The other night, I clipped one of Finn’s nails too short and it bled. And bled. Oh, and it bled some more! The special powder had turned to rock, so while K held a paper towel on our poor alarmed pup’s paw, I whipped up a concoction of corn starch and baking powder.
The bleeding stopped, as bleeding usually does. But later, after settling on the pillow that he sleeps in at the end of our bed, Finn worried at it some. I didn’t know it then, but the nail bled again. The next day while making the bed (or what I call ‘making the bed’), I was astonished to find a perfect heart of his blood on our coverlet.
In writing class last week (and weirdly, I can’t remember if it was before or after this nail incident), I wrote (and wrote) about blood. Oh how I wrote! If this is the year for making myself uncomfortable with risk-taking, then I ought to share it, oughtn’t I?
Meanwhile, I lost my progressive lenses two days ago (my $600 progressive lenses!) It’s disorienting and distressing to say the least. I have tons of three dollar reading glasses which I lose all the time with little consequence. But these? Until two days ago, I had considered my successful tracking a function of respect for the price tag.
(That’s $600 with insurance, by the way. If St. Anthony doesn’t come to my aid, I’ll be looking to Warby Parker for cheaper replacements).
Coincidentally, I recently recommitted to a babysitting job that kinda ruins my Thursdays. I didn’t want to say ‘No’ and I didn’t want to say ‘Yes’ either. In the aftermath of saying ‘Yes’, I decided that earmarking my modest earnings as ‘mad money’ might ease the ambivalence.
And then I go and lose my glasses. I lose my glasses something like ten minutes after the ‘mad money’ idea — glasses that cost almost to the dollar what the babysitting will produce in income.
Maybe they’ll turn up. Certainly, I won’t spend $600 to replace them. But correlations like this make me pay attention and ask questions.
Questions like: don’t I deserve to spend $600 on myself? (this from a woman who recently purchased a sweet grass basket in Charleston for $270 and considered it a deal). Or, is the designation ridiculous, given the amount of our resources spent to keep me nicely clothed and in bath salts?
Could it be an old lesson — that old, old one about the dangers of saying ‘Yes’ when I want to say ‘No’ (I thought I was done with this one).
Or maybe it’s about losing focus. Pure and simple (although, what’s simple about that?)
Such first world issues I leave you with today.
UPDaTE: I re-thought the Thursday commitment. Relief. ‘Hear that glasses? You can show up now!’
your first world issues….i just read this and need to go feed Goats and burn some weeds
and i will carry this post with me during that and come back later, here, it co insides
with some of my own first world thoughts this morning of International Women’s Day.
my husband is out of town, so even the minor gesture of keeping the kitchen closed would be of no consequence today! But, I will feed myself. That’s what so much of our unpaid work is about, afterall — feeding others.
And to continue in the vein of self care, I am corresponding with dr.s about cholesterol and osteoporosis after weeks of pauses and avoidance.
I use the spare pair of glasses to find the good transitions with the flexible wire frames almost every day
funny! not sure my spares are gonna help me here, though
sending good hunting vibes through the ether
When I lose focus, become ambivalent, run in circles, I know it’s time to stop. Stop what?
The world has seeped in and my juices are running high. Actually, that’s precisely what
my weekly sittings in the Zen tradition provide. It’s a ‘stop’ practice that rests upon a known
routine…a structure and a posture that supports the practice. Around me others are practicing, and that too is a support. Once the bowl is struck three times a communal silence descends. It isn’t necessary to suppress thoughts at all, just let them come as they will and don’t attach to them. It’s a practice like any other practice. The practice is the path and the only goal. Anyway, it helps me, and sometimes I do it in community several times. Sometimes I do it for myself alone here at home. I’m always happier after, and easier too. May you find ease, and glasses too.
sweet heart; we never clip Django’s nails…..hope your glasses turn up soon, maybe when Ken returns they will magically reappear; the very expensive pair I own aren’t nearly as good for me as the cheaper ones, so that is a different kind of loss
How often I sit in my stitch chair muttering “where did I put them?” … nearsighted as I am, I take my glasses off to stitch, but then can’t see where I laid them down (and no, it would be far too simple to always put them down in the same place).
I found a stone heart on the floodplain after reading your post … and thought of you.
Ha. I have too many places for my glasses. They still haven’t turned up. The stone heart on the flood plain is a beautiful image. Did u pick it up? And what was in your mind or heart just before finding it ?
I did indeed pick it up and put it at the end of a picture walk blog post. And as I was on the floodplain, I was thinking of my oldest granddaughter, who turned 13 today. She gathered flint with me and her mom when they came to visit in January.