Welcome to August, on The Slowdown, Hot Air Balloons

Juvenile goldfinch with sunflowers

Welcome to August: On the Slowdown and Hot Air Balloons

As my insomnia continues and my nervous system seems to be on the fritz, it seems my site has had problems too! If you missed last week’s post, that’s probably because the site was down. Hope it stays up this time (WordPress really needs some tweaking).

A little glimpse of my back garden with a juvenile goldfinch moments before it landed on my sunflowers (which I’m so proud of—both the snapdragons and sunflowers were unusual colors grown from seed from local farms!) August is great for gardens—lots of sunshine—but the heat and haze have taken a toll on my body, already run down from a couple of weeks of poor sleep. On the plus side, have watched so much Olympics coverage. LOL.

On the poetry side, I was briefly interviewed on the Slowdown this week as they chose my poetry pick, Kelli Russell Agodon’s “Hunger,” for their audience choice show. Here’s the link—you can hear me say a couple of things about the poem before Major Jackson reads the poem (what a great voice for radio, am I right?) 1175: Hunger by Kelli Russell Agodon | The Slowdown (slowdownshow.org)

Another thing our area has during August is amazing views around our home—this week, we followed a hot air balloon sinking from our house to the lavender farm, and we caught a particularly lucky shot of the balloon along with Mt Rainier at sunset, the lavender garden, and a V of geese! Woodinville just has some above average chances to catch beautiful things. So even if I’m not at my peak right now (and rarely am in August), the world is still beautiful. Just got to get through a couple of weeks of heat waves and smoke and make it to September!

A Week of Insomnia, Visiting with My Brother and Lavender Festival, and the Olympics

Me in wildflowers

A Week of Insomnia, Visiting with my Brother and a Local Lavender Festival

I’m a bit foggy from lack of sleep (I haven’t been able to sleep at all at night for the last week—or more?) but wanted to report in. This weekend our local lavender farm had its second weekend of its inaugural Lavender Festival, which featured a ton of vendors from ice cream and coffee to art and plants. We went both days this weekend and took my little brother and sister-in-law on Sunday. (It seems ironic that walking through a field of lavender at night didn’t help my insomnia!) But the light was so pretty that most of the shots Glenn took of me don’t even look like I haven’t slept much. (Maybe there’s a potential author photo in here?) Everyone should do their author photo shoots in a field of flowers in late evening light!

Glenn, little brother Mike, sister-in-law Loree, and me at sunset

Family Visits and the Olympics

It had been a while since we’d gotten to visit with my little brother and sister-in-law, so we were happy to have dinner and walk around the festival with them. Besides the amazing field of flowers, the farm’s employees are terrific, friendly folks—a pleasure to be around. If you get a chance and you live in easy distance of Woodinville, you should definitely check it out.

With all my insomnia, I got to watch (live) all the Olympic opening ceremonies, plus some swimming and gymnastics. I thought the ceremonies were strange, French, and beautiful, and the sports part has been exciting too. Of course, I can’t help but worry every time a gymnast takes a fall or hurts their ankle—my empathy (and remembrance of my own sports injuries in high school) kicks in.

My own garden is in bloom, and many baby birds are cheeping around our feeders. We’re supposed to get some much-needed rain tomorrow, and hopefully that will help the surrounding air quality (we’re sort of surrounded by wildfires) and people suffering from fires. Remember to keep your ears open for the podcast The Slowdown, especially on August 2nd. Wishing you a happy (and for me sleep-full) summer week. I’ll be here, thinking about fall…

My Poem “On Being Told You’re Dying” is Up on Poetry Daily Today!

I couldn’t be happier to say that Poetry Daily has my poem “On Being Told You’re Dying, but Not Quite Believing It” from Flare, Corona up today! I am so thankful as this is the first time ever one of my poems has been run there.

Here is a link and a sneak peek:

On Being Told You’re Dying, but Not Quite Believing It – Poetry Daily (poems.com)

Poem from Flare, Corona on Poetry Daily this Thursday, Full Moons and Sunsets, Lavender Festivals and Heat Waves

Me in lavender field, during their first festival, evening

EEK! A Poem from Flare, Corona on Poetry Daily this Thursday the 25th! Aah!

Yes, the day has been full of news, but I couldn’t help being super excited—after writing six books of poetry over almost 20 years—one of my poems is finally going to appear on Poetry Daily, this Thursday the 25th! I will of course put up a link here when it is up. I am so thankful for this little break and hope it leads to more people discovering Flare, Corona and reading it!

