In addition to worrying about Toby’s ear (which is really slow to respond to medicine), this week’s stresses included a trip to Instacare Monday because I was afraid I’d broken my toe. The good news: it’s not broken. The bad news: it might be a neuroma, which is chronic.

I’m sitting out the gym this week–so my shoulders won’t be immediately getting broader–but I thought this piece of Instagram wisdom was good. It’s all about building resilience. And getting cannonball shoulders.

(via)

I’m not too proud to admit that I’ve saved a lot of encouraging images on Instagram and pull them up pretty frequently. Here are a couple on my mind this week:

A quote from Martha Graham, via Words of Women:

 
And this cartoon, which is PERFECT, from Sarah Andersen Comics:

We said goodbye to my mother on Sunday. She fought pancreatic cancer–from an initial cautiously optimistic diagnosis through chemotherapy to a surprise terrible diagnosis after surgery–for ten months. It took her health and it took her life but it didn’t take her beauty or her spirit, not even at the end.

She taught me how to sew. She taught me how to cook. She taught me how to take care of people. There won’t be a day for the rest of my life where I won’t want to ask her about my garden or show her fabric for my next project or tell her about my day, but she also taught me how to be strong.

She showed us all what it meant to be strong over this past year and what love really looks like. For that, and for everything else, I say: Thank you, Mom. I love you.

I have Monday through Wednesday off so I’ll be back Thursday. Be kind to yourself this coming week; even if you like the holidays, things can be overwhelming.

1. It’s the winter solstice today. We made it through the darkest part of the year. (I have to say, taking meds has made my SAD nonexistent this year, and it’s been great.)

2. Here’s Anne LaMott on hope, in an essay for National Geographic, and it’s a good one:

Everyone I know, including me, has lived through devastating times at least twice, through seemingly unsurvivable loss. And yet we have come through because of the love of our closest people, the weird healing properties of time, random benevolence, and, of course, our dogs.

At regular intervals, life gets a little too real for my taste. The wider world seems full of bombers, polluters, threats of all kinds. My own small world suffers ruptures…that leave me struggling to stay on my feet.

In these situations I usually have one of two responses: either that I am doomed or that I need to figure out whom to blame (and then correct their behavior). But neither of these is true. The truth is that—through the workings of love, science, community, time, and what I dare to call grace—some elemental shift will occur and we will find we are semi-OK again. And even semi-OK can be a miracle.

3. And here’s  Beatrix Potter’s “The Tailor of Gloucester” online, in case you need to read a Christmas Eve story about talking animals and sewing (aka the BEST Christmas story). 

I’ve talked about Ask A Swole Woman here before; she’s the reason I started lifting. She’s now writing a column for Self and, back in September, I wrote in to ask for advice on what pants to wear to the gym that aren’t leggings. (Remember these sweatpant knockoffs?)

She published my question last week! Of course, the kicker is that since I wrote in, I’ve gotten a lot more comfortable with doing gym things (and how my butt looks), so I go to class in leggings like it ain’t no thing. As she says:

“…stretchy fitted pieces just do truly make a lot of the practical elements of lifting easier for everyone, regardless of your biology or geometry, and I do think many people end up making this transition not out of narcissism, but rather out of a kind of necessity. We are a stretchy-garment-loving people, and we come in peace.”

Indeed.

***

And in more internet fame, I posted Doc’s birthday shirt on my Instagram yesterday, tagging the fabric store because I am not proud (and because I want as many people to have nice ikat as possible). They featured my post in their Story!

Seeing it like that makes me realize that IS some pretty nice pattern matching, if I do say so myself.

Kottke featured this earlier in the week: a Random Koyaanisqaatsi Generator, which is “an internet version [of the film’s trailer] using random Giphy ‘gifs’ which have been tagged as slow motion or time-lapse, playing them along with the Philip Glass soundtrack.”

In other words, hours of dystopian arthouse fun!

Well, maybe not deep, but I had Mark Doty in my head again, right on schedule for fall.

Like trying to familiarize yourself,
exactly, with the side of a mountain:
this birch, this rock-pool, this square mosaic
yard of tesselated leaves, autumnal,
a jeweled reliquary.

I’m not Wiccan but I find it endlessly fascinating to learn about the old, old traditions, how the early Christian church adapted/co-opted them, and how they’ve evolved into what we have today. (See also: Saturnalia, Eostre, etc.)

For Halloween, we can thank the Celtic pagans for the idea of spirits being close, the focus on death and blood and bones, and even trick-or-treating–and you can learn all about it in the Wikipedia article.

Turns out the originators of the holiday had some of the OG creepy costume ideas, too. I present the Láir Bhán (similar to the Mari Lywd, for any readers of The Dark is Rising series):

In parts of southern Ireland during the 19th century, the guisers included a hobby horse known as the Láir Bhán (white mare). A man covered in a white sheet and carrying a decorated horse skull (representing the Láir Bhán) would lead a group of youths, blowing on cow horns, from farm to farm. At each they recited verses, some of which “savoured strongly of paganism”, and the farmer was expected to donate food. If the farmer donated food he could expect good fortune from the ‘Muck Olla’; not doing so would bring misfortune.

(Image from here)

I am out of the dating scene and not in my twenties, but I enjoyed this essay nonetheless: Against Chill. As the subhead explains it, “In recent years, ‘chill’ has become one of the most desirable qualities in a romantic prospect. But it is a garbage virtue that will destroy the species.”

My mom took us all out to California and the Channel Islands before she starts a little more chemo, and it was a wonderful trip. I kept thinking of M.F.K. Fisher:

There we were, solidly one for these moments at least…not laughing perhaps as the families do in the pictures and the stories, but with our eyes loving and deep, one to another. It was good, worth the planning. It made the other…more endurable, more a part of being that undeniable rock, the Family.