The Universe Jots a Message

Life at my house has gone from 0 to 100 mph in recent weeks with Greg’s return to school and then his team getting to play an actual (although shortened) soccer season. Two months ago, it didn’t look like there would be a return to school this spring, much less a soccer season. I really thought I would have a quiet March where I could complete a few projects before starting to get busy for the summer months.

That’s a different direction from what happened because as we stand here at the end of March, I have no idea where it went. And while there are many good things happening and my feeling overwhelmed is more related to getting back to a routine that has been missing for a year since Greg was home with me instead of at school, there is a part of me that feels like I’m on a road and I have no idea what’s next.

I know what I want to be next– I want to fly Chelle Summer forward in double time after missing a year of making things happen. And I know that will happen. But what’s unknown right now is how long it will take to catch up and move past where I left off on that board game. That’s the hardest part now– I don’t quite sure know when events will not just return, but when people will start to feel comfortable spending money on themselves.

I didn’t think much of the dime I saw in a checkout at a store yesterday, choosing not to pick it up because, well, I just didn’t feel connected to it. I didn’t feel the need that I needed it. I saw it, moved on, and went on with my day with two bags of dog rawhides tucked into the crook of my arm.

But in the darkness of the parking lot of the gym pool this morning, my mask somehow stuck at the bottom of my bag and not in the pocket where I usually leave it so I had to stop and find it before I got to the front door of the building, out of the corner of my eye I saw a shiny penny staring up at me.

It had been a long time, but there was the dime and penny combination that I had gotten to know so well. And it was then that I realized the universe had jotted a message to me. All is well, the universe said, stay the course, don’t fret– although the universe knows I will– you will get there.

The Vaccination

I have had mixed emotions about sharing the fact that I was vaccinated a week ago.

A year ago, when this all started, I thought I would definitely share when I got vaccinated for one major reason- my mom had polio.

All I could think as the pandemic raged on was what a challenge life was for her because she had polio when she was six, in the early 1940s when there was no vaccine. She walked with a limp the rest of her life and I know it affected my life in many ways via the emotional challenges she faced with that limp. I remember once watching home movies and I couldn’t understand why she didn’t want to watch. I must have egged her on because she finally said, “Because I don’t like the way I walk.”

Getting vaccinated was not a no brainer for me though. As someone who experiences chemical intolerances I knew that chances were good I would face some sort of rash (I did). However, I also knew there were things I want to do and without a vaccination, I would not be able to pursue them.

However, the flip side was watching many people get vaccinated and, while wanting to share their excitement and happiness, a sense of freedom that comes with it, I wondered if they were aware of the frustration of those who really wanted the vaccine, but couldn’t get it. I felt if I shared it, I would be gloating.

When I finally let go of the questioning of when my opportunity would come, it came back to me, as if I had thrown the boomerang to the universe and it came back to me. I have been very grateful, shaking my head that once again I was taught a lesson that when you let go, things come back. I am very grateful for the opportunity and that I received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, not subjecting me to more than one shot or opportunity of an itchy mess all over my body.

And there was one more thing. On Wednesday, the 24th, my mom will be gone seven years. I share this for her, for the life and hope she never had because of what polio did to her. None of us know what might happen, but if we’re given an opportunity to help ourselves, we should never turn it down.

A Year Passes

Has it really been a year since the pandemic started? Has it really been a year since Hattie died?

I don’t feel this need to acknowledge that a year has passed so much as I can’t believe a year has passed.

Then I think about my first thoughts when the pandemic started and everything shut down. It was most important to me that I didn’t look back on it, also believing it would only last weeks if not a few months, feeling like I had wasted my time. I saw some people so angry they were paralyzed by it while others seemed to exhausted from the busy-ness of their lives and routines (mostly people with children), that when they ere given a chance to sit down, they realized they were too tired do to anything.

For me, I felt like it was an opportunity where, because I couldn’t go anywhere or have dinner parties, that I could work work work. I could sew and write and create. I also thought there were some house projects that should have been completed, just maintenance stuff like touch-up painting.