Here is the link live on the site today: On Being Told You’re Dying, but Not Quite Believing It – Poetry Daily (poems.com)

I also recommend listening to the Slowdown podcast this week and you might hear one of Kelli Russell Agodon’s poems there.

We had a crazy heat wave this week which made my MS symptoms worse, which meant a week of me out of commission. (Wake up! Your legs won’t work! Also, you can’t sleep but you’re so tired all the time! Also, dizzy and nauseous!) But I got one night cool enough to get to the lavender garden at sunset, enjoyed some daisies, and got to see this hot air balloon from my bedroom window one morning.

Full Moons and Sunsets, plus a New Democratic Candidate

A lot of stuff in the news today, but also an amazing sky. A very orange sun at sunset, and a very orange full Buck moon. Can’t tell whether it’s the late July bend of light or air pollution from fires, but it was really beautiful.

Politics has been moving at a head-spinning rate, but I was a supporter of Kamala Harris when she first ran for President, so I’m definitely a supporter now. I hope we can get our first woman President. I worry about America’s sexism and racism, I do, but I’m hoping that Americans do the right thing this time. In the meantime, I’m trying to fight off politics-laden anxiety attacks. Watching the moon rise can help.

30th Anniversaries, Birthday Celebrations, Small Beauties, Losses, and American Troubles

30th Anniversaries, Birthday Celebrations, Small Beauties

This was a big week for us

my husband Glenn’s 53rd birthday, and our 30th wedding anniversary, which I found out was the Pearl anniversary. It was super-hot for our holidays, so we mostly hid indoors and ate homemade cherry frozen yogurt, but we went to the Willows Lodge for our anniversary (blessedly well-air-conditioned) and had cocktails and salads (too hot for anything but that and ice cream!) We walked in the small garden only after it got dark, checking out the blooms and visiting their cute pair of pot-bellied pigs.

Glenn’s birthday, lavender field

For Glenn’s birthday, he wanted to go out for cheeseburgers, so we went to a gluten-safe outdoor place in Kirkland and then went to the lavender farm to see how the lavender was growing and the wildflowers were faring. It was still hot at 8 PM (over 80!) but we still managed to have fun, and I marveled at the Instagrammers bending into uncomfortable poses (I still haven’t mastered that Instagram habit of posing in a totally unnatural and uncomfortable way that seems most fetching?)  We were very thankful for the small beauties all around us – sweet potato fries (gluten free!) at the cheeseburger place, lavender honey ice cream on a hot day, flowers that show up unexpectedly in your garden (this year, giant hot-pink lilies, though our dahlias were eaten by slugs.) We were also thankful not to have on the news most of the time this week, because of our celebrations.

Losses and American Troubles

Red sunflower in our garden

We lost so many people in a week Shelley Duval, Dr. Ruth, Richard Simmons, and (exactly Glenn’s age) Shannen Doherty. Then the shooting at a Trump rally. I am old enough to remember the attempt on Ronald Reagen’s life—I was eight at the time—and know the Brady Bill that was passed eventually because of it. Perhaps something like that will happen again—a fire captain lost his life, after all, and people will recognize the need for more gun safety. We can hope, anyway.

Before the shooting incident, there were a lot of calls from Democrats for Biden to retire or stop running and step down. Some of the comments rubbed me the wrong way, not just the agism, but the ablism inherent in the criticisms. (I legitimately do have a neurological condition, and it doesn’t make me stupid or incompetent. And I have to take a cognitive test—two hours’ worth—every year because of my MS.)  I like Kamala Harris quite a bit as a candidate, but I still didn’t like the comments people were making or the tone they were taking.

Hummingbird and verbena

I don’t usually do much political blogging here—I try to stick to the writing life and living with disability and chronic illness, as well as pictures of my (mostly Pacific Northwest) surroundings. I can understand how people feel confusion, anger, frustration, and disenfranchisement with America and its systems right now. I try not to give into despair even in seemingly endless lists of end-times events.

Perhaps focusing on small beauties in the best thing to do. Not to squeeze our eyes and ears shut, but to open them wider – to the wider world around us, not just the news that social media and television scream at us in increasingly alarming tones. To the person who lives across from us, to the birds and flowers, to the cherries at the farm stand or the friend who needs a visit who’s been in the hospital, or the relative across the country who’s been fighting with cancer.  Because we are not powerless, though at times we can feel that way. We can do small kindnesses, donate to charities we believe in, treat each other with understanding. Hug our cats and our loved ones. Tomorrow is not guaranteed to any of us, but in the waiting, we get to decide what we focus on, what we spend our energy on, what we place into timelines or gardens.