Thoughts on being a Mom and everything else
It’s been a busy week and my brain is working through a plethora of stuff, so this is a short post. I was super excited to notice flowers on the strawberry plants this week!
Or as I prefer to refer to them… future strawberries.
Great, now I’m hungry. And we don’t have any strawberries in the house. I suppose that’s OK, I know storebought won’t taste as good as homegrown ones.
Two households, both alike in dignity, In fair Verona Aurora, where we lay our scene….
More alike than different, these plants are currently segregated: whites on one side, purple on the other. I know, nothing looks white or purple right now… that doesn’t happen until much later in the season, when the fruit ripens. They won’t even go into the ground for another month, at which point we’ll have to decide whether we really need sixteen plants worth of eggplants, or if I should hand some off to friends.
Oddly, I hadn’t intended to start plants indoors this year. I was taking a cavalier attitude of only using last year’s leftover seeds and free seeds from the library. (Yes, our public library has a seed library!) That worked until I found out about a free seed event near me – the selection was lovely – and I was halfway home before I remembered that eggplants require starting indoors for our climate.
If you’re wondering why there’s loose dirt in the box, that’s because a cat sat in it and knocked some of the starter pots over.
Growing up, most girls will learn about menstruation either from their parents (usually their mother) or their school system. That presentation can be at varying levels of enthusiasm based on cultural significance, among other things, such as the outdated “you’re a woman now!” concept. Bleh.
But nobody in my age group seems to have gotten the perimenopause talk. Part of that may be because of social norms that discouraged talking about menstruation, even more so for older women, and some because our mothers may not have reached that stage at the point when they were sharing the menstruation talk. All of this came to mind when I saw this BBC article about menopause today… older women are quitting their jobs because the system isn’t set up to support the changes we’re going through. The lady featured in this article said “She suffered with night sweats, heart palpitations and migraines that left her feeling weak and lethargic.” She quit because her management didn’t provide the necessary support to deal with those changes.
Like other people I know, perimenopause brought irregular periods – sometimes more frequent, sometimes less, usually heavier that before – which makes preparing for them difficult. When I still worked in an office, I gave up on planning and always carried supplies with me. Hot flashes led to clearing out any turtlenecks in my closet; I was too warm wearing them and the higher neckline made my throat feel constrained. There was a period when my breathe would catch at random intervals; while I received a prescription to deal with it, the doctor didn’t actually mention that it was common during perimenopause.
As to night sweats, well, it’s hard to tell whether that’s hormonal when multiple cats are sleeping on the bed. It’s probably a mix.
“Life before death, strength before weakness, journey before destination.”
These are lessons learned in Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archives. Today, I want to focus on the journey part. I recently had the opportunity to rediscover everything stored in my closet, as the sagging support for the clothes bar gave out, dumping my clothes onto the floor early on April Fool’s morning. As I pulled everything out, I found my collection of karate belts, representing my first ten years studying martial arts.
I realize it’s hard to tell in this photo that about half the belts are split colors – there aren’t two orange belts side-by-side; there’s a yellow & orange belt between the yellow and the orange belts. That’s easier to notice on the red and blue belt, since the shade of blue is different from the solid blue next to it.
In a rare case of social media being helpful, I am frequently reminded of my martial arts journey on my Facebook account. Just opening the application, I’m likely to see a post by one of many friends I’ve made at various karate events, and Facebook’s reminders of photos shared on any particular day in the past frequently showcase a past test, tournament, or other time on the mat. Even the photo above reminders me of karate friendships; the snow leopard blanket (essential for protecting my sleeping feet from a ferocious toe-biting cat) was a gift from one of those friends.
Karate has never been about the destination for me; that suggests that at some point it will finish. Instead, it’s an ongoing journey filled with friendships that last a lifetime.