So what have done in the past year? Well, I had hoped to have a manuscript completed and I did write, I wrote a lot, this past year, but, as Greg said, it wasn’t intensive writing. It was much more of a challenge to write with Greg around the corner teaching excitedly online (after all, you can’t be a quiet person and teach a foreign language– you need some pizzaz and be a little, well, nutty). It made it harder for me to focus when I was used to the quiet of the house. So I did write, I just didn’t complete one project and instead worked on several. It’s not really something I’m proud of, but if one thing doesn’t come together, I work on what is coming together so at least there are multiple baskets of eggs and things are in process.

The sewing, however, that’s where it was at. While I always have more things I want to do, the Chelle Summer closet is overflowing with items waiting to be sold and be enjoyed by someone. Many days, it was the thing I could do, I could create, I could sew. When I was upset with the world, I went and made something which helped me feel like I hadn’t wasted my day getting caught up in the anger of others.

The house painting didn’t happen, but I suppose you can’t have everything. The reality is that I can at least walk away from the past year knowing that I was as productive as possible and that, hopefully, as things open up, the items I made will find new homes in the coming future days. And I know that my sewing skills made a huge leap forward, too. And, while this wasn’t the year I wanted to have, it was a year that I can honestly say things did move forward. It’s just that sometimes they don’t move forward in the way we want or expect them too.

The Ember of Hope

As I approach the 28th anniversary of my sister Denise's suicide later this month, I debated what message I would want to convey. I didn't know right up until Greg hit play on the video recording, but here it is, very reflective of where my journey is today.

Lent 2021

We were eating cheese soup the night before Ash Wednesday, the same day this photo was taken, and having a discussion about what we could give up for Lent.

I don’t normally give anything up, instead choosing a journey that usually revolves around writing, the way that I feel draws me closer to God. And what I believe Lent is about. But for some reason, this year I felt the need for a change, a dietary change, one that would ultimately help me in the future because I do know my body is getting older and since I had surgery nearly three years ago, the reset from the anesthesia changed things metabolically.

I have made a lot of changes in our diet– we don’t eat a lot of sugar or bread. Or even meat, but that wasn’t something I ever ate a lot of in the first place. What was it that we could do that would make a difference?

Cheese.

We decided to give up cheese. We chose this because, ironically as we were eating cheese soup, it would involve not work, but creativity. It means we can’t eat at some of our favorite restaurants for another month, but it also means that we can eat more at Saigon City, our favorite Vietnamese place. And Gyros, too.

I heard somewhere on Ash Wednesday, maybe it was the mass I was streaming here, that we should give up something that will be work, that will draw us closer to God.

As I packed up all the cheese from the refrigerator to put it in the freezer, I was joking to myself how we were making this desert journey without the cheese. But it didn’t seem like something insurmountable. Instead, I thought about how it would be creative. I’ve had to think about how to prepare food differently– cream soup instead of cheese soup, what other foods do we like that don’t involve cheese?

That’s when I remembered that I draw closer to God when I am creative. This is a different way of doing that, a way I hadn’t thought about before. A journey that I’m enjoying instead of dreading. The change is a good one. I’ll be happy to eat pizza and huevos rancheros again, however, I’ll also have learned something about myself in the process as I spend 40 days journeying in the desert thinking about how to do something differently.

Mom's Bernina and My Creative Space

On video today- sharing some of my creative space and the sewing machine I use, the one that belonged to my mom.

The Path Forward

In the last ten days, five of my friends have lost a parent, two of them were moms that I had known a long time because the friends have been in my life since I moved to Albuquerque in 1994. And three of those friends have now lost both of their parents, a club that I none of us wants to join, but it’s inevitable that we will. We just hope it will be later than sooner.

While all our journeys are unique because our relationships with family and all the people in our lives are as unique as we are, I know that for some there is peace a parent is out of pain (emotional and/or physical). And for everyone, this is a gaping hole in their lives. For most of us, even if we didn’t have perfect relationships with our parent (really, who does? A parent’s job is not to turn us into a mini version of them, but to help us forge a path for each of us to be the unique person and have the life we are supposed to be– but that usually comes into odds with so much of who they are), typically there is no one in our lives who loved us as much as they did. I don’t know that I fully understood this until after my parents died, particularly my mom.

After the loss of a parent, we are faced with the reality that there will be no new memories nor anyone to share the past with. I often want to ask questions, wondering about things I didn’t think about until it was too late. We are, for good and bad, who we are because of them.

