December 29, 2021

The year is winding down, and even though this tradition we have of celebrating a new beginning at the very end of December is much cherished, it is, in a way, artificial. But having said that, I think that we humans must have known what we were doing way back in the long ago, to set a definite end moment of the current year and create a “starting over point”, going forward.

I imagine there are a lot of people in eager anticipation of the end of 2021—good riddance they’ll say—and ready to blow the horns and shout, come on in, 2022!

That concept—out with the old, and in with the new—is the very reason that spring is my favorite season. After the relative stasis of winter, of course, comes the spring. Spring, with it’s tiny green shoots poking through the snow, gives us the reality of new life beginning, and a very real sense of “starting over.” When you think about it, the “new year” really should begin in the springtime.

I need to share with you something that I’ve thought about long and hard over the last few days. If life were a movie, it feels, especially lately, as if the movie we would be living would be Groundhog Day, as opposed to the one that the season of Christmastime tries to edge us toward—It’s A Wonderful Life.

But I digress.

It has become harder in recent months for me to keep up a positive attitude. I don’t think I’m alone in this.  And that is most unfortunate because now is when we need a positive attitude more than we have ever needed one to date. Therefore, desiring to be proactive, and on a positive note, I can tell you that the one thing I know for certain right now is that neither you, nor I, are the only ones who feel as if they have slowed down, as if they are just so damn tired all the time, and as if everything we aim to accomplish takes a ton more energy now that ever it did before.

It really is not just you and me, my friends.

I believe that this sense of brain fog and energy depletion we’re feeling should be recognized as the pandemic within the pandemic. Whether we’ve individually come down with Covid or not, this one, this pall, this miasma, we have all come down with. There is not a single person I’ve spoken to who doesn’t feel this way.

 I don’t know what the cure is, really. I imagine it’s going to be different things for different people. Seriously, I believe the choice before us all right now is this: perk up or perish!

To a certain extent, I believe that the cure for the dark ick hovering over us all must include some form of physical exercise. In times past, whenever someone was feeling tired, or perhaps it’s more accurate to say “burned out”, others have recommended exercise. The maxim is that expending energy to exercise creates more energy. (That’s sort of like that truism in life that the more love you give, the more love you have to give).  I don’t make New Year’s resolutions, per se, as you well know from these essays. But I sometimes will take the time to look at where I am and what I’m doing with a view to perhaps making a slight course correction.

The course correction I’m contemplating involves physical activity. Heck of a time of year to decide on that, but there it is. I want to move more—not higher, stronger, faster. Just….more. Around the house, around the room, it doesn’t matter. I can put two feet in front of the other (I walk with a cane so technically that is three “feet” I am tottering around on) and just do it.

I don’t have to talk myself into accomplishing this—at least not much. What I do have to keep affirming, mentally, is that this isn’t something that will show any kind of instant results. This will take time. There are some small, particular improvements I am hoping to see, and I think if I begin today (actually I began yesterday) and move more each day than I have been doing over the last year, I should see some improvement by the end of March. In this household, the end of March is synonymous with the end of winter. So that would be as close to perfect as I can get.

Movement creates energy, and energy eradicates stagnation. Yes, my dear friends, this is just my opinion. I don’t care if anyone else believes this, or not. I only care about getting my butt in gear, and honestly, moving is the best way I know to do that.

Plus, keeping busy does guarantee that sleep comes easier. Trust me when I say that a good, easy sleep is second to exercise in curing whatever may ail you.

And I will also here admit that I need to add the adjective “earlier” to that. Staying up until the wee hours really isn’t good for one hoping to get an early start on the day with vim and vigor.

Wishing you all a wonderful 2022!

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

 December 22, 2021

Here we are again! It’s almost Christmas of 2021, and it really doesn’t seem like a year since it was Christmas of 2020.

And as another wave of the virus surges, so does what they’re calling “virus fatigue”. I don’t think there are many people who don’t feel this modern-day miasma. I’ve been reflecting lately, and I really can’t tell you how many times in the 2010s I heard the warnings. Several learned, intelligent people, people of consequence, warned us that we were overdue for a major pandemic. They told us that it could be very, very bad. They told us to be ready.

Then, just as we were exiting that decade and entering the 2020’s, it came! The pandemic the ubiquitous “they” had been warning us about for years. And…we really weren’t prepared for this at all, were we?

Do you think that our habit of living life at ninety miles an hour, of arranging our society so that instant gratification is the norm has contributed to our lack of preparedness?

I do.

If you’re a parent, you inevitably recall times when your children “just couldn’t wait” for something—be it Christmas morning or arriving at your destination after an hours-long car ride. It’s that kind of impatience that I believe is gripping society at large right now. There are a lot of people interviewed briefly on the evening news casts who are positively whiny about wanting this over.

