Mahalo, Marcus

Things seem to be back to normal this morning, whatever normal is in my life. Is any of it normal? Probably not, in the minds of most folks, but it works for me. Normal never had much appeal, frankly.

Be that as it may -- I woke up this morning without the least desire for anything for breakfast other than my standard easy, healthy smoothie. Food has returned to being something that's necessary to keep the body alive and healthy. The gym called and I answered. Granted, these days that answer at the gym is on the tame side, but one has to work back into these things slowly, especially when one is my age, and find out how much the body can still do. Fortunately, this body can still do more than I expected. Mostly cardio, enough weights to wake the muscles up but not enough to harm, and I more or less force myself to finish 30 minutes because I'm lazy. But that's OK. It's step one, and once the body is comfortable with that and happy pushing past those 30 minutes, I won't have to force anything.

Let's face it -- the previous week was a bit crazed around here. There was that drive home from California, followed by a football game, followed by somebody doing a hit-and-run on my car, followed by sleuthing and cops, followed by a certain Oregon quarterback doing the round of awards back east and running away with everything. Mahalo Marcus! So yeah, I guess it's no real surprise that this mind and body got all caught up in all that excitement and piled on a bit more excitement in the form of food. It was a fun week, but I'm frankly glad to see things calm down just a tad. At least for the next couple of weeks.

Carb crazy

I don't know why it is, but my appetite has been running a bit crazy since I returned from California. Not for quantity, so much, but for specific things. It's called craving, folks, and this time I'm not doing much of anything to stop it. Other than refusing to go to the market on a whim. So far.

It's not because I was hungry down there, or because the food wasn't tasty, because neither of those is the case. Food there is generally quite different from the way I generally eat, but I tend to think that's a good thing -- adds some much-needed variety to my diet. And it's good and plentiful. No hunger.

I'm not really sure what's going on here, but it seems to be a craving for various kinds of comfort food: muffins baked from whatever I have on hand, hot biscuits with oozy fried eggs, a Mexican-inspired bake with refried beans, fried eggs, cheese and sauce baked atop a flour tortilla. Notice it all revolves around something baked and full of carbs. It could be merely my usual winter urge to bake, but it seems deeper. I haven't spent a huge amount of time wondering about it, but my normal strong awareness of what's happening in my mind takes over and some dissection just happens, all by itself.

So -- it could be wanting to bake in cold weather just to warm up the house, but that doesn't fly because after the first few days home the weather turned mild. Not an excuse. I suspect it's due to a lingering depression that's been threatening for a long while, and really manifested while I was down south. This week hasn't helped. I'm still not allowing myself to get caught up in it -- just being aware that it's there, observing -- but it's the likeliest culprit to the appetite issue. Also the likely culprit to me not even trying to resist the cravings. Of course, it could also simply be the sheer comfort and joy I get from the act of baking, itself. I love to bake. Anything. And there are just times when we have to find comfort and joy where we can.

Whatever it is, it is impermanent, like everything else in this life, including this life. It will pass. I just need to try and up my exercise level in the meantime to keep all these carbs off my belly. :)

The culprit is found

Today is starting off with the promise of being much better than the rest of this week has been! It's early yet, but there has been some resolution in the car issue and I think all the hassle and paperwork are behind me.

My eagle-eyed landlady noted yesterday morning that the people across the street (with the driveway that was most likely the launching spot of the truck that hit my car) have a pickup, and she's noticed that suddenly this week they have been parking it nose-out rather than nose-in, as they've done in the past. Plus, they'd gone from parking it nose-out in the driveway and had moved it nose-out into a small space between the garage and the fence. Suspicious behavior, don't you think? So -- armed with the big piece of lens I went over to check, and sure enough, the driver's side tail light was demolished!