There has been much loss and pain during this pandemic. I know that mine started with Hattie’s death just a week before the first shutdown. It’s been a continued spiral of realizing that there is much I can’t hang onto as the world spins forward. If I choose not to spin with it, I will end up stuck and that will be more painful that letting go and letting it take me with it.

As I was swimming early Friday morning, thinking of another set of friends where the husband just found out he has terminal cancer and some other changes in not just my life, but in all our lives, I realized that somehow I will have to find a way forward. I will have to let go of so much. Maxine was the mom I used to see my at pool parties (mom of my friend Jim whom I have known forever and whom introduced Greg and I), usually finding her in the kitchen near the end doing the dishes and shooing me back outside to my guests. I am sad because I didn’t get to see her all last summer since we couldn’t gather. I feel like I was denied something, the very something I worried about when the pandemic started– the deaths of people in my life whom I wouldn’t get to spend time with before they died (I’ll also add that none of these deaths was virus related).

But I have no choice if I want to forge forward in my life, the very thing I write and speak about here. There is so much luggage that we’re still letting go, leaving a baggage claim or some getting lost because it’s not supposed to go on the next leg of the trip with us.

It’s okay to mourn what we’ve lost. However, somewhere in there we still need to go forward, to remember the good that we had, to be grateful for it, and then let it go because its path forward isn’t the same as ours.

The February Vision

The videos are back! A message relating to all the pink– and it's not just about Valentine's Day.

Movement

I have a whacky workout schedule and I often hesitate to tell people how much I do daily because I understand how whacky it looks from the outside. But there’s more to it than the need to add steps and workouts to my Garmin watch.

There are three segments to the running part of my workout – I run Lilly, then I run Ash, and then I go for my run (which has gotten slower of the years and isn’t helped by the very cold mornings we’ve been experiencing this fall and winter season). But I trudge through my nearly six miles each day, walking some on weekends.

Then, five days a week, I quickly change after I get home and head to the gym pool with Greg where I swim for 45 minutes.

By the time we get home, I'm done and I can sit down to write and sew and do other activities that require being still. The best part is that I have a feeling of satisfaction that I’m not getting from a lot of other areas of my life because of the pandemic. That’s why I do this whacky thing five days a week.

Movement is partly what has saved me in the nearly year since the pandemic started. While I am not able to do some things in my life that are important to me, especially in my personal life (having dinner parties) and in my professional (taking Chelle Summer to event), at least when I run and swim I feel like I’m moving forward in some way.

The pandemic has forced all of us to rethink not just what’s important to us, but how we maneuver through life when we aren’t able to do the things that help us be hopeful and joyful. And sustain us in the routine of life. For me, one of those aspects has been a several-hour workout, but one then allows me to relax (in my head, at least!), knowing that I’ve completed that part of my day and I can now move into the next part.

Creative Freedom

I am filled with inspiration. There is more that I want to do than there is time for. And yet there is one part of me that lacks, like there is a disconnect between my head and what I actually produce– drawing.

I grew up drawing all the time. Mom made sure that Denise and I always had plenty of paper- the notepads my medical doctor grandfather received from drug companies and later piles of dot matrix computer paper Karen brought home from college– and markers and crayons. It seemed like almost yearly we received new markers for Christmas and after school ended in June, our leftover crayons ended up in one big bag, a bag I believe Karen still has.

In school, even as I grew older, I doodled a lot. Probably in suicide prevention meetings and my doctoral classes, too, but I don’t have the notes to prove that.

And yet now I find that even though I have good intentions about drawing, I easily push it aside for other things I feel I need to do. The disconnect seems to have more to do with what I allow myself to do in a day, that freedom not just to express myself, but to spend the time doing something that always made me deliriously happy.

One of my goals for this year to get over that hump especially since reading something that graphic artist Milton Glaser (who died a few months ago) said about how we have gotten away from our imaginations and we allow technology to be our creative outlet. I don’t want to color in someone else’s lines either, I want to color in within the ones I have drawn (if I even have lines on my page!).

Apparently, Glaser was known for sketching various aspects of life– landscapes, meals. It’s also a diary of sorts and one I hope that I can not just find the time to do this year, but make it a new way of documenting life and what inspires me.

Reconstructing Our Lives

Happy New Year!

While I was streaming mass from the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles (my church here in Albuquerque remains closed because of the pandemic) yesterday, Fr. Gallardo was talking about how we are now “reconstructing our lives” as we continue through the pandemic, but there is light at the end of the tunnel with the vaccines.

