emotions – Page 105 – hannah ananas

Recuperation

Today, I did a lot of not much all day and evening. In fact, I woke up a few times throughout the morning, either because the dog was shifting around or because I needed to pee. But, every time, I went ahead and went back to sleep. It was overcast enough of a morning, plus the curtains in this room are rather effective, I was able to fall back asleep easily. I went to bed after one in the morning, sure, but getting up for the day at 1:45 in the afternoon is just plain nuts. I haven’t done that in years.

However, yesterday, and the proceeding few days had a whole combination of stressors for me, as well as the added lack of sleep that comes with an uncomfortable situation yet comfortable company (read friends). So, it really makes sense that I slept so much and so hard last night (and today, technically). I knew I was exhausted yesterday, especially since things were really getting to me in a way they only do when I am exhausted. So, even though I physically felt okay, I knew I was close to wiped. Thus the 12+ hours of sleep.

Then, after getting up for the day, I indulged in the candy that tempts from its jars, as well as a Tillamook ice cream bar (which was awesome, by the way) from a freezer filled with desserts. I did eat some real food, too, but the bulk of my calories today was likely the three ice cream bars and the finishing part of a tub of ice cream. However, I think I still ended up under my caloric requirements for the day, so my body gets to use its excess stores to handle the remaining caloric balance for the day.

Basically, I spent the day hanging around, either eating food or watching Disney movies, or even both at once. I took the dog on a training walk-run, and exerted some real physical effort this evening, but mostly just spent the day recuperating. And yes, recuperating is the right word – I wondered why I was so unbelievably uninterested in doing anything else throughout the afternoon and evening, and I realized that it was because I needed this non-effort… I needed the opportunity to readjust and revamp… I needed to spend today in a way that allowed me to re-empower myself, both physically and mentally. So, I slept physically for 12+ hours, and then I rested mentally the rest of the day.

And it did a really great job. I think tomorrow will be a joyful and bouncy day for me, now that I will have rested so much and so well. 🙂

I am grateful for such an opportunity.

Post-a-day 2020

Rain’s a’comin’

Okay, the grandparents are safely evacuated from the hurricane’s danger path, and I am mostly settled into the home where I am housesitting for the next couple weeks, both being on the Houston area. Hopefully the casual wind and rain forecast will turn out as expected here. I love storms, but prefer they be safe ones.

(Ha – I wonder if that has anything to do with the ups and downs in my life…)

Dear God and Universe, help is to be happy, healthy, holy throughout these storms this year, and going forward from them afterward.

Amen.

Post-a-day 2020

Swirlytop

I don’t have much to say right now, tonight. Except that I feel a lot of that old hurricane season waiting for the next 24-48 hours. It could be disaster, and it could be simply some winds and rain and no biggie whatsoever. It could not even do that much – the storm could turn elsewhere entirely, or dissipate immediately upon landfall. They all have happened in my lifetime, and more than once. I guess that, in a way, growing up in such a place, I find myself calmly in the middle of the total and extreme fear and concern, and of, its polar opposite, utter chill and calm and unconcern – it shall pass. Because they always do pass. Like final exams, next week, they will be over and done with, but there is a huge hurdle to get through them to next week. And all we can do is just prepare and then wait.

As I was saying recently to someone, having grown up in southeast Texas, hurricane season, somehow, always gives me a sense of at-home-ness. I guess it is kind of how I felt so comfortable with all of the earthquakes in Japan, because they happened so often (weekly, was the average where I lived). In a way, they were representative of my home there. So, I have this odd sort of affinity for earthquakes now. (In fact, when still living in Japan, it am earthquake didn’t happen for a couple weeks, I would feel so out of sorts, it seemed nuts. When finally one happened again, I felt like I could breathe more easily, more freely again.) And I think the link between hurricanes and my childhood, being with my family through them (and through their aftermaths), has me feel this sense of homeyness and comfort around hurricane season now.

Also, I am rather fascinated with the powerful display of this planet’s abilities of power. Air and water, two things we need to be alive, are the exact things that can take away this life via a hurricane. Yet there is beauty in their power, both figuratively and literally.

Funny: I just realized that I even felt incredibly at-home when we had typhoons in Japan. Just like home, I suppose was the feeling. Haha. How odd this all is…, but that doesn’t make it so any less.

Over the next couple or few days, there is a potential of two hurricanes to pass this way. We shall see what happens, I pray.

P.S. While this has never happened in my lifetime, I think there has never in known history been two such storms developing in the Gulf of Mexico at the same time. She’s kind of a one-storm-at-a-time kind of Gulf. ;P

Post-a-day 2020

The Body Of Life

My left hand has been going tingly and numb lately. And I don’t mean because I hit it on something or and carrying heavy items or anything else that could be cutting off the blood pressure in any circumstance. I mean because I move it a half inch forward or an inch backward, or any other number of regular movements or non-movements of the arm. Whatever my regular existence is, that has the to king and numbness begin.

