Ordinary Life

I am living a very ordinary life these days. That doesn’t mean it’s an unhappy life. In fact, my ordinary life is quite nice and I am very content with it.

It’s late January and the arctic days that make Minnesota a challenging place to live in the winter have arrived. After weeks of above normal temperatures and little snow we are now experiencing the frigid cold for which Minnesota is known. Today it’s not quite as cold as it has been but light snow has been falling most of the day. We expect more snow tomorrow into Monday and then a frigid week of below zero temperatures. I’m feeling good staying warm and cozy at home today instead of braving the cold and snow.

Today I’m wearing long underwear under my clothes, a fleece jacket over them, and while I sit in the chair writing this post I’m covered with a fleece blanket. Gracie, my cat is draped over my legs. What a good leg warmer she makes.

Ordinary Life

This is my ordinary life in Minnesota in January.

Every day I give thanks for a warm home, warm clothing, plenty of good food, and our reliable warm cars. My biggest worries these days are my non-functioning 27 inch iMac computer and preparing for hip replacement surgery. Actually I’m doing my best to not worry about either of those things.

There’s a pleasure in being reminded of the value of ordinary life. — Karen Thompson Walker

I’m missing using my iMac computer for editing my photographs. This computer has been my good friend for about 10 years. For some reason it froze up while I was using it this week and when I tried to reboot, it froze partway through the reboot.

We are still working on seeing if we can diagnose and fix the problem. Fortunately my sweet and ever-loving Jon is very persistent and good at trouble-shooting computer problems. I know that this computer will not last forever but so long as I can keep it running and usable I prefer to do that. In the meantime I’m using my laptop computer and making minimal photo edits on it’s much smaller screen. Hopefully we will be able to get my trusty iMac running again. If not, I guess it will be time to go shopping for a new computer.

Sharpening the Saw

A photographer friend and I are going through a list of photo challenges for the year, sharing our work with one another for comments and critique. I’ve found this process very helpful to challenge me to do types of photography I don’t usually do. It also stimulates me to actively plan and execute those plans rather than simply respond to life as it happens.

The photo at the top of this post was my second in our series of challenges for the year — it was intended to show scale. When I saw the challenge word “scale” I wondered how on earth I could show scale given the fact that I’m limiting the amount of walking I’m doing due to hip pain. As I pondered the challenge I noticed a little pile of used tissues and thought about how it seems like I go through a mountain of them each week between allergies and seasonal colds. I decided to ask my grandchildren if I could borrow a lego figure and voila— a mountain of tissues with a nurse lego figure. It’s silly but I had fun making it.

Amaryllis Series of Photographs

I’m still working on my amaryllis series of photographs. The second set of blossoms on each of my plants have fully opened and are beginning to fade. While finding something new to see or say about these flowers is becoming more difficult over time, I try to take at least a few new images every day. I expect the flowers will be done soon and then I will be left with working on editing the images and choosing which ones to include in the final series of photographs.

Making these images has reminded me of photographs I saw years ago by Kathy Beal that I fell in love with. She creates what she calls “Inspirational Abstractions” that I find fascinating and beautiful.  I think if Georgia O’Keeffe (one of my favorite painters) was a photographer, this is the kind of image she might create. One of the things I’m working on with some of the images I’m making, is to play around with creating similar abstractions. So far I’ve had minimal success, but I keep experimenting and trying new things.

Watercolor Play

I also continue to play around with watercolor painting. While I don’t do as much painting as photography, I read about watercolor painting, watch instructional videos, and experiment with different techniques. This week I mostly played without trying to paint anything “real.” I’m reading a book by Jean Haines called Paint Yourself Calm. My most recent paintings were inspired by exercises she talked about in her book.

Sharpening a Different Kind of Saw

My preparation for hip replacement surgery has been interesting. After two months of physical therapy I am experiencing significantly less pain but still have some pain with specific movements. I am feeling very confident that joint replacement is necessary and that the timing is right. My hope is that I will regain lost mobility and be able to get out and hike again with my camera and also to be able to travel.

I’ve been surprised to also experience anxiety and fear about the surgery and recovery process. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised to be having many different feelings about this process but I was. There is a part of me that feels like I have to figure it all out, pick the perfect surgeon, the correct approach (there are several different surgical options for hip replacement) and the perfect preparation. The rational part of me knows that there is no perfect. All I can do is educate myself, listen to my heart and mind, and make the best choices I can. I am working on trusting that all will be well no matter what happens. It is taking all of my presencing and meditation tools to breathe through and accept whatever arises in this process.

This coming week I meet with one of two orthopedic surgeons I’ve decided to talk with. My appointment with the second surgeon is not until early April, so I will have a lot of wait time before making a decision on which surgeon to go with.

Time to Prepare

In some ways it’s good to have so much time to prepare; in other ways I wish I could just get it done as soon as possible. Now that I’ve learned that I probably cannot achieve pain-free with the hip joint I have, I’ve transitioned my physical therapy appointments into strengthening and exercise sessions to help get me as strong and fit as possible before surgery so that the recovery process is easier. I’m finding this new phase of physical therapy very challenging. Because I’ve been living with the pain for so long my body has compensated by using incorrect muscle groups and stopped using the most effective muscle groups. Re-training the brain to activate the proper muscle groups and not use the other muscle groups is difficult and exhausting. It takes such effort and concentration to break unconscious patterns.

This blog post is a sort of capsule of my ordinary life these days — living day to day through January weather, making photographs and learning more about photography, playing with watercolor paints, figuring out the whole hip replacement surgery thing, physical therapy, physical therapy exercises, a little bit of cooking and cleaning, and reading.

During these interesting times my wish for you is that you also enjoy leading an ordinary life.

May you walk in beauty.