It’s been almost ten months since our lives were upended and from the beginning I saw that we all had an opportunity to make things better for ourselves. I’m not saying this was easy– it has been a challenging year and it’s been challenging in a different way for each of us because our lives are unique to who we are and how we live– but no challenge to become better is ever easy or a cakewalk. In fact, if we don’t walk through challenges or face them head on, we don’t grow.

Now that we’re at ten months and we see light coming at some point, although we don’t know exactly when, I it’s a good time to reflect both in the rearview mirror and what’s ahead of us. I see it that we have several months before things start to open up again so it’s a good time to finish up any projects or things we’d like to do or change. It’s a good time to make changes at home (mine include painting a bathroom, touching up paint around the house, recovering a chair and ottoman) before we get busy socially and find ourselves bouncing around outside our homes again.

It’s also a chance to make changes for ourselves. This past year we definitely took a step up at eating better at our house. We already ate fairly well, but we’re continuing to find more ways (er, I am continuing to find more ways) to include vegetables and beans in our meals. Since my surgery nearly two years ago, my body hasn’t been the same and it’s much happier if I eat less meat and eat more produce. I’m also swimming more than I was a year ago, knowing that running and swimming– movement– will help me get through the rest of this frustration and irritation.

Finally, what changes do we want in our lives to be permanent? For me, It’s about not just writing each day, but writing better and finally finishing the manuscripts I start. It’s about drawing more (to be covered in another blog soon), and upping my sewing production. While it has probably looked like I’ve accomplished more than most people this past year as I continued to sew, the inspiration is still coming quickly and I want to grab it while I can. But it means the list doesn’t get shorter because for each thing crossed off, there is something always getting added.

Turning the calendar to a new year is always a good time to make changes, but even more so this year as we look toward how we want our lives to be when we are finally free from the virus. Life won’t be exactly the same, it can’t be because we’ve changed in this experience, but it can still be great again. It’s up to us to find those opportunities and run with them.

December and Suicide

In the midst of the traditional December hubbub, I usually spend part of the month educating people on the myth that suicides go up in December. While people believe that suicides go up because of the holidays, it’s not true and there’s data to prove it. It is true that people are often more depressed, but the reality is that, whether we like it or not, in “normal” times, we’re forced to be in close proximity to people. This can be through family holiday events or just in parties and other gatherings we might be attending. Or even the shopping mall.

However, this isn’t a normal year.

While there is a glimmer of hope as the first vaccines have been given around the country, and there is light at the end of the tunnel (if you watched my video last week, you know that the light isn’t always there, but we’re getting glimpses of it), what we don’t know yet is how that will affect suicides this month.

There isn’t data yet to show that suicides are up although anecdotally it’s easy to say they are. But looking at the current situation, it’s also easy to see how more people might be suicidal – and act on it– this month as they face more isolation. For the people who might have been protected by spending time with loved ones (not that they wanted to, but that they had to per mom’s orders!), suddenly find themselves alone.

With their thoughts and with no one to keep them from acting on those thoughts.

Many people feel like this photo– walking alone with no one in sight. No one to distract them from the thoughts that are growing in their heads.

It’s going to be some months before we have enough people vaccinated that life can become to resume openly. In the meantime, especially this holiday season that is devoid of our traditional gatherings as we all try to stay out of hospitals and keep well, check on the people you about.

A little phone call can go a long way to keeping someone here with us until we can gather again.

December Details

Pandemic inspiration, a funky seventies dress, a handbag full of daisies and, oh, those earrings. All in this week's video.

Prickly Pear Hard Candy

Some of the most unique candy ever. And best tasting, too. All because of a cactus I planted in the front yard. Now a holiday tradition at my house.

Ingredients

3 3/4 cups white sugar

1 1/2 cups light corn syrup

1 cup prickly pear puree and 2 tablespoons prickly pear puree (these are used separately)

Grease a raised edge cookie sheet.

In a medium saucepan, stir together the white sugar, corn syrup, and 1 cup of the prickly pear puree. Cook, stirring, over medium heat until the sugar dissolves. Then bring it to a boil.