Which brings me to what else we are lacking in, and this is a biggie and an absolute necessity for surviving a pandemic, sanity intact.

From what I am seeing most people do not, by and large, seem to have an old-fashioned quality called “stick-to-it-ivness”.

I first heard that whining of “when will it be over?” sometime in May of 2020. This was after the general consensus was in March, that, hey, we shut everything down, and in a month, it will be over.  Really, people? A pandemic that comes and goes in a month, three at most?

When we learned there was a pandemic, David and I were absolutely terrified at first. We didn’t know if it was an airborne virus that could come on a wind, or if it needed some form of closer contact to spread. And, since the consensus was that older people, and people with “comorbidities” were most at risk, and we realized we checked both of those boxes, yeah, terror defines our original reaction well.

So we shut the door of our house to everyone who wasn’t one of the three of us, and we watched and we listened, and most importantly, we learned. Now, in our search for real, solid information we did stumble upon some “misinformation”, but for us, that was a pretty easy commodity to sort out. Like separating the wheat from the chaff.

We came to the conclusion that this pandemic would be with us for two, possibly three years. That realization didn’t make us at all happy, but it was what it was—and still is. Now, here I must say that in truth this pandemic could have been much worse. It could have been more “air borne” than it is, and—and this is a very big and—the scientists could still be searching for a vaccine. So, if we had to have a pandemic, SARS-CoV-2 is not the worst one that can imagine.

What we never once had on our bingo cards was that a whole bunch of people would refuse to be vaccinated. Or wear masks. Or social distance. We never once, in the beginning, could have imagined that people, en masse, would refuse to believe that the damn virus was even real.

Because of our failure of imagination, we are both beginning to wonder how long beyond our original estimate of two years this thing will last.

We have received two shots of the Moderna vaccine, and tomorrow, we get our boosters. If, in another 4 to 6 months, they suggest we get another shot, which is what they are doing in Israel right now? Well, we will be rolling up our sleeves.

We are no longer living in fear. We watched and we learned. And because we did, we are living in reality. Yes, we’re tired of it all. But that is something we just have to get over. Or endure. It is exhausting. But we’re not quitters, generally speaking. And since we want to stay on this earth for as long as God will allow us to do so, well, we’ll just do our best to carry on. We intend to live our lives, not by going ahead and, against best practices, “doing” this or that, and not by clinging to customs that used to be, as pleasant as they were.

We may not go out to dinner, or to parties. But we are keeping our attitudes as positive as possible. We are keeping in touch with family and friends. We are keeping busy.

This year, at some point we will attend small gatherings of family, and everyone there will be people who are also vaccinated. Until those two events happen, and, I hope, for every day from this moment forward, we are keeping the peace of that first gift of Christmas within our hearts.

And I can promise you that on Saturday, we will be communicating with our loved ones, and possibly watching some of our favorite Christmas movies. We’ll remember the joys of Christmases past—which, as parents of a child who is in heaven is something we have done for nearly two decades.

May your hearts be filled with love and laughter and the peace which is at the heart of this season. Merry Christmas, from our house to yours!

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

 December 15, 2021

Thanks to the past weekend having been spent with three of our four great-grandchildren here for a sleepover, our Christmas tree is up and decorated.

It’s not a real tree that you’ll find here in our house. Our daughter developed an allergy to the real thing when she was a young teen. (She can’t even have one of those classic pine-tree air fresheners in her car.) The tree we have now we purchased a few years back, the December following the “great attic clean-up caper” that David and the girls staged one spring. This was back before our daughter moved in with us. It was a very well-organized effort, needed because over the last many years prior to that noble effort, they both—our girls, that is—liked to bring things here to “store”. That’s all well and good and we are always happy to help them—until the space runs out. So, they planned a mass clean-out of what was no longer needed/wanted.  We’d ordered a huge bin, and the three of them, working together, did a good job “cleaning up” the attic. The good news is, that there was a lot of space created and unwanted stuff gotten rid of.

Unfortunately, they tossed our Christmas tree out in error. Our daughter had mistaken our tree for her tree, which she had thought she had stored here. And during that great attic clean up she had decided, for whatever reason, that she no longer wanted it. There were a couple of other items in that clean up that we lost as well, including a small metal table that I had purchased to use when I needed to sort out my paperwork during tax prep season. The table had been bought the fall before, and it hadn’t cost much, but it had worked perfectly.

The tree we have now isn’t very tall—only about five foot high. Because I like that tree, the year after we acquired it I went out and purchased some miniature-sized decorations for it. We have lights, garland, and hanging ornaments. With small dogs in the house, we don’t bother with the tinsel or anything else that might end up going through a dog’s digestive track. The tree is pretty, and the little ones did a good job of hanging the tiny ornaments.

