I made the choice not to go on Twitter yesterday. So I remained relatively calm. But near dinner time, Don came to me because he had been doing the opposite, reading too much news, and he needed calming down. So then I got stressed. And so it goes.
It’s a battle, isn’t it? How to stay informed yet maintain a healthy distance. There’s so much going on, the devastating fires, the hurricane headed toward Mississippi and Louisiana, shootings, protests, OM holding indoor rallies in a state that has prohibited them, (we won’t go into his vile speech.) I’m sure I’ve missed something. As my friend Caroline, who is Australian and was in the cast of Anastasia says, I can’t watch the news from America. It’s imploding.
My anxiety is rearing its ugly head again.
So I took a walk around the property yesterday afternoon, taking photos along the way. I’ll share them with you this week. It’s a good reminder that taking photos of nature calms me down.
The coleus is sending up purple flowers.
I counted 5 or 6 orb weavers.
The limelight hydrangea is turning pink.
Our monarch chrysalis is still intact, still green. We’re coming up on 2 weeks since I discovered it hanging from the bottom of the birdbath. That will be on Thursday. But it very well might have been there for a few days before that. So I go out there and check on it several times a day. When it begins to turn dark, the monarch will be getting ready to emerge. I sure hope we can sit out there on the funky patio and watch the whole thing. Wouldn’t that be amazing?
Stay safe.
Happy Monday.
I have a Twitter account but never go on it, so I’m all good with that. FB was the problem for me, so I disabled the app on my phone. So now I only go on it when I’m on my laptop, which is usually just in the morning. I’m not missing it at all. I have enough stressful things going on in my life right now; I don’t need any extra bombardment of bad news.
Even walking around my neighborhood has now become stressful to me because there are several houses with big Trump signs and flags on the property and it disturbs me.
Tomorrow is our anniversary and we are escaping to a small town in Wisconsin. A one day reprieve.
xoxo
Happy Anniversary Melanie. Small Wisconsin towns are good for that! ;)
I am so interested in places like Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota. I don’t know anything about the geography; have never been there. I don’t know the Great Lakes area at all. What are some of the good small towns? There was an author I liked years ago who was in Stillwater, MN. And I have former work friends who wound up in Minneapolis, then Wayzata which is I guess a very-nice lake community . (Also a lot of relatives I’ve never met in Michigan.) I refuse to give up a trip I want to take to that part of the U.S. and I want to hit the right places (a wish & a hope & a prayer for maybe 2023, if I dare plan that far ahead!) Like, I worked with a guy who came from White Bear Lake in Wisconsin; he seemed to miss it a lot although he was now in Calif. I’m also always intrigued with Door County and Green Lake. Do tell! I’m an inquiring mind who wants to know!
hej, vicki …
a couple quick suggestions off the top of my head (none are teeny tiny places, just not as massive as chicago):
along the mississippi:
galena, il
stillwater and red wing, mn
duluth, then lutsen and on up to grand marais in the “arrowhead” of mn
madison, wi
hudson and menomonie, wi
superior, wi (not far from duluth)
anywhere in door county, wi
hope you get to visit the midwest … it’s beautiful! and when you do, please let me know. i’d be glad to meet you somewhere!
praying for you all to get a good rain, no wind, be safe in every way and for those deputies!
kathy in iowa
Thank you for this list and your nice wishes, kathy!
Happy Anniversary tomorrow, Melanie! Enjoy your escape. You deserve it.
Stay safe.
happy anniversary, melanie, and many more!
kathy in iowa
My husband and I have been getting the house winter ready. We closed our little swimming pool, put away beach chairs, took down the bird feeder that has become a target for the hawk that sometimes visits our backyard. Just odds and ends but exhausting. We took a long ride (for us) to the eastern part of Long Island, put the top down and drove a long stretch past dunes, sea grass and huge mansions. We put on the beatles and sang at the top of our lungs. I feel so much better. It released some of the pressure and anxiety we have been feeling. I hope everyone finds a way to do something special today.
Singing Beatles songs sounds like heaven, Maria. Good for you!
Stay safe.
Well, the photography is certainly lovely and therapeutic, Claudia.
And what a good word for the news and what’s happening in the U.S. Imploding. I feel like a lot is imploding; like a runaway train. One bomb dropping after another. Can’t help but make us feel a bit desperate. Distracted. Uneasy.
I can’t diffuse with my husband because he has turned COMPLETELY off. Although I don’t know what he’s still doing on social media. At least I have a friend I can call and she & I often commiserate about headlines and politics.
It is normal for anxiety to be accelerating; we all have too much to worry about; for baby boomers I think most of us agree that there’s been nothing like this time in America, despite our childhoods with Bay of Pigs and Viet Nam; 1968; one thing after another; 911. I get concerned that no matter which way the election goes, we’ll have more unrest in the streets at that time. Makes me want to doubly ‘hunker down’. And I don’t like feeling like that; to be scared; when I need to feel empowered, which is when I turn to prayer.