So -- lots of phone calls to my insurance company and to follow up on the hit-and-run police report. Three very nice young police came out, took my story, took photos, went over and checked out the car and then talked to the folks inside the house. Before they did the latter, they asked me what resolution I'd like to see. Hit and Run, even without injury, can be a serious charge, after all. I told them I just wanted to see the other party be financially responsible for the damage to my car, not trying to get anybody in trouble. In talking to the others, he got them to fill out an official accident exchange form with ownership and insurance info, and I did the same, then he did the form exchange. I suspect it was fairly easy to get this form -- given the option of offering it up or facing charges for a hit and run, I think most sane people would cop to the plea. I did find it interesting that the woman who owns the truck told the officer that she'd been out of town and her friend had been driving the truck, but on the form she filled out, the name of the owner and driver were the same. Not my problem. That big piece of lens I grabbed was a good find -- it was marked inside with 'Toyota', which is who made the pickup, and of course it matched the lens on the other side of the truck. Hard to argue.

So -- now it's going to be in the hands of State Farm vs. Progressive, and I doubt there will be much of an issue under the circumstances. I had to go to DMV (nearby) to fill out an accident report form, and since the repair shop was also nearby, I stopped there and made an appointment for the work to be done. State Farm's repair service is pretty nice, so far. If you use one of their approved shops, you don't have to get estimates. They will accept whatever estimate the shop sends them. This place was booked until the end of the month, but that's OK. And it should only take about 4 days to get it done. That's good, too. And I can drive it in the meantime, according to the police officer, as long as I feel I can do so safely.

We have a storm coming in today, and I hope the power stays on since both heat and cooking and everything else in this house runs on electricity! The old 'Pineapple Express' has kept day and night temps quite moderate all week, which is a nice by-product.

Not a good start to the week....

I went outside this morning to go to the gym, run a few errands, and found that someone had smashed into my car overnight. My first clue was the driver's side power mirror on the ground in my landlord's driveway. Then there's a dent just in front of the door, over the wheel well. Needless to say, I was not amused.

I drove to the gym and errands anyway -- probably totally illegally -- then called my insurance agent to learn that they can't handle claims and I'd have to call elsewhere. Grrrr. I really didn't want to waste my phone minutes on this, and I had to go downtown to the library anyway, so I went to their office and made the call. At the very least, it's going to cost me $300 in deductible. I'm wondering if the mirror might be simply reinstalled less expensively and I'll just live with the dent -- will need to check that out. Not like I have $300 lying around waiting to be spent.

A neighbor in the front house heard a 'loud truck' and a bang around 4am, but that's all I know. I do have a big chunk of plastic from what looks like a tail light, so if that car lives around here it should be easy to identify! My guess is that somebody was simply turning around in the driveway across the street, and backed out into me. Drunk, no doubt. Probably never see them around here again.

So that was my Monday. And since I had such a good weekend, I guess it's not surprising that the old pendulum would swing the other way soon enough. And I guess it could be worse. I have to say, I've had car insurance with State Farm for most of the last 50+ years, and while I haven't made many claims I have to say that the process used to be a lot easier.

A nail-biter

I gotta say -- as much as I enjoy time spent helping my bhikkhuni friends in California, it is truly good to be back among creature comforts and 'ordinary' life! My nice soft air bed compared to a hard pad on the floor (my choice -- could have put a frame together and used that or taken the bedroom with a real bed in it); a soft, comfortable place to sit (in my experience, comfortable places to sit, relax, read, etc. are unheard of at a Buddhist facility); and yes, even my TV and my big computer monitor and desk to sit at, rather than a plastic milk crate on the floor next to my 'bed'. The bed was not uncomfortable and I actually slept very well every night I was there, but my old body was less positive. Aching bones and joints were daily companions. So yeah, good to be home.

Drove up I-5 yesterday in just over 9 hours, compared to just over 11 hours driving down there via 101, plus it was simply an easier drive. My car (my sweet little car that's approaching 100,000 miles and still runs like new) almost drives itself with cruise control, the seats are comfortable and I had good music to drive by. Mostly low traffic. Rain the first couple of hours, maybe more, and the last couple of hours,  but the middle of the drive was mostly dry. Somewhere south of Shasta City all the fog and clouds cleared, blue skies and bright sunshine appeared, and while the sky had plenty of fluffy white clouds, they didn't stop the sunshine. All that high-desert area was greening up after some recent rains, and it was absolutely ethereally beautiful and lasted all the way into Oregon. Awesome! Mt. Shasta was wrapped in a big dark cloud, but I knew it was there.