The snow that I wrote about a couple of weeks back melted, and then we got more snow. It, too, melted over this last weekend. On Monday, as I peeked around the corners of my computer monitor to see outside, I was greeted by bright sunshine, bare trees, and green lawns, mostly raked of leaves. I was blessed to see the exact same sight again yesterday, as well. I don’t know if this is real, or just perception, but it seems to me that two straight days of sunshine and blue skies lately is a rarity.  I tend to think its more the former than the latter, since we’re at the time of year when two lines have been added to the daily forecast screen at the weather network web site: expected snowfall and expected hours of sunshine. It looked so pretty outside Monday and yesterday. If it weren’t for the fact that it was only just a couple of degrees above the freezing mark, I might have been tempted to go and sit on the porch for a bit. The forecast for today tells me to expect 0 hours of sunshine, and possibly some rain. Since the skies are now grey and the street is wet, I’d say that’s an accurate report.

Because our local government will not collect yard waste again until the spring, one is left trying to decide what’s best: letting the leaves that are still there on the lawn right now stay there, to be covered by the snow that is sure to come again any day now; or does one rake, and bag, and then store those full bags of leaves in the outside storage spaces until spring?

Friends, that is a dilemma with which my beloved husband has been wrestling over the last couple of weeks. Or one that he says he is wrestling with. I think the truth is, he just doesn’t want to take the chance that any stored bags will somehow get wet, thus beginning their decomposition cycle. So, he really is counting on the snow to arrive soon and hide the unsightly brown, somewhat rotting former foliage from view.

My daughter is going to take me Christmas shopping in the coming week, so I can get something for the smallest two of our great-grandchildren. At two-and-a-half and three-and-a-half, they much prefer getting something to open on Christmas morning, and who can blame them for that?

The older two of our great-grandchildren look forward to shopping trips with their “nanny” where they can choose their own gifts. And, of course, there’s the plus for them that the after-Christmas sales mean they can get far more than they otherwise would have with the money gifted. And yes, at the age of eight, the oldest of the two can reason that out.

I know it’s lazy on our part, but we pretty much gift money to the rest of our family—kids and grandkids alike. It is lazy, but it is also the gift that always fits and never has to be returned due to a flaw in the manufacturing. That makes it a win-win for two older people who really don’t like shopping.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

 

 

 

 December 8, 2021

I’m here to tell you that not all change is bad.

We live in a quiet neighborhood, with streets and cross-streets, made up of single-family dwellings with various types of front yards, and back ones, too. Our neighborhood is resplendent with mature trees of various genus. There is a sidewalk in front of our house. It used to be a straight and short journey to it, out the front door, three steps across the porch and then straight down the five concrete stairs to the sidewalk.

A few years ago, the town wanted to repair our sidewalk and wanted to know why we put our steps down from our porch onto their sidewalk. The engineer working for the town with whom we spoke seemed to suffer a disconnect; we explained that when we purchased this house in 1993, those steps had already been there, and we hadn’t even thought about the fact that they rested on a part of the sidewalk. He kept insisting that couldn’t be so because the blueprints he had on file didn’t show them.

This house is more than a century old, and only God knows how long those old concrete steps had been there.

The long and the short of the back-and-forth discussions with the town was that we had to remove the steps. But the gentleman proved not to be a total dork, because he suggested that the town crew working on the sidewalk down the street and scheduled to do the repairs in front of our house would likely remove our concrete steps for us in return for the donation of a case of beer.

David took a stroll down the street, and the bargain was struck. As it happened, we had to go out that evening, so we dropped the case off to them, and headed out, stairs mostly intact. I say mostly, because David and our son both had tried a jackhammer as well as a sledgehammer, on that behemoth of a staircase, all to no avail. The town’s crew were several and they had machinery at their disposal.

When we returned from our evening out, those steps were gone, as was all the associated debris. The neighbors thanked us for the evening’s entertainment. They sat out and watched those four burly men and their mighty machines struggle and struggle and then finally succeed where we could not.

All through the time we’ve lived here in this house, one thing has remained a constant: on the 16^th of the month and on the 1^st of the month, we have had to move our car from parking on one side of the street, to the other.

That is, until this past Monday.

I did wonder some when I was working yesterday, because I have just enough of my window available to me to get a gist of what is happening outside in front of the house. And yesterday, I watched David go down the new porch steps he and daughter built this summer to replace the old new steps he and son had made after the crew demolished and then hauled away the remnants of the concrete ones.

David walked across the street, and then seemed to be looking at the parking sign beside my car. Then he looked up and down the street. He was clearly confused about something, but I had no idea what. Then he returned to the house, but rather than retake his seat on the porch again with the dogs, he came inside the house, and to my office.

“I think you have to move the car,” he said. “There’s a no parking sign there.”