I have been thinking that it is something in my shoulder, as the alignment there has been iffy for quite a while, and has lately been worse than usual. However, when my aunt looked at it tonight – she’s an awesome massage therapist, with extra emphasis on the therapist part of the job title – she concluded that it mostly wasn’t my arm or shoulder at all, but somewhere ever farther up the line. After some more poking around, and some noises from me, it was clear to both of us that its origins lay in my neck, all the way up at the base of my skull. So, the bottom of my head slash top of my neck have been affecting my whole arm and hand negatively recently.

It has me wondering, just from a little brain-playing a few minutes ago, if our body is representative of life, and, if so, if this is representative of pains and aches in our greater lives. Is such and such pain cause not by the thing that seems obvious, nor by the thing that makes sense based on all previous experiences and evidence, but by something even further up the line or down the rabbit hole… something w head never even considered, because it was so obviously this other thing causing the pains?

In other words, what if, by going more than just the extra step, the extra level, we were to look even further than we imagine makes sense or seems reasonable or likely to make a difference? If we did so, what might we discover? What might we be able to sort out for ourselves in life, if we didn’t stop after only the first or second why?

I’m certainly willing to give it a go, and to see what then happens. I’ve already had that in certain areas of my life. Perhaps this will give me that intense level of freedom in all areas of my life, as opposed to tingling and numbness in so many places, cause by the slightest of changes of position by myself. Because I am all too familiar with that tingling and numbness in my life. 🙂

Post-a-day 2020

Yikes

It has only been a few days of te air being warmer in the house, and already my acne has gotten significantly worse. Specifically my back, shoulders, and chest are suffering from abnormal numbers of individual blemishes appearing. Even my face has had a bit extra in the past two days. And this is normally the time in my menstrual cycle that produces the least amount of acne… so much for that right now. This merely adds to my experiential belief that a huge part of my acne is related to 1) getting sweaty and then 2) having things (mostly clothing) rub on that sweaty skin. Without the clothing part, it is never as bad, but it still can happen a bit. However, the two together really make the acne happen, no matter the time of month. Add onto it my week-ish or menstruation, and we have a recipe for an extremely uncomfortable-for-me amount of acne on my body. Ugh.

So, I suppose less clothing would be helpful over the next few days, to help to counteract the elevated temperature in the house. Racerback tanks instead of tees are the requirement now.

Ugh…. hassle.

Haha

I acknowledge my first world problem, as some might call it. That doesn’t make it any less annoying to be covered with acne when I already have found a way to prevent such a thing from happening… anyway…

Post-a-day 2020

First loves

I found myself thinking again today – after another long conversation with him, that is – of my high school boyfriend. We are certainly clear that we are of no romantic interest to one another anymore, and are fully satisfied in being friends. However, as I explained last night, there is a part of me that is only filled by him, un trou that likely never will be filled fully, as we never will be in a romantic relationship again. And that’s okay with me. What it had me wondering today was about the irony of my not wanting to be like all the world, yet fitting practically perfectly to the stereotype of the adage, “You never forget your first love.”

I never understood that before today, I think. I always wondered why people spoke so fondly of their first loves, yet they had let their first loves get away or disappear from their lives completely – what kind of love is that? Or so I always wondered. I realize now what it likely really is. When we love someone for the first time – even before we might understand what it means to love someone outside of our families – it is exactly the fact that we have never done it before and never experienced it before that it ends up staying with us throughout our lives. Without the opportunity or intention of keeping ourselves safe or preserved or protected, we dive into our first experience of love wholeheartedly, loving with all of our being, however we can find to love. We have no reservations, and no agenda either – we just live purely and truly and openly and fully. We have never lost our love, and so we don’t even try to cling tightly to it, or mistrust our own feelings around it – we simply love.

When the relationship ends, for whatever reason it may be, we have our first lesson in loss. Yet we, after having been so utterly invested in our love, can never hold anything against our first love. No matter how it ended, the experience of the love remains untouched, pure. But the ending of it keeps us forever on our guard, of course. Likely never again will we love in such a way. Never again will we be so reckless with distributing our love, as we may see it. The free love lives forever in that first and only fully free relationship of love, therefore inducing a nostalgic look of longing for yesteryear whenever we find ourselves reminded of our first love. I’m nowhere near old age, but I already experience just that around my first love.

And I am grateful for it.

I have no desire to reestablish that relationship, yet I always will be grateful for the opportunity to love so fully as I did with my first love.

Perhaps, just perhaps, this is a perfect opportunity to consider what value may lie in loving so freely again.

Post-a-day 2020

Today

Two things tonight: trash and holes.

First:

Today, I got to experience a delightful little bit of small town life. No one put out the trash this morning, so, once I was up and finished with tutoring, I handled it myself. There were still trash bins all down the street, and, when I had been doing the running for my workout, I discovered that some really reeked… suggesting that they still had trash in them. In fact, it smelled outside period, because of trash. So, I cleaned out the trash cans throughout the house, added their trash to the kitchen bag, and stuck it in the trash bin. I hugged the bin out to the curb, and headed back inside, out a clean kitchen bag and cleaned the trash can lid, and then washed my hands.

Suddenly, the doorbell rang. After a pause of contemplating the possibilities and likelihoods, I went and opened the door. An older, grayed and balding yet able-bodied man stood on the doorstep. “I hate to have to say it, but the trash man’s already come today.”

His southeast Texas small town accent only increased the endearment of the whole act. Only in small towns, communities that care openly about one another, does this happen. The other week, my mom said that the fat layer on my arms was due to my having been in the boonies for so long – it was just part of living out here. I laughed really hard at the joke, and told her later how grateful I was again and again at her having given me that silly way to look at the unpleasant situation of having gotten fat where I didn’t want it. That was, nonetheless, one of the drawbacks of small town life. This week, I got to have a positive of small town life, and enjoy the super sweet neighborly kindness that this guy gave freely to me. Just lovely. 🙂

Second:

I talked with my old high school boyfriend this afternoon. We have remained friends these past many years, despite the oh-so-different paths our lives have followed. We don’t talk often, but, when we do, we have to be cut off by some activity of some sort, or else we talk for hours. And we do it with ease. We weren’t just a dating couple in high school. We were really good friends for years first.

Talking today, I noticed how there is a piece of me – un trou – that is filled only by him. It sits just behind my ribs, from the center to the right a few inches or so, and it has a bit of depth to it, though not uniform. I could feel it so incredibly clearly today, I am surprised that I hadn’t fully identified its existence before. It had just been one of those subconscious knowings, I suppose, until today. But now I see and feel how that one spot is filled only by J——–, and it makes my heart, somehow, feel more full. By the knowledge of his absence, he somehow goes everywhere with me, whether I realize or pay attention to it or not. It was a kind of fun realization to have.

While we spoke, I could feel an intangible heat stretching inside my ribs, expanding to fill, at least in part, his space within my being.

Whenever I see him next, I can definitely see myself hugging and hanging tightly around his neck for quite a while – he is so important to me. But it is truly out of love through friendship, not romantic love. Frankly, we are so not interested in one another on a day-to-day or dating level – that’s a hard pass for the both of us. But, just because we are not romantically for one another, doesn’t mean that we cannot improve the foundation of our relationship, and stick with that: friendship.

Anyway, I’m losing focus, both visually and mentally, actually. So, I’m going to end here and do my stretches and reading so I can go to sleep now. Goodnight!!

Post-a-day 2020

Perseids

Tonight, while awaiting the arrival of my aunt and uncle, finally coming home from their ten-week vacation, I received a message from my aunt, asking if my cousin and I were still awake. It was 10:56 when the message arrived. I called her in response, and she asked if we wanted to go see about seeing the Perseids meteor shower with them. Ten minutes later, we were on the road to meet them in a dark place surrounded by trees. It was supposed to be only fifteen minutes away, but my cousin wanted to drive, and he drove ten to fifteen miles per hour under the speed limit for some reason… and he almost ran us off the road more than once… I’m not so sure his eyesight is okay…

Anyway, we arrived to the parking lot in the median on the highway, and we lay down on some sleeping bags that my aunt had set out on the ground in front of their vehicle. The temperature had been 79°F at the house, but it was down to 74°F st this particular spot, but still with high humidity, so there was moisture around. When I lay down, my arms were wet within a minute, due to the dew on the sleeping bag.

The sky was gorgeous. I’m not sure I have ever been able to sit and see the sky like I saw it tonight, so dark and deep with stars and planets – the more of them that are visible, the more of a depth that is added to the sky… it really feels like we are in a galaxy, looking up at a sky like that… I’m not sure I have ever felt so much a part of something so much bigger than just the little world around me (literally)… it was glorious. I put my hands behind my head, and I basked in the depths of the galaxy around and above me…

So, we chatted and watched, and we all saw some meteors – my aunt kept stressing because she was always looking the wrong way at first. Eventually, though, we all saw multiple meteors. My aunt did a toast to the Perseid meteors, using the $15 whisky they had in the back of the car, and we all saluted the Perseids with a sip or so. She had tried many a times to see the Perseid shower throughout her life, and she had, at last, seen some of it.

