a beautiful day in the neighborhood

Rain. Blessed rain. The earth is rejoicing with each drop, taking it deep within itself to nurse the parched plants. We need a few days of this before everything is sated.

Yesterday as we floated around the pool somehow the topic of death and what happens to the body came up. Carm had some scientific mumbo jumbo, while I, more fanciful perhaps, felt that we turn back into the star stuff from which we came. If we have a soul that supersedes us it might join with Nature to become a part of the soul of the earth. We might become one with the force that turns dirt into food and seeds into flowers. What a wonderful way to spend eternity. Maybe I had water in my ear which addled my brain!

I looked back in my blog at the posts from the beginning of this year to see what my aspirations for the year might have been. My main goal was to take lots of training classes with Adia so that she could become a therapy dog… well… we did 1 ½ classes before Covid put an end to things. I’m not going back to school until this is all over so I guess it’s a bust. She was doing well but still needed work on her public access - we can’t practice now with everything so limited, and honestly I have no inclination to go into a store to play around for ½ hour… I don’t have the motivation to practice much in the house with her.

Reading forward (or would that be backward?), on January 27th I mentioned that Carm had gone to Costco for the first of a ‘stock up’ run in case things got iffy with Covid. It was a ½ hearted stock-up so we did need to make another trip when the sh&* really hit the fan. I’ve been thinking ahead to the fall and a possible resurgence so have been slowly refreshing our pantry. It never hurts to be prepared.

Is there a more perfect time to watch a movie than on a rainy or snowy afternoon? Thankfully there was no snow. I’d been wanting to watch ‘A beautiful Day in the Neighborhood’ with Tom Hanks playing Mr. Rogers. I expected a light hearted, feel good movie… well… it was a three-tissue affair! The scenes with Mr. Rogers were like sitting with my psychiatrist, his soft voice leading me to deep hidden areas of my mind. It wasn’t long into the movie when the first tears started - nothing had really happened yet, just the sense that someone was there to help.

It was a great movie!

Headline tonight: 3,355,497 cases with 137,402 deaths in the US. There are a total of 107,346 (107,125 yesterday) cases of Covid-19 in Canada today, with 8,773 (8,759 yesterday) deaths today.

“If you truly get in touch with a piece of carrot, you get in touch with the soil, the rain, the sunshine. You get in touch with Mother Earth and eating in such a way, you feel in touch with true life, your roots, and that is meditation. If we chew every morsel of our food in that way we become grateful and when you are grateful, you are happy.”

~Thich Nhat Hanh