Blue-Footed Musings

Days and weeks get longer, but years get shorter.

Last year brought me and my family a mix of good and bad. We had an abundance of humor and good times spent together. But a lot of things went wrong, from the minor inconveniences to the major traumas. My blog reflected that. There were happy posts and unhappy ones.

To commemorate the year, I put together a representative selection of posts, one for each month. You can read the first paragraph or sentence of each here on this post. Use the link at the beginning of each one to take you back to the original post.

This is how I remember 2017—

A Birthday Celebration 1/31/2017: Livia had a birthday this month. She is now six years old! It’s hard to believe, because I can still remember her as a baby. Baby Livia would tackle every obstacle head-on, wearing a big smile, and with a gleam in her eye. In many ways she’s still like that, only she’s bigger now and doesn’t drool so much.

Never Apart 2/18/2017: A little doppelganger of my husband sits on my shoulder while I’m clothes shopping. I pick up a shirt in a pretty shade of blue-green. “No teal!” the little husband hollers in my ear. I move along. Next I find something in gray. “Too drab,” he objects. “You should wear brighter colors.” I move along. Soon I spot a comfy-looking sweater. The little husband gets apoplectic over that one. “That’s something your mother would wear!” Is that such a bad thing? “It is!” So the little husband steers me toward a more form-fitting sweater, but he nearly flips on me when I reach for the blue-green. “I said no teal! Try the brown.” I hesitate, because he did just tell me to wear brighter colors. “It’s OK. It goes with your hair.” He’s right. It does.

You Didn’t Breathe 3/15/2017: Dear Peeps, late last night I went downstairs to tell Faithful Reader something. He said, “Shhh. Peeps is making the strangest sounds.” I stood on the stairs, listening, looking down on you. You were sleeping on your favorite spot on the couch. You stretched and relaxed. Faithful Reader said, “Her eye is open.” I said, “She looks dead from this angle.” I was only joking, but then you didn’t breathe. We waited for you to breathe, but you didn’t.

Kite and Flight 4/29/2017: It’s cute and frustrating and almost inspirational the way Livia refuses to believe us when we tell her that her homemade kite won’t fly. Not only is the kite not built properly, but there’s hardly any wind. Never mind. She believes she can do it if she tries hard enough and applies enough tape to the torn parts.

Improper Attire 5/29/2017: Heard around the house: Hey, hey, hey! Cups are not shoes!

What a Mess 6/19/2017: Total chaos in the kitchen!

Proud 7/21/2017: Earlier this year I started working on a special photo album of nature pictures and posts. It took weeks just to sift through all my photos and writing. I found more material than could fit in a single album, so I split the project in two. Then I had to cut and paste, arrange, edit, and proofread. After months of working on it, it still wasn’t finished, and I had begun to think it might never be.

My Vacation: Part I 8/27/2017: Our vacation destination was a cottage on a lake located about six hours from our home. It’s a long drive and, as is usually the case, we left late. We also hit traffic. As a result, we arrived after dark. My parents and my brother and his family had already arrived and selected their rooms. Aside from one room with a double bed on the main floor, all that was left was the basement, which smelled musty.

Now We’re Cooking 9/12/2017: How to cook delicious soup in three easy steps:

1. Find a slow cooker recipe for delicious soup.
2. Buy all of the ingredients.
3. Hand recipe and ingredients to husband and say, “Here. Make this delicious soup.”

It’s Saturday 10/21/2017:

A Perfect Day for a Hike

Life Without the Internet 11/6/2017: A nor’easter hit the Northeast on the Sunday before last. Had it brought snow, who knows how bad the damage might have been. As it was, the winds (hurricane-strength in some areas) knocked down trees and power lines all over the place.

All I Can Do Is Laugh 12/9/2017: I have my own particular set of sayings that I use frequently. One of them is “make it snappy.” I use this saying on the kids when they’re slow to do whatever it is they’ve been told to do. But Marshall has decided to take the saying literally. If I tell him to “make it snappy,” he starts snapping his fingers and doing a little dance. Usually we’re in a rush, so I ought to get angry when he starts dancing instead of following my instructions. His snappy dance is just so hysterical that all I can do is laugh.

The worst thing about being an adult is having to force myself to do things that I don’t want to do. Every morning I have to bully myself out of bed. There is always a part of me that is digging in her heels and refusing to get up, even as the rest of me is pushing away the covers and getting out of bed. That rebellious part of me is angry, and she gets a little angrier every day. Thank goodness she’s allowed to sleep in on weekends. Otherwise she would have staged a coup by now.

Every blog post is a little like a message in a bottle. You hope someone will find it, and be interested in it, and reply.

Before 2017, I never could have imagined reprimanding the POTUS daily on social media. I also never could have imagined having a president that needed daily reprimanding. What a strange place we’re in.

I know that as a New Englander I’m supposed to be stoic about wintry weather. But it is 12° right now, and that’s warm compared to the temperatures we’ve been having. Tomorrow’s predicted high is 29° (heavenly!), but we’re supposed to get a blizzard the next day, followed by several more days in the deep freeze. My stoicism is wearing thin!

My memory is poor. I can hardly remember things from day to day, let alone from year to year. This has caused me a sort of “separation anxiety.” I feel a separation from everything that has happened to me in the past, and the distance is always widening, with only the sketchiest memories to connect then to now. And it causes me anxiety, more so with every passing year. Sometimes I read things that I’ve written, and I know that I wrote them because the words sound like mine, and the events they describe involve people that I know, but I don’t remember writing them. That scares me.

Another side effect of this poor memory is that, though I learn things as I go along, I don’t always remember what I’ve learned. There are probably some epiphanies that I’ve had dozens of times. I suppose, in a way, it’s cool to keep rediscovering things. On the other hand, lessons that could be helpful with everyday life ought to reside at the top of one’s memory, where they’re easily accessible.

My memory issues remind me of the movie “50 First Dates,” in which the main female character has brain damage that prevents her from forming lasting memories. She forgets while she sleeps, so every day she wakes up in her past, not remembering all the things that have happened to her since the accident that damaged her brain. Her solution to this terrible problem is to keep a journal (later, a video diary) of what has changed in her life. She leaves it out where she will see it first thing in the morning. Every day she reads/watches it and catches up with her own life.

Though the movie was presented as a comedy, it’s not really funny. I get sad just thinking about it. But I think sometimes I am a little like that character, and maybe her solution could be helpful to me. So I am visualizing a new project, something to remind me every day of the lessons I have learned, and why they are important.