Setting Intentions

This beautiful photo is from the Mario Cuomo Bridge website. I can't find the photographer's name, but wish I could. What a keen eye. 

When I turned 60 in January 2021, as another pandemic year unfolded, the Tappan Zee/Mario Cuomo Bridge walking path was open. Even in the chills of winter, I wanted to walk it, but also wanted someone in my family to join, and nobody was convinced. So while I was in Connecticut in September, about 35 minutes drive from the Westchester start of the bridge, I set a Sunday to walk it. Dan drove and met me. It was all I hoped it would be, that Hudson River view, the nature, the wide expanse, the big feeling. The connecting with Dan. The guide says it takes 80 minutes each way to walk (3.6 mile span, then back again), so we did maybe 2/3 of the length and turned around. I told myself I would do it weekly. 

I think I'm going today, and hope Dan joins after trimming the hedges and also that my friend Anne comes. Otherwise, I'm good on my own, starting on the Nyack side this time.

Intentions for this week:

• Every weekday, I get up about 7:30 a.m. I would like to shower first before doing Wordle, Spelling Bee, reading some news articles and seeing Punch out the door to the school van. Problem is, I like getting a cup of coffee with cream right away, and lingering over it. So do I do that briefly and then go back up to shower? I get sucked into the comfort of it all, the swirl of the internet and social media sometimes, too. (I would like to know what you do, friend.)
• Apply makeup (not much, but enough to look alive and bring my eyes out), earrings, necklace, skirt and shoes. Put socks and sneakers by the door so I'm ready to walk later.
• Get to my desk and get busy on writing assignments, don't work from the living room furniture.
• Take a walk every day. I have been pretty good about this, but not at a set time, and that seems risky.
• Make dinner. But our dishwasher is not working (for weeks), so we have to hand-wash every last tumbler, skillet and spoon. Even pink grapefruit dish soap only goes so far to lighten the task. But it does contain essential oils.
• Go to restorative yoga one night a week.
• Keep up with the 2 support groups I attend. That can be a lot, but also a relief.

Let me stop there for now. That list is plenty ambitious. xo Thanks.

See Jane Walk

 I took this photo last spring--a thoughtfully crafted home in our boxwood shrub. 

The babies did rise up and fly away.

Happy to report a 20-minute walk at 7 p.m. This may sound like a kindergartner's recap, but here is what I saw:

1. A robin redbreast (at least I think so). My birder (Figgy) is in her own apartment, not here to verify.
2. A cracked light blue robin's eggshell. It was in the green grass, a positive sign that a proud, can-do baby emerged, leapt to its feet and took flight. I carried it home carefully, in my palm. "Oh, no," said Punch when I showed her. I told her it meant the baby flew away. "Oh, good," she said. We connected on nature. Common ground.
3. Two adult bunnies scavenging in gardens.
4. A mama deer and two offspring. She was very protective. Stopped in her tracks and stared me down to be sure I wouldn't advance or make trouble. Good maternal instincts.
5. Birds alighting in a shrub to build a nest.

Good night.

Our Town

I love perusing grocery stores. Chicken potpie photo from Griggstown Farm website. Actual potpie in my freezer.

Today I pushed through and walked into town at 4:45 p.m. It took about 25 minutes. I realized it's not just the can-do journey I miss, or the lacing up the sneakers, wrapping my mother's aquamarine mohair scarf around my neck and heading to a destination with a purpose (today was grocery shopping). 

It's also the familiarity of passing all those houses along Valley Road, the ones I have passed for 30 years. Lydia's. Mary's. Maiko's. The house where the woman worked hard planting flowers, like tiger lilies, in the heat and then her family moved. The ranch that took so long to sell. The idyllic white farmhouse with a porch and front garden. The house with the iron entrance gate, and the one with the hydrangea tree (not bush) that is so pretty in bloom. The small house that always has a shiny, colorful sports car in the driveway, turquoise or yellow. I figure the homeowner must be a car salesman, who can rotate cars from the inventory. I figure him to be a bachelor, though I've never seen him.

And it's a jolt of energy to be downtown in a cosmopolitan place that is not my living room, home office or immediate neighborhood. The commuter train nosing out of the Bellevue Avenue station. The people walking from the platform to their homes. The woman in a cute knit hat with fluffy pompom. The railway connection to my beloved New York City. And yet, yet, commuter time in our town is so much lighter since the pandemic, with hybrid/work-at-home schedules. I no longer see a rush or crush. It's different, and quiet.

I had two very heavy bags of groceries, so I couldn't walk back from Kings in the dark. Figgy picked me up and drove me home. But I laid in lots of nourishing family groceries, including fresh blueberries, mangos, organic milk, a big bag of Bell & Evans frozen chicken patties, Ezekiel cereal, Dave's Killer Bread, a large Griggstown Farm (Princeton, NJ) frozen chicken potpie to stash in the freezer, organic apples, fresh mushrooms, oatmeal, fresh salmon from Norway, vegan coffee creamer, a papaya and more. Groceries cost a lot, even with the many digital coupons I used. I better step away from Kings. It's just that I can walk there, and that's good. And healthy groceries are an investment in our collective well-being.

Good night.

Up in Dark for Quick Walk

Coffee image cribbed from Newsweek.com coffee (+ cancer) story, which I have not read. (Note to Celia and Dan: Another news story about what coffee can and can't do.)

Here is the link I like:

https://medium.com/the-innovation/what-successful-employees-do-every-morning-7c3d64b19abd

I'm not sure I can make a habit of waiting 30 min after wakeup for morning coffee, or that I can (ever) limit it to one cup per day*, but I hope to take a quick walk every morning before Punchy's schoolday starts at 7:50 a.m.

I like the advice in this short article.

Have a good one. 

*In my efforts to skirt sweets, I have embraced coffee. And the foodie in me loves it--searching out craft blends, organic half and half, cute cups etc. Coffee is my friend now, about 2 cups in the morning and one in the afternoon. That's a lot for someone who never liked coffee much (until Starbucks hit NYC in the late 1990s, and lured me in with whipped cream, caramel syrup and that trendy cup, plus dark chocolate dipped graham crackers, which I know from a press tour were originally made by exquisite Lake Champlain Chocolates in Vermont!).