My uncle told us a story of how, though he regularly lay in his truck bed in the driveway when he was a teen, watching the stars (and, my aunt added, listening to Peter Frampton [on his eight-track, he added]), there was one night that, with the sky dark-dark, and everyone had come for a watermelon smash at his home, a comet suddenly appeared, making the sky look bright as daytime while it passed. It freaked him out, apparently. That was in the 70s at some point. (I intend to look it up later.)

My aunt had never heard the story. And that is not very common at all.

Then, after work fumbling with her phone for a while, my aunt finally got the great version of “Baby, I Love Your Way” playing on her phone, and we all felt the time-warp nostalgia of my uncle’s nights in his pickup in the 70s. She had the volume low, too, so it really was like how it would have been back in that day.

While we were lying there after the song, my aunt said to me, “Hannah, you’re gonna have to remember this for me. Because I’m not remembering things too well these days.” I chuckled, and told her that I even would tell my cousin, her daughter, so that she, too, could help my aunt to remember this memory.

It certainly was a good one to have and to remember. 🙂

…..

Then, of course, we came home, and no one went right to bed. Dishes had to be washed (because my cousin hadn’t done it throughout the day), sheets had to be found (because my aunt didn’t like that my cousin was putting his junk on her nice sheets in the guest bedroom), and food and certain other things had to be unpacked from their vehicle. That, along with the general need for us to hang around and talk with one another, despite the fact that it was way late. We never found the sheets, but we did find something else my cousin had been looking for for a couple days so far. Finally, around 2:30/2:45, people went to bed. I had already showered and was doing stretches on my bed (i.e. the massage table), since they had finally stopped rummaging through the room for those sheets, at long last. Good thing no one is getting up early tomorrow… oh, wait… we all are. ::face palm and goodnight!

Post-a-day 2020

He is back

Tonight, my cousin – who is back in town again at last – and I played a kind of duet. I played piano chords, and he played the fretless banjo that he made from cherry tree, a gourd, and a roadkill deer hide, and we both sang. It was “You’ll Be Back” by Lin-Manuel Miranda, from Hamilton. It was spectacular, and totally fun for the both of us.

And it was only one piece from a whole delightful chunk of music for the two of us tonight, all for which I am extremely grateful. 🙂

Happy eyes watched me bounce around with delight and freedom, as we listened to the track of “You’ll Be Back”, and warmed ears heard our self-produced music the whole rest of the time, feeling the passion and love through our notes and words. I even played one of my own songs for my cousin to hear for the first time, and it was basically no big deal to me, in terms of nerves – it was awesomely easy for me to do.

Man…

This late-night / early-morning hangout was a solid one, for sure. 🙂

Thank you… gratitude, dearest World… gratitude… 🙂

Post-a-day 2020

Power

BOOOOM!!!

And then all the lights go out.

And the air that had not yet been turned down from 80°F from during the day cuts off.

We had just arrived home, close to 2:30 in the morning, and I was in the middle of folding towels, so I could put the sheets on the bed, so we could go to bed. We hadn’t planned on being back until tomorrow afternoon (technically this afternoon, but whatever). But he wanted to go ahead and drive back tonight, after we finished around midnight. And so, we did. Now, it is growing harder to breathe by the minute, it is uncomfortably warm, and it is practically impossible to use the bathroom safely.

I managed to call out to Siri to give us light, and then turned on my phone flashlight to find some candles and matches in the living room (which are now dripping wax all over the cardboard we set under them on the floor – glad we did that! Whew!). I worked for a while in efforts to report the outage, but the system is idiotic. Fortunately, it was reported somehow anyway, despite its having been at 2:30 in the morning. Estimated recovery time is 5:00 in the morning, just another hour and a half from now.

One comment on the stupidity of the outage reporting: They all want you to do it online… when there is no internet, due to the power outage. Also – okay, a second comment – you cant report to outage unless you have the right company and the right user number or ID or whatever… I don’t live here, but am house sitting here. I have no idea what power company they use, nor what their user ID is. However, I know that just after 2:30am on this street, something exploded and then all the power went out, and it doesn’t look like anyone on the street has power right now. Geez… stupid systems suck big time.

Anyway, I’m off not to shower and not to have a normal night of rest, but o continue my bedtime routine stuff, and see if I can manage to sleep at all until we have air flow again.

I feel so spoiled with all of this talk. However, here’s the thing: We pay for a service that declares reliability. Therefore, we expect it to be reliable. And it hasn’t been reliable. And we’re exhausted, and I just wanted a shower and a bit of cool air, so I could pass the **** out until I had to get up to tutor in the morning.

Ugh…

Anyway… turns out that it is three and a half streets with no power right now.

Post-a-day 2020