Of course right now in SoCalif, we are dominated by our state’s wildfires and the neverending smoke. I have a continual sore throat and my eyes are slits (burning from smoke); I spent maybe 3 minutes outside today, despite a greater appearance of sun, just to feed my dear feral cats whose lungs I can’t do anything about, poor things. Oh wow was the smell of it thick the last two nights; can just feel it and smell it seeping in thru any little crack in our old house.
But I’m also preoccupied about the two young sheriff’s deputies who were sitting-ducks in their patrol car at the train station in Los Angeles and were shot at point-blank range; ‘ambushed’ is the word being used. One of them is a mom with a child and I think her jaw is shattered from gunshot. I can’t get this out of my mind on either of these officers, it’s of course all over our local news stations in SoCalif and makes me cry every time because I also know where this incident occurred (like ten minutes from where my mom grew up and where I was born), but I can only hope as two young adults, they have the power to physically and mentally heal although they’re both in critical condition. Like Mayor Garcetti said, “Deputies across the county bravely work to keep our communities and Metro riders safe. ” Their presence was to help where needed; to protect. My husband has been a commuter with the rail line and he has appreciated that protection in times past.
I did a lot more ‘assessing’ this weekend and I’ve tried to center again on what I can do rather than what I cannot. And that’s to reduce my news-watching/reading time (always the same thing I go back to until it creeps in again), try to keep myself physically healthy (which, for me, isn’t easy), love on my dog, talk to my friends on the phone, email my further-away cousins and former classmates; and make sure my husband is okay and feeling balanced; then, keep working on my house. It needs attention. And I need focus.
Because it seems any other long-range planning just isn’t possible right now. (Although I toy with taking an online course in something/anything.) I have to concentrate on the sameness and predictability of my everyday life because too much else is unpredictable in the larger world that I can do little about except to VOTE IN NOVEMBER and be cautious about Covid. And make sure the days don’t keep flying by with nothing accomplished. My aforementioned friend with whom I can safely vent about the political scene – – even on the days when she’s not at her job, she keeps a written ‘to-do’ list on the kitchen counter so that she doesn’t have to suffer one day of feeling she didn’t do something productive, even some little thing. Every time she passes by the counter, it’s there to remind her to keep on track.
I think we all need to feel useful; purposeful. I know my husband would be jumping in to do more charitable work at present, but he has Covid risk as do I, so volunteering has to be set aside although he may reactivate with our certified emergency response team to do specific tasks, like traffic control; he’s mulling it. And of course he’ll be a poll worker, which is a whole new ballgame from how it’s worked before; for instance, he had to submit a detailed resume and will be interviewed by phone this week by I assume County Elections (this is a first, although he’s a very experienced poll worker as he’s volunteered for the job over many years [says to me, they’re taking no chances; this election is SERIOUS {they all should be, but never more than this one in 2020}]). For me, I’ve got enough projects and hobbies to keep me busy for the next five years if I can just get out of my funk and get to it. The past seven months have been a confusing sort of wasteland and if we’re truly in this with Covid for at least another seven months (and more), I don’t want the next months to be like what’s behind me.
I’m just hoping Biden gets the win. We’d be on a new course. Hopeful. Encouraged. Reassured. Someone in charge with good plans (and intelligence; integrity). It would be easier for us (just as humans trying to be normal in regular, everyday lives) to settle down to tasks and chores and projects rather than how we HAVE been (with some new, bad thing seemingly happening each week to further stir us up and put us on edge and pitch us off course). I’m so sick of feeling ‘alarmed’ too much of the time. It just creates these damaging spikes of stress.
He has to win. I read too much Twitter this morning, so Don and I are going to walk in our woods.
Stay safe, Vicki.
Are orb weavers the spiders who make those big basket-like net bags in trees that end up looking scary because of all the stuff caught inside? I’ve always wondered what made those. We have one growing (?) on one of our trees that hang out over the lake this year.
Happy chrysalis watching. Hope that monarch hurries and flies away before winter.
No, they’re not orb weavers. Orb weavers connect intricate webs from plant to plant, stalk to stalk – usually I’m looking down at their webs.
Stay safe, Shanna.
I stayed away from most things online over the weekend… little snippets invariably sneak in of course. As I’ve said before…the country is in a state.
And, it’s becoming overwhelming to me. So, I’ve been distracting myself as best I can.
If I had a large property like yours….I’d be walking it all the time. You and Don are so fortunate. Maple Grove looks like the perfect place to retreat. Good luck on finding more chairs.
Yesterday, we finally got to watch some football. It wasn’t quite normal…no fans, but piped in crowd noise…but it was great to see the Packers win, nonetheless. We are off to do the weekly shopping…at least it’s a trip somewhere. Stay safe! ;)
We watched some baseball recently. But it’s weird without a crowd!
Stay safe, Donna.
