No Strings Attached

Posted By Kathleen David on November 16, 2020

Or eight months since we started dealing with COVID-19.

That’s a long time to still be dealing with the same thing.

Even scarier is that we are seeing another rise in the curve that does not seem to be reducing. It is another wave that appeared after Halloween. I am dreading what we are looking at after Thanksgiving.

I am tired of people screaming TRADITION! And how their lives are ruined if they can’t do something that they have been doing for years.

You know what I am doing? I am staying home. I am putting aside what I want to do which is see my parents and siblings because I know that is safer for my parents who are in their 70s and my family as well. I am putting others safety before front of my feelings.

And I wish others to do the same. If we had just done what is needed like America did in the past to get the job done in March, then I would not be writing that we are in the eighth month of this chaos.

There is hope on the horizon and I hope that the end of 2021 is better than the end of this year.

I am grateful for sensible people.

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Posted By Kathleen David on November 15, 2020

I found out about weighted blankets through a friend who got one for her son on the recommendation of his therapist. She said it was a miracle. Her son was able to sleep through the night rather than waking up at an absurd hour and unable to get back to sleep.

I got Caroline one because she, like me, is a flipper while sleeping. She loves it. She says it is like a warm hug and is comforting. Doesn’t surprise me since she loved to be swaddled when she was a baby.

I have my own version of this. It is called Phoebe. She is the youngest of our clowder and loved to sleep with Peter and me. She loves even more to sleep on top of me giving me a warm weight with a lovely purring massage. The first time she did this, I was a little startled. Now, I don’t even notice. 

This morning I woke up at 3:30 AM and was having a hard time falling back to sleep. Phoebe crawled up on top of me and settled down. I fell back to sleep feeling the purr slow down as she fell asleep on top of me.

Yesterday I took my first on-line puppet course from <a href=http://www.davidbizzaro.com> David Bizzaro</a> about building toilet paper tube puppets based on works of Hans Fettig. It was a lot of fun and I highly recommend it. Thank you to the North Eastern Puppet Guild for bring it to my attention. More on that Tuesday I think.

Now I have to pull out my Fettig book and get some ideas for some projects.

Inky has taken to falling asleep on the ottoman next to me in the morning. She gets her pets and then curls up knowing I will protect her from the other cats.

We are getting a break from the rain this morning. It is a lovely fall day.

Today I have several activities planned. I am making a physical list since I read a paper on procrastination and ways to counteract.  I am still figuring out how to avoid getting distracted by the shiny Internet but I am getting better about it.

Work is good. I am learning new skills and how they want me to do things. It is amazing how a good manager can motivate a store and a bad or ineffective manager can kill the working experience. I am happy that I am at a store with a great manager and happy employees.

I am grateful for kittens who calm.

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Posted By Kathleen David on November 14, 2020

There was a PSA that aired a number of years ago from the fatherhood.gov site of an older woman hearing someone chanting in the courtyard. She looks out to see a full-grown man doing a cheerleading routine. The camera pulls back to find his daughter next to him doing the routine as well. The voice over says, “take time to be a dad today.”

My father did take the time to be a dad to brothers, sister, and me. 

He would take us out on errands with him. We would go to the hardware store or a book store or wherever he needed to go.

Once a year he would take each of us to work with him where we were able to explore the physic department and play, under supervision, lasers. He would explain the experiments he was working on.

At museums he would give us the history behind either the movement like cubism or the painter or the history that created that work of art. He has a passion for art that he passed onto us.

He took us to Lionel Playworld and let us walk around pointing things out that we liked. Some of those items would show up under the tree or on hour birthday. 

He has a good eye for clothing for us when we were kids as does my mom.

He listened to us tell him what probably endless stories of our day or the tale we created while we played.

He read to us. I have fond memories of sitting in his lap as he read me from picture books and classics of children’s literature. In that he instilled a love of reading in all of us.

I still have my camp letters and the doodles he did in those letters in the margins.

One of my biggest regrets is I have no drawing skills.

He taught us tool safety and photography. He taught us basic car care. He made sure we walked out of the house and into adulthood with practical knowledge along with intellectual knowledge.

We did word of the day at the dinner table along with bad puns and shaggy dog stories. Discussions of the situations in the world were part of my growing up. 

Even when he was busy, he had time for us.

Happy Birthday Dad!

I love you very much. Hope the day is good to you.

Love

Kath

I am grateful for everything my dad taught me,

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Posted By Kathleen David on November 13, 2020

I have noticed something that is really grinding my gears that I am seeing more and more.

We have a feel-good story or a moment that shows humanity at its best form then someone comes along and says Yeah, but then proceeds to ruin any chance of the story ever feeling good again.

A large cat acts like a kitten with a cardboard box and uses that cat adage “If I sits, I fits”. It is a silly thing to bring a smile to one’s face. Then we get the yeah but about something bad that happened at that zoo to some animal and zoos are evil.

Policemen takes a knee with Black Lives Matter groups who are protesting yet another death of a black man at the hands of the police. It is good to see some support within the police department for this heinous act. Yeah but steps in and gives us all the problems with this including one of the officers who had a number of disciplinary hearings for using excessive force during arrests. 

A black man is killed by police. They say they were in fear for their life. The mother was there pleading with them to not shoot her boy that he had mental problems and wasn’t going to harm anyone. His rap sheet is paraded around to prove that the officers might be justified by the yeah but groups.

We can’t have nice things anymore without someone trying to break them.

Sometimes we just need a win, a moment of silliness to break the gloom, something to make us smile and not feel guilty about doing so.

Considering the number of books and magazines that are supposes to help one find happiness, I find it sad that so many people find their happiness in tearing other people down. If others are unhappy, they are happy. And that is not healthy.

Right now, mentally, the United States is not healthy. We need a few happy moments to remind us of how things were and how they could be.

And if that is a tiger in a box or some silly meme about hamsters, let’s take that at face value and not try to tear it down.

We need to take care of each other. We need to remember how to empathize with others. We need to work on our moral core and make sure it is strong.

We need to lose the yeah but to everything that happens both good and bad.

We can do this. We just have to want to do so.

I am grateful for silly things on the Internet that make me smile.

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Posted By Kathleen David on November 9, 2020

Feeling groovy is an idiom meaning to feel happy and calm. 

I learned the phrase from Simon and Garfunkel from their song entitles the 59^th Street Bridge song (Feeling Groovy).

And that is how I am feeling for the first time in a long time. 

I have hope and that has made so much of a difference in my whole mental being.

This weekend I did get a bunch of things done and I plan on getting even more done this week. 

I am planning on distancing myself from social media for a while. I think that has helped keep me on a more even keel.

I am trying to reduce my time on electronics over all. I want to get more done that I don’t need to be on-line for.

I have a schedule I want to do this week. 

I am working Tuesday through Thursday and am on call the rest of the week.

Let’s see where this newfound energy can get me.

I am grateful for feeling groovy.

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