The coolest part of the day happened not too long after I reached I-5 somewhere around Williams, after the lengthy connector interstate from around Vacaville on I-80. I was tooling along and my eye caught the word "Oregon" spelled out in huge yellow letters on the side of a big, green tractor-trailer. And it was the Oregon Ducks logo, not just the word. Of course, this caught my attention and I wondered what it was about until it cruised alongside for a second as we passed one another and I saw the word "Athletics" in smaller, finer print under "Oregon".  Then, it was obvious: team gear headed to San Jose for tonight's Pac-12 championship game! A yell and a fist-pump, and a big rush of adrenaline. Had to call a friend in Eugene to tell him I'd seen it -- way cool. After all, that game is the reason I came home yesterday rather than today. I missed two games down there, and that was ok, but I wasn't about to miss watching this one.

So -- today is laundry, shopping, getting life back to normal and ready for a nail-biter of an evening.

Panorama in 4 panels

I thought some might be interested in seeing the view I look out upon for most of each day around here. It's far too sweeping for one photo -- so here are four. As you can see, it was a lovely, sunny early morning here -- totally tempting to me as a photographer. These past days have been balmy -- into the 70s and sunny, although that's due to come to an end on Friday. Naturally, I see that temps in Eugene have also been mild, although certainly not this mild!

On the far left, our property sweeps downhill and adjoins the landlord's portion. In the distance a lone house with unkempt vineyards around it.

Continuing our journey around the panorama, our property sweeps down here to a large pasture usually dotted with cattle -- but they have a lot of land to roam and were elsewhere at this particular time.

On around -- more pasture. Cows still on the left, but starting to see the neighbor on the other side who has llamas and goats. This view, and the previous one, are what I generally look at outside the kitchen window, or the French doors to the outside, and most of the other large windows on the back of the house.

And the right side. Hard to see the neighboring house on the next hill, or their pasture, from this spot. The kitchen window is not shown, would be a smaller bay window than the one shown, just out of the frame on the right. Smaller, but big enough for an expansive view!

As expected, my body is struggling here, but it's OK and it'll be relatively short-term. Lots of creaky back aches and pains -- some muscle, some bone joints. But nothing I can't work with. The benefits of being here far outweigh all of the discomforts.

Yesterday, my two monastic (and monastic-in-training) friends came in from the Hermitage and we had a nice visit. The house is very quiet, as the head monastic is on a writing retreat this week, upstairs in her rooms. We take her food and other things up to her, and she often brings the dishes and such back when nobody is around. We only communicate by note, and only if necessary. The other monastic and I are very quiet too, to keep from disturbing her concentration. Sounds from outside, other than livestock and birds, are rare. It's a beautiful, peaceful existence.

Today, a supporter is bringing lunch, so my duties are finished for the day, in terms of cooking. That's good -- not sure what I'll do with the time, but I'll find something. Sunshine calls!

Tired, but happy

For any who wonder -- I arrived safely after just over 11 hours, door-to-door, yesterday.  Much longer than I anticipated, but I took a longish lunch break because after 6 hours of steady driving, I needed the break and food! Also a couple of traffic jams of unknown origins here and there, including here in Santa Rosa. But -- I'm here, happy, and looking forward to my time with these wonderful people.

One thing that became really obvious yesterday was that going home via I-5 sounds absolutely wonderful! Long stretches of concrete, easy cruise-control, all sound much better than the scenic but winding roads and small towns of yesterday. It was, as always, great to see the redwoods and the coastline, but going home will be a different path.  And while I've been saying there's no good way to get here from I-5, I realized en route yesterday that for some reason I've been avoiding taking Hwy 12 through the city of Sonoma -- probably because of past memories of heavy tourist traffic that are unrealistic. From where we are, it's an easy drive to pick up 12 in Glen Ellen, then an equally easy drive from there to Napa and thus to I-80 and I-5. Not as big a deal as I thought it would be, as often happens.

But in the meantime -- I'm going to rest up this morning before starting lunch, which will mostly be warmed-up leftovers. This old body is tired, but happy.

What's a frustrated cook to do?

