Author: Dunrie

Breathing well (gratitude, week 9)

neti pot demo 2, originally uploaded by mybloodyself.

A few years ago, I had a subscription to a yoga magazine which included articles about yoga asanas, living your yoga off the mat, explanations of yoga scriptures like Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, and recipes. I liked the magazine. Interspersed with stuff I liked were a few ads and stories about neti pots. They featured beautiful pictures of little ceramic pots, shaped like teapots, that they recommended we use to pour water through our nostrils to clean out the sinuses. I thought they were completely and totally nuts.

I’m someone who “never” gets sick. I might get some sniffles now and then, or feel a bit achey, but I almost never miss work for illness. Not this year. In the past 2 months, I’ve missed 4 days of work in 3 different weeks due to illness. This last bout was first a very sore throat, followed by several days of getting better, and then I got knocked over by a sinus infection that also wanted the skin on my face.

I called the doctor on Monday, and got an appointment for Thursday morning. I imagined I’d be better by then, and anticipated cancelling it. While I was back at work on Wednesday, I wasn’t better enough. I was constantly and unproductively honking into mountains of tissues. The right side of my face seemed completely stuffed with something that didn’t budge. At the advice of my sister, I’d taken to snorting warm saltwater. It was kind of gross drawing it through my nose and spitting it out, but I was desperate. The warmth and the moisture gave me at least a temporary relief. I didn’t want to go anywhere without my bowl, container of salt, and towel.
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March 2, 2008
Loving this winter sunshine (gratitude, week 8)

What a glorious sunshiney day. My semi-elderly cat is soaking up the rays, moving from chair to chair in the dining room as the sliver of sunshine arcs across the room. He’s loving the sunshine too, flipping over now and then to “brown the other side”.

February 24, 2008
I heart Detroit Coolers: Vernors and Vanilla Ice Cream (gratitude, week 7)

Mmmm….Vernors…. again, originally uploaded by DetroitDerek.

Back in the day there was a Sanders ice cream parlor on the main street of my town, and a big day was when I got to go there and order a Detroit Cooler–Vernors and ice cream. Vernors was one of the first soft drinks in the US, of course we locals call it “pop”.

This weekend I woke up with a very sore throat, and along with sore throat lozenges and honeyed tea, and I remembered that my mom always gave me ginger ale for a sore throat. We had some vanilla ice cream in the freezer and tah-dah! A Detroit Cooler, cold and fizzy and sweet. Mmmmmm.

February 18, 2008
Grateful for a class action lawsuit? Rediscovering personal history (gratitude, week 6)
So, I got some paperwork in the mail on a class action settlement for foreign-exchange surcharges and conversion fees for credit and debit transactions. This settlement covers the period from February 1996 to November 2006. There were 3 ways to submit a claim:
1. Easy refund $25.
2. Total estimation refund. 1% of typical foreign transactions. Input needed: # days outside the US during the period covered by the settlement.
3. Annual estimation refund. 1-3% of actual transactions. Input needed: amount of foreign transactions per year of the settlement.
Since Dave and I lived in England for the first year of the settlement period, I knew option #1 was too small. If I kept extra-detailed records, #3 might be possible, but not without a lot of interactions with the credit card company to dig up missing statements and the like. So, today, I settled down to do #2. The method I used was my personal journals and a spreadsheet.

I am a journal-writer. I write for sanity and clarity. I write to write, and I rarely read my journals. I don’t write every day, or even every week, but I do tend to write on vacation and on airplanes (recording the flight number and the departure and destination cities). So, I had a pretty good record of when I traveled to England for that year abroad, and when I was in Canada at the family cabin, and when I was elsewhere.

Here are the results – 592 foreign days, 222 of which were spent up north in Canada at the family cabin. 274 were from our year abroad, and the others from various vacations.

Along the way, I read more than just the date stamp and location of my entries. I was charmed to see me writing my hopes of my now-husband proposing a full two years before he did. Apparently I am patient, and the wait was worth it. I was sad to see myself struggle with a work situation that ended poorly. I didn’t recall that it dragged on for as long as it did, and I felt sadness seeing myself force it for so long. With hindsight, there are a few moments where I wish I could now intervene to give myself the advice to “cut and run” sooner than I ended up doing. But, in general, I did alright, more alright than I thought at the time.

On a semi-humorous note is I captured the comment of an adjacent passenger when I was on a flight. The guy saw me writing furiously, and he said that he was a therapist and he cautioned me not to use my journal as a way to process emotions so I didn’t act on them. It was good to recognize more action and less stewing as the years went on.

I felt tender and friendly towards the me in the past that was writing, I wanted to be her friend and comfort her distress. Now I realize I did comfort “her”, by journaling, and it was better for it.
February 10, 2008
Dance that lifts the spirit – Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in Detroit (gratitude week 5)

Last night I saw the spectacular, athletic, precise, and joyful Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at the Detroit Opera House. On the way in, I marveled, as always, at the looming ruins in Detroit – burned out and boarded up homes adjacent to the freeway, the Amtrak building, tall and empty. The desolation makes me wistful and sad.

I met my mom at the Opera House and we walked to dinner. Our restaurant overlooked grand Comerica Park. Kids and parents and Elmo balloons streamed by the window, leaving Sesame Street Live at the Fox Theater. Foxtown was vibrant.

Back at the Opera House, the first piece, “Love Stories” (2004) paid tribute to Ailey’s legacy. Ailey wanted to “hold a mirror to our society so people can see how beautiful they are.” The piece was a celebration of dance, of the dancers, of beauty and achievement, of power, precision, athleticism, and grace. As usual with Ailey, the night closed with Ailey’s trademark Revelations (1960), choreography to gospel music that is both sorrowful, courageous, and transcendant. The audience rose to our feet and clapped time during the encore. As we left, couples laughed and touched each other affectionately, families chattered happily. In the afterglow of the dance, all felt whole and luminous.

February 3, 2008
Grateful for old friends – gratitude week 4, 2008
Make new friends, but keep the old, one is silver and the other’s gold….

So this week I’m grateful for old friends, the friendships that grow deeper with time and don’t seem to suffer from neglect or distance.
- for Dina in New Jersey (pictured with me outside her parents home in Ohio in 1992, friend since probably 1989) who called late Friday evening to talk about a book she was reading. Wonderful to hear her voice, to rediscover some parallel threads in our lives and thoughts.
- for Heather in California, my first friend at college, met in 1988, and probably the most faithful and loyal friend I’ll ever have. She emailed “I’d like to come visit with my family and we’ve picked out some dates in August.” Knowing I’d be thrilled to host her, she took the initiative to start scheduling her visit.
- for Andy in Ann Arbor, known since 1993, who knew I’d love to visit a granite wholesaler in Wixom with him yesterday. We both marvelled at the astonishing variety of color, grain, pattern, flow in the granite slabs. A feast for the eyes.
January 27, 2008