I don’t have a Twitter or Facebook account. I get my fill of bad news all day, so to keep up I just watch the headlines at lunch on our national news channel. Yesterday we had haze from the fires in the American northwest – at first I thought the city north of us was on fire again. It made me cry for the people in America, knowing firsthand what people here went through. I also stopped following a blog that I’d enjoyed for some years as the author has suddenly decided to espouse (and encourage) what I think are irresponsible opinions concerning masks and social distancing. Not a great day, but I do have an Instagram account for posting the occasional photo of miniatures and everyone that I’ve ‘met’ in that world is quite lovely. Escapism on my part I guess, but it is a small (no pun intended) comfort.
I love your instagram account. IG is my place where I can escape into humor and beauty. I agree, the community is lovely.
We all need an escape, Barbara.
Stay safe!
Thanks for the lovely nature photos. They cheered me up. My yard is covered in ash right now (very grateful it’s not reduced to ashes like so many) and the air is so bad I shouldn’t go outside, so I have to experience outdoor life vicariously for a while. I’m looking forward to following the progress of the chrysalis!
I’m so sorry that you are being impacted by the fires, Christy, but glad you’re safe.
Stay safe.
I try to stay away from watching the news (politics) for my better health but my husband watches and reads a lot of it and then relates it all to me… so I’m fighting a losing battle! :-)
My husband is the same! I tell him I don’t want to hear about it but he can’t stop himself. I guess he needs to unburden but couldn’t he talk to the dog or the cat instead?
Exactly. And I have to confess my part. Sometimes it’s me that disturbs Don’s peace.
Stay safe, Cathy.
Your nature is a beautiful respite. Yes, it’s all awful — all too much. I will worry well beyond election day, I fear. I’m going north by myself tomorrow for a week — Rick is supposed to quarantine away from me — he spent the day with the grands, which was fine but their mom had been to a bridal shower and while it was outdoors and more or less distanced, they were eating four to an eight-top table (not enough distance for me) and of course, not with masks when they ate. The day before after a bike flat a guy gave him a ride home and neither were masked. He will probably get a test but the doc said to wait four or five days unless he gets symptoms. So, that’s hard. We are each others’ emotional lifelines. At least if I’m north it’ll feel easier. (At home, our houses are two blocks apart, so we can distance easily here.)
I’m getting very edgy which can translate to weepy or bitchy in a New York minute. And the weather is still nice…. Hang in there.
Good idea to go to the lake, Jeanie. It will be easier, I suspect. Stay calm and stay safe.
I disabled Twitter a long time ago and don’t miss it. I had not been reading Facebook very often til just lately as I have several relatives living in Oregon and wanted to know if they have been affected. Some of of them were on be ready status 2 days ago and I haven’t seen anymore from them since. So much to pray about.
I do hope they are safe, Cristina! That must be very, very worrisome.
Stay safe.
Here’s to hoping you get to see the emergence of the beautiful winged wonder!
Take care…
Kelly
Thank you Kelly!
Stay safe!
Loved the floral photos. We have a bed of coleus in our back yard which my husband has planted and cared for. I love them because if they start to get a bit leggy you can snap them off and plant to fill up the bed. Ours are looking reasonable after winter so should start to perk up more now that spring has arrived. I love the colours of them too.
Last weekend I spent quite a bit of time tidying up my veges and planting lettuce and beetroot. It’s time to get the garden ready for a hot summer which I am not looking forward to the amount of heat we will endure.
The photo of the spider is quite amazing with all of its detail. I find spiders repulsive, but you have to be amazed by the wonderful detail of their bodies. Thanks for the focus on nature. It never fails to amaze.
That picture is of the spider’s underside. They’re really beautiful.
Stay safe, Robyn!
glad that you and don have each other!
with all that’s going on, it doesn’t take much information for me to feel a lot of worry and anger. my best solution, for me, is to quickly scan headlines on a website before i leave for work or listen to a little news on the ten-minute drive to work and then find a happy song before walking in to work … and only then, in the morning (before 7:00 am). i am very strict with myself about that last part so i can get to sleep more quickly at night!
thanks for more beautiful photos … very soothing, reassuring. except for the spider one (sorry … they freak me out)!
i sure hope you and don can watch the entire process of the butterfly emerging and that you are having a nice night and stay safe!
kathy in iowa
I hope so, too. I’ll check on the chrysalis this morning.
Stay safe, Kathy.
Politics, ugh! Driving us to a state of stress and depression. The satire of Randy Rainbow on youtube speaks to me and lifts my spirits on occasion. Good to know there are others like me.
Are you familiar with the art work of Salley Mavor. She has kept her political views and sweet art separate all her career. Until OM entered the scene. She and her husband spent an incredible amount of time on a video putting the facts out there. If you haven’t seen it, you may want to?
https://weefolkstudio.com/liberty-and-justice-film/
I love Randy Rainbow and retweet him every time he comes up with a new song.
I’m not familiar with Ms. Mavor, but I will definitely visit that link, Jackie.
Thanks so much.
Stay safe.
hej, jackie marks …
thank you for sharing the link to that video. it is incredible! and they have so much patience! i will share this with others who will appreciate the message and the artistry.
hope you and your loved ones are well and safe.
thanks again.
off to check randy rainbow …
kathy in iowa