Behind the Vihara, from the terrace

Tomorrow morning, early, I head south to Santa Rosa for two weeks. with my bhikkhuni friends. I am SO looking forward to being there -- seeing these wonderful women who are like family to me.

I've grown since I left there at the end of July. Everything that I experienced and learned over the three months I spent with them has jelled and coagulated and filled my mind to such an extent that my first instinct is to want to kneel before each of them and thank them -- and I just might do that very thing!

To swing subjects completely, I've also noticed lately that I have a deeply buried urge to cook that hasn't been able to rise to the surface for a good while -- because of $$$$$ (or lack thereof) among other things.

I used to really cook for myself. Good food. Trying all kinds of recipes. I still cook, of course, but my budget and expanding waistline hold the variety to quite a dull level. Beans. Beans and lentils, good curries here and there. No wonderful baked creations. I buy basics, but nothing interesting and/or exotic, certainly. I'm well-nourished, but bored.

It's not all money, of course. A real kitchen with counter space, a real refrigerator, a stove (preferably gas) where all four burners actually work. Freezer space. But there's one more missing ingredient: people to share it with. I can only get so interested in preparing complex recipes just for myself.

I'll be able to cook and share in California, of course, but the batterie de cuisine at the Vihara leaves a lot to be desired, plus there is limited time for preparation and rather serious dietary restrictions, so I don't get very complex or interesting in my cooking there. I'm usually happy just to get necessities on the table. There's a big difference in cooking for fun for myself, whatever floats my boat, and cooking full meals around strict schedules and dietary needs. I've never had to prepare regular family meals, so I don't have a repertoire of casseroles or veggie dishes or pasta dishes that go together easily and taste delicious. So -- while rewarding in its own way, cooking there can also be a bit frustrating and hard on the ego.

So -- what do I do with this urge? I envision a kitchen with someone else -- or several someones -- cooking for  people. A lovely kitchen -- everything a cook could ever need -- and appreciative diners. Where and how to do that? Not at a retreat center, a restaurant? Who would hire me to do that? Who would even take me on as an apprentice to do that? Like much else, this is very much a pipe dream.

But worth giving up to the sub-conscious to work on, see what might come along.

Football, Food, Exercise, Meditation

Another exciting, tense and breath-holding football Saturday here in Duck Land, with only 3 more regular season games left. I have to apologize to all the people over many long years for my lack of understanding about the culture of football. Finally, I get it. The year revolves around this season, and here in Eugene it's so intense that it begins to feel as if there's nothing else going on anywhere that has any importance. So -- an early morning shout-out to Mariota and the gang in Utah, in hopes of yet another victory. I'm not sure I'll be able to watch this one. It'll air on-line at espn3.com, but the internet here has been so bad these past few days that I don't know if I'll be able to watch. I may have to settle for the radio.

But -- that's not what brought me here this morning. Today, I'm kind of ranting about something that I fully realize is largely of my own making -- the difficulty of eating the kind of nutritious diet I want on the small income I have. I do pretty well, but even while saying/thinking that, I also know that I buy some small amount of cheap things that I really should avoid, and that I buy them because they are either cheap, filling or tasty. Not enough money spent on these things to allow me to afford much more real nutrition, however, no matter how I slice it. It'll be better once I'm able to move into the affordable senior housing I'm waiting for, but that's a year or more away, and I have to deal with the present.  It'll also be a little better come January, when the measly $20 social security increase will hit my bank account. There was a time not too far in the past when I thought $20 wouldn't make enough difference to matter. Nowadays, I know better. I also think I can arrange my expenses to add another $20, so that will be a big advantage. I'm not by any means starving -- I could live for awhile on accumulated fat, if it came to that, and I have plenty of good food, even if it's sometimes boring.

On to other things -- I've been waiting until January also for my new medicare supplement to take effect so I could use the Silver Sneakers gym membership program. A few days ago I had a big duh moment and realized that my current supplement is still in effect and I can still use my Silver Sneakers card, even though I've moved. So -- the nicest gym that's part of the program around here isn't within walking or even short drive distance, but I think I've come up with a plan. There's a Curves nearby that I can walk to a couple of days a week, and then I can go to the other place a couple of times a week for yoga classes and to make good use of their steam/sauna facilities. Can't wait for that!

