Today is the winter solstice. Usually folks say it’s the shortest day of the year which feels sad. But last week a friend spoke of it being the longest night of the year, and suddenly it felt better.
Nothing is really changed. I did not have a shorter workday and I will not have a longer rest tonight.
But it’s still a much nicer night now.
✸ Happy solstice. ✸
I’m trying something new for me this month, a web community challenge: Gwen Bell’s The Best of 2009 Blog Challenge. Find the best the year has offered me, and review, remember, contemplate, reflect, and celebrate it. There’s a question/topic each day.
December 20 New person. … Who is your unsung hero of 2009?
My unsung heroes are the nursing, physical therapy, and cafeteria staff who helped ease my mother’s suffering this summer at Enloe Medical Center in Chico. In the surgical ward where Mom spent her time, doctors make daily rounds and visit the patients briefly, checking on how patients are recovering after surgery and such. The nursing and related staff are the ones who take care of so much of the patients’ needs and these lovely people treated Mom with caring and true concern, tremendous patience, and great gentleness along with great competence and professionalism. Many of these lovely people went to extra lengths to help. Even the student nurses I met were wonderful, each in their own way. I don’t want to write a lot about this; it’s too much to revisit Mom’s ordeal in detail. But I just want to acknowledge all the wonderful staff who tried to make Mom as comfortable as possible, to ease her pain, and also extended much kindness to my brothers, my sister, and me as we spent our time at Mom’s bedside.
Thank you all; you were true heroes in our lives this year.
snow is a wonder, creating a calm and peaceful vista.
but sometimes, i’d rather it pass us by…
disclaimer: never said i’m a writer.
I’m trying something new for me this month, a web community challenge: Gwen Bell’s The Best of 2009 Blog Challenge. Find the best the year has offered me, and review, remember, contemplate, reflect, and celebrate it. There’s a question/topic each day.
December 17 — Word or phrase. A word that encapsulates your year. “2009 was _____.”
Whew, 2009 was a lot of things, a lot them on the downside, too. It was a very harsh year. It was a year of loss, of sadness, of longing, of deterioration. Looking back, I see that some of that isn’t completely true, that it’s just how it feels to me. There were some good things in it. One reason I’m doing this challenge is to seek out the positive and remind myself that the year has not been as wholly bleak as a quick reflection shows.
So I’ve been toying with words and phrases for 2009 all day. One good word is challenging. This year has been that. I ignored some of the challenges, put them off for the coming year. But some could not be ignored and surprisingly I rose to some of the challenges and impressed myself that I had. I’ve often feared that I’m someone who would fall apart under these circumstances. We like to believe we are dependable but I doubted myself. When those challenges came this year, I didn’t fall apart. I endured and even contributed, pushing past some of my failings and frailties.
2009 was also a year of transitions. That’s partly a nice way of speaking of my losses: some of them have significantly changed my life. I’ve felt adrift a lot this fall. I have responsibilities and I plod on because of them, but within me there’s been turmoil and disorientation and always that doubt. I used to trust to the future and now there’s a lot of uncertainty. But to balance that, I’ve also started to explore some areas I’ve always assumed were beyond my reach and to try to find a voice in disciplines I never considered before and to rekindle old interests I let die down long ago. And I’m trying to push myself to push myself more. I’ve grown complacent and defeated and old in recent years and it’s time to get past all that. So 2009 is a year of changing and hopefully a prelude to a stronger year ahead.
I’m trying something new for me this month, a web community challenge: Gwen Bell’s The Best of 2009 Blog Challenge. Find the best the year has offered me, and review, remember, contemplate, reflect, and celebrate it. There’s a question/topic each day.
Today’s topic might have been written for me: December 16 — Tea of the year. I can taste my favorite tea right now. What’s yours?
I’m a tea person, meaning I drink tea, lots and lots of tea. I drink it daily, all day long, mostly blacks, but there are times for greens, whites, and oolongs, too. I steep pots of tea for the office. Others share in, and when I’m out, some of the crew doesn’t even try to steep their own. My twitter bio includes the phrase “crazy cat and tea lady”. When I host gatherings at home, everyone knows that there will be freshly steeped pots of tea ready. I have shelves set up in my living room to hold most (but not all) of my tea paraphernalia:
I’m not an expert about tea but I know more than the average joe.
But thinking of the best tea of the year? Hmm, I almost want to say: All of them! But no, that’s not right. There have definitely been some pots I’d call sub-par. Still, the rest were just dandy. So my best tea is: yunnan and keemun which I’ve loved since college and a lovely sencha I steep on weekends and the old, nearly empty tin of Kashmiri chai that’s full of cardamom and the Earl Grey I made a few days ago that reminded me that sometimes I still like Earl Grey and the vanilla tea I brew for my friend on weekends, plus the Ceylon OPA that I buy in bulk at a local Indian market. Oh, also the Turkish tea I bought at the same market that my friend doesn’t like at all, but I do, more and more. And though they’re, strictly speaking, not real tea, there’s also the lavender I brew late at night sometimes and the barley tea that my favorite Japanese restaurant serves as house tea.
Ummm, tea!
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