I blinked. It was only the 6^th of the month. Now I was confused. “You mean, no parking 16^th to 31^st.”

“No, I mean no parking, period. And it is the only parking sign there is on either side on the entire street.”

I texted my daughter, who’d gone out to the store and was due to return shortly, to let her know she needed to park on the house side of the street when she returned. And then, because I am just a tad anal, I called the town offices.

And I learned that because the snow plowing crew had been complaining for years how difficult it is to remove snow when cars are parked on either one side or the other depending on the day of month, a change had been mandated. Beginning when the signs go up, and going forward, we will only park our cars on one side of this street.

I will tell you that likely this sign was installed before Sunday last—the day I went to get groceries and then returned my vehicle to its spot right beside the parking sign that was now a “no parking” sign. I’ll tell all of you, but I am not mentioning to my family the fact that I never even looked at the sign or noticed the change.

Right now, though, I feel as if I have been given an unexpected Christmas gift. I will no longer have to trudge out on a cold or rainy day just to move the darn car from one side of the street to the other. And from now own, I won’t have to idle and wait for the groceries to be unloaded, either, because I then have to park on the other side when that chore is done. Nope, from now on my car will always be parked on our side of the street.

Yes, indeed. Merry Christmas to me.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

 December 1, 2021

The last month of 2021 has arrived, and although this year hasn’t taken as large of a toll on me as 2020 did, I nevertheless won’t be sorry to see it go.

It snowed last Sunday beginning in the morning, and while I was certain that the wet kaka would be gone by the next day, it has remained. I had heard the dripping of melting snow as I left the house Sunday afternoon to get the groceries, and the white stuff was just so wet! However, it didn’t disappear over night, and I’ve the feeling we’ll see a lot of it in the next few months.

According to the traditions of this house, winter is defined as that season that stretches from October to March, inclusive. So hooray, the second month of winter is now history. The season is already one-third done!

The beginning of the last month of the year is also the beginning of the Christmas season. We’re not partying this year, but then, we never really do. There will possibly be two occasions over the course of this month when we will be amongst our larger family. In both cases, everyone has been vaccinated.

David and I have been careful, ever since the pandemic struck. In the early days, before we knew more about it, we were both, frankly, frightened. We’re older—David will be 70 next year. We also both have risk factors. I am diabetic (type 2) and have heart disease; David has COPD. It’s not at the stage where he needs oxygen, but he does have an inhaler he must use once a day. He also has a rescue inhaler. As we have paid attention and learned more about this novel coronavirus, our fear has eased, but we’ve remained vigilant.

We both, right from the beginning, figured this thing would be front and center for about three years, at least, before it was completely under control. What we didn’t count on was that so many people would play silly games, resulting in their refusal to take the vaccine. We thought most people were intelligent enough, and generous enough, to focus on the greater good first and get the shots.

I never could have imagined that in this modern age and in the year 2021, that the inmates would truly take over the asylum.

Sunday last was notable for more than the snow that fell. On that day, our two “puppies”, Missy and Bear-Bear, offspring of our beloved Mr. Tuffy, turned 2 years old. We didn’t have a party and nearly missed the occasion altogether. They’re both a couple of scoundrels if you ask me. They need a lot of attention and affection. They love their routine and are happiest when their human mommy and daddy are close by. But we love them, of course we do.

One day, when they were only about six months old, David went upstairs, his goal to tidy up our storage area. There were several empty boxes up there and he decided it was the day to thin the collection out. He thought it would be funny to let those collapsed, light-weight boxes slide down the stairs toward the waiting puppies. He thought they’d think that was a great, fun game.

They did not.

Now, although it happened only that one time (he swears), if he goes up those stairs in the morning when I am behind my closed office doors trying to work? Yeah, I get Missy scratching like crazy at one of those doors. Of course, I open it so she and her brother can come in and seek refuge with the one person who has never tried to terrorize them—me.

I will always stop writing so that I can pick them up and calm their little-doggie nerves. But that doesn’t mean I do so happily. It’s not their fault, after all, that they were frightened by being pelted with cardboard bombs at an impressionable age.

And, if it happens twice in one day, I become annoyed. Compromise, as you know, is key to any relationship. David and I have a deal. Monday to Friday, I claim the time from when I get up until noon hour as my exclusive working time. And it is work, and results in some income that we both use. If David wants to trek upstairs to get tools to do whatever or if he wants to do something totally outside of the norm, upsetting little-doggie schedules and psyches, then he can do so after the stroke of midday. By anyone’s standards, that is reasonable.

Trust me when I say that the puppies are not the only creatures in this house who like to cling to their routines.

The difference between me and our small dogs in that regard, of course, is that I tend to get a whole lot crankier than they do when my routine is interfered with.

And no, a belly rub and scratch behind the ears just doesn’t cut it as an apology.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury