard 70 minutes. It must vary depending on our age too. A 20 year old and an 80 year old must need different amounts of exercise, right? Those chickens have handsome feathers.

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  6. Happy almost-birthday to May (and almost birth-day to you).

    Being outside and running is what helps my anxiety, or at least takes the edge off. I think it's more the being-outside part. It definitely is.

    And I'm having major chicken envy. I'm getting chickens next spring, when both the boys are here to help raise the chicks. Except, since I'm kind of a crazy animal person, I'm not sure I can wait.

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  7. Wishing many happy returns of the day to your precious May!

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  8. They DO look like tiny dinosaurs. I was thinking the same thing last night as I watched starlings flapping around our bird feeder. Birds are creepy in a way. Hitchcock understood that, didn't he?

    I do believe in exercise, but 70 minutes precisely seems a little silly.

    So why is your Overdrive account blocked? Librarians want to know! :)

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