Without stirring, heat the liquid until 300 degrees using a candy thermometer for measurement. This part can be long and disconcerting because you do not stir it and it will appear the temperature will get “stuck” in several places– around 230 degrees and 270 degrees. Once it passes 270 though, it will go quickly so keep an eye on it from there on out. The entire boiling process takes about 25 minutes.

Remove from heat and stir in the two tablespoons of puree. As the mix will have discolored somewhat in the boiling process, this will help bring back that rich hue that makes prickly pear so unique.

Pour the mix onto the greased cookies seek and let it cool. I usually let it sit overnight to be assured that it is indeed hard and not still pliable.

Store in an airtight container.

December 1 Inspiration

Finding peace and inspiration during the holidays this year...and Florence's vintage dress. All in this week's video. December has arrived.

Thanksgiving gratefulness

And a few other things.

Lots O' Green

I'm wearing a vintage green dress and I have two fun bags that I made for today's video. And a little breeze to send the floats across the pool behind me.

Grief in Routine Loss...Again

Let me preface this blog with, there is much I am grateful for right now. The list is much longer than what is frustrating me. However, every few weeks my irritation bubbles up from a variety of things that have been affected by the pandemic. I also know that when I might be experiencing some feelings, others are out there might be, too, and so I believe it’s important for me to write about the variety of feelings and emotions I travel through.

When I took Lilly out to run at 4:15 this morning, the darkness felt a little more eerie than usual. We started a two-week shutdown today and one of the major pieces that’s affecting my life is that the gym is closed. Some people will say, “But you run every day! You can’t miss the pool!”

But what most people don’t know is how important swimming is to my mental health. My pool is open, however, there is no way we can heat it (or pay to heat it!) to get it warm enough for me to swim in right now. Just Friday morning when I got in the pool for my swim at the gym, we had an amazing sunrise. I actually thought about getting out to take a photo of the pink and orange colors that were bouncing off the surface of the water, but I thought, No, I’ll get it another day.

I didn’t know that by that afternoon, I’d only get to swim the weekend– when I usually don’t swim– and not until December 1 (hopefully it’s only two weeks!). Today I feel like a piece of my routine is missing.

For nearly two months, Greg and I have been going five days a week (four for him– he teaches live on Mondays so I go without him) to swim and we both were starting to feel the results of our efforts. But I also just need that time of letting my mind wander as I go back and forth. Some days I don’t want to get out of the pool because I feel so much peace there. I told someone recently that it’s like the outside world can’t hurt me when I’m in the pool.

Take it away though and I feel sad because part of my routine has been yanked away from me. Even though it’s hopefully only for a short time, I feel like something has been ripped away and it has left me sad, angry and depressed.

We all know I have plenty to do- the list is long, the piles are high. I will be busy for two weeks. But that doesn’t mean that change has been forced upon me in a way I don’t like. I’ll have to work extra hard this week to be productive to distract my mind from lamenting what I miss.

Life is a continued road of adaption and in the past nine months we’ve had more than we wanted. Yet we have to continue to figure it out because each adaption makes us stronger and gives more purpose and meaning to our lives.

Retro Orange

Two orange Take Everywhere Bags made from vintage curtains and one fun vintage dress.

Finding Peace

This photo says so much to me.

It’s about continuing to keep walking, to keep looking for what I want, what I believe I need, where I want to be.

Last week was a difficult week. While I know for many people, it was about the election, it wasn’t that for me. Two people I know here in New Mexico died from the coronavirus last week. And I two women I know who were recently diagnosed with breast cancer. I felt covered with sadness.

However, I was feeling fairly productive because I had so little on my calendar and I wanted to make sure I made the most of that time. I kept one eye out on the news for election results, but I didn’t feel caught up in it.

But somewhere toward the end of the week I began to feel a peace inside myself.

I have found that when I let myself get back to God, to prayer, to reminding myself that God is walking with me, I feel better. I pray daily, that’s not an issue with me. But it’s easy to move on with my day and start to fight with everything– mostly the thoughts in my head that take me down roads I don’t need to see because they are negative and unproductive.

Yesterday the Archbishop of Los Angeles Jose Gomez reminded us in his homily that prayer can “settle the mind.”

It’s been easy to get caught up in what’s going on outside of us, in the world, in places we can’t control. But what we can control is what happens in our minds. I’ve been letting myself be outside of myself too much. The journey within brought me peace I haven’t found in some time.