And -- I seem to be making progress in my efforts to establish a theravadan meditation group here in town. I'm supposed to go sometime today to meet a young woman who has offered to host our group at her wellness center, not far from here. Hopefully, she will call, and I think she will. That's a major obstacle out of the way. Once we get that, I think I'm going to bite the bullet and set up a MeetUp account for us. I may be going down to Santa Rosa later this month for a couple of weeks to help out the bhikkhunis at the vihara, so I'll probably wait until I return from that before getting started beyond the Monday morning group we are already doing. If they decide I'm needed. Of course, I always enjoy seeing them, and I miss them.

So that's my Saturday. Hope yours is happy.  GO DUCKS!!

We always have to think about others

I had one of those phone calls yesterday that everybody dreads and that have thankfully been rare in my life. My phone rang early morning -- odd for it to ring at all, but the caller ID showed my elderly cousin in Georgia, so I answered cheerfully. Then -- a different voice and I knew I wasn't going to like this call at all. This was my cousin's daughter, who I'd met once or twice, and there was only one reason she would be calling me.

Yep -- Sue had died on Monday. She was 92, so that's not a huge shock, really. Terri said all the things she'd probably been repeating for a day or so: they'd found cancer all over her body a couple of weeks ago, she went peacefully, she didn't linger long. All that. But the one thing I remember most from those words is something that exemplifies Sue. Remember, this is a highly Christian southern family with deep roots in the community. People down there want to pray for others. Sue told her family to tell people that if they wanted to pray for her, pray for her not to linger. She said she'd had a good life, she was ready to go, and that we always have to think about others. She never wanted to be a burden on her family in her old age and certainly wouldn't have wanted to burden them with the the emotional and financial effects of a lingering illness. She died as she lived.

She was a friend and contemporary of my mother's, although back then as teenagers they didn't know they were related. I sought her out at a local DAR meeting after I moved down there 4 years ago, because I knew from her name that we had to be related. She treated me like a long lost daughter, kept in touch with me, tried to draw me deeper into her life. I resisted much of that but certainly was happy to have lunch with her every few months, take her to the hairdresser a couple of times, and generally happy to have her in my life. She was a rare and beautiful human being and I'm glad I had this time with her. I made a point to call her and have lunch with her right before I left. I couldn't leave without telling her, or without seeing her. She left a couple of messages on my cell phone while I was in California with the phone off. I didn't hear them until I settled up here, but I never returned the calls. I should have, and wish I had.

What shocked me the most, I think, is the emotional reaction I had to the phone call. Tears started flowing before Terri even got all the first words out, and they flowed for the whole conversation. I couldn't even talk clearly for the sobs that wanted to erupt. After we hung up, I let them flow for a few moments -- unable to do anything else. Then, a deep breath, and I performed the mundane act of opening my genealogy database and entering the date of her death -- with a sigh and more tears.  Then -- still weepy, I went back to what I'd been doing when Terri called: playing a silly computer game.

I thought about that as I played and as tears flowed. Clearly, I was using the game as an escape, as I probably use it for many times every day when I spend mindless amounts of time with it. Also clear was that all those tears were for more than Sue. Far beyond the response I might have expected from the news. I'd have been sad, yes, but it seemed that some kind of dam broke, and all the emotions from who-knows-how-long burst through. I don't cry -- don't know the last time I cried -- so this was out of character. There have certainly been a lot of things in my life over a lot of years that haven't gone right, could have been 'stuffed' even while I thought I was observing and letting go like the good Buddhist I try be.

What was I escaping? I'm not really sure, but I know I've been doing it for a good while as I find all kinds of nonsense (TV, fiction, computer games) to occupy my mind and keep it from meditating, from looking inside and seeing truths. I guess something doesn't want to go there. I certainly didn't go there much yesterday, other than what I couldn't avoid. I spent the day escaping, numb. Today doesn't look much better. Maybe it'll be a good wake-up, a good stimulation to meditate more, once this numbness wears off. I can hope.