Wendryn Doubt

I signed up for a gift exchange called Crappy Day Presents. You send neat stuff to the person who is assigned to you and you get a package from someone else. It’s an exceptionally neat idea and I’m having a lot of fun with it.

The people who are sending presents, though, don’t necessarily know me, so I’m going to list a bunch of random things about me and things that I like.

1: I like tea. I mostly like herbal teas, since I don’t need much caffeine. I ended up drinking teas when I stopped being able to drink hot chocolate due to my dairy issues.

2: Puns are good.

3: Pretty much anything kitchen or cooking related will make me happy.

4: I have a sweet tooth, but not for things that stick to my teeth. Saltwater taffy makes me very unhappy. Chocolate is good. Caramels are good, too. They don’t stick in quite the same way.

5: I don’t wear makeup or paint my nails, so I’m rather boring in that respect.

6: I have very short hair, so anything hair related will get used on my daughter.

7: Interesting spices are good. A friend of mine gave us an assortment of spices from Africa and we had a lot of fun experimenting!

8: We eat popcorn, air popped, when we don’t feel like making dinner.

9: I read a lot. Murder mysteries, science fiction, nonfiction – if it’s printed, I can’t help reading it.

10: My hobbies over the past several years have included aerobatic flying, dog training, belly dancing, gardening, cooking, and running.

I can’t think of much else right now. I hope that helps whoever is data mining for ideas!

I’ve been running a lot. I will be running a half marathon in less than a month. Training is going well, though I periodically have bad run days. I often write notes about runs and I’ve noticed that if I have a bad enough time that I actually stop instead of just slowing down or walking, it’s very hard to get started again and the rest of the run is a struggle.

This is something that shows up a lot in my life, but every time I’ve noticed it in the past, I’ve forgotten it. I know that mornings are much easier if I make lunches and lay out clothes the night before, but I stopped, got out of the habit, and it has taken me a few years to get back to it. If I completely stop something, even if I intend to start again, I often stop entirely.

I decided to work with Nicole’s goal setting program. I’ve been feeling scattered lately. There are many things I’ve started, stopped, and never gotten back to that I feel bad about every time I see them. I worked through what I want to get done over the next six months. I have lists. One shows daily, weekly, and monthly items which need to be done. It’s in a sleeve so we can write on it in dry-erase marker and change it if needed. It’s much easier to keep track of things when they are all laid out neatly.

When I run, especially on long runs, I don’t mind walking. If I walk, at least I’m still moving. It’s slow, yes, but I don’t lose my forward momentum completely.

Some people can stop and restart without a problem. I am not one of those people. If I stumble, if I’m tired, if I’m just not feeling it, and if I stop completely, my ability to start again is extremely limited. I need to learn how to slow down rather than stop so I can keep going.

You know those runners who stop at crosswalks to wait for a light and keep jogging in place? I have become one of those people.

A friend of mine died yesterday. She’d been very sick for a very long time. I was lucky enough to get to meet her once; I was even luckier to be able to have her as a friend and be her friend for years. She was a strong, fascinating, intelligent, caring person, and I will miss her very much.

I met her first when Xander was fencing. I did an online search for female fencers who blogged. I was learning some about being an armorer and Elizabeth was a very good fencer. We connected there and continued talking via blog posts, comments, and emails. She eventually became quite ill, but she remained herself, a person to be reckoned with.

One of the most amazing things that I will remember her for (the list is pretty long!) is that even when she felt most alone, she was still reaching out to people. She sent postcards to anyone who asked. She wanted to make sure that other people didn’t have to feel alone, and she was dedicated to this. She created The Postcard Project and sent out several thousand postcards. How long has it been since you got a postcard or a letter from someone? Handwritten, sometimes covered in stamps or stickers, made especially for you – these were the postcards Elizabeth sent out, often with the help of her wife, Linda, and a friend.

I started writing letters and postcards to people a while ago because of how happy I felt when I received one of Elizabeth’s postcards. I sent her a lot (though not nearly as many as she sent me, I’m sure) and it has become a habit; I write letters to certain people once a month at least. These are people who are important to me but are also, for whatever reasons, not people I talk to on the phone or email very much. I ramble about our life, what Katja is up to, what our plans are, and anything interesting going on at the moment that I’m writing. They aren’t fascinating or edgy or, probably, even terribly well-written. They are just a way to keep in touch, to let these people I love see a little slice of our life and know that I am thinking about them.

I have thought a lot since Elizabeth died about the connections I make over the internet. She inspired, challenged, encouraged, and, once or twice, even fought me. We stayed friends throughout, even though I know I seriously ticked her off (and vice versa) a few times. We cared about each other. My friendship with her meant more to me than many people I know “in real life”, as some define it. We chose to stay in touch, worked at it, and enjoyed our discussions. I can’t really express what she meant to me, but she was important.

I have some older relatives who don’t understand how someone from the internet could become such a dear friend. “How can it matter? You’ve only met her once!” That’s true, but I know her voice. I know how she writes, what she cares about, and what makes her laugh. I know that she was my friend and very dear to me. The end of last year I failed her, between moving and people getting sick and my surgery, but her wife wrote an email asking what was going on and I got back in touch. That happens with friends in the physical world, too, sometimes. Life gets busy. It doesn’t mean we stop caring.

I met her on the internet and we became friends. I am lucky to have gotten to know this amazing woman. Her wife, too, is quite incredible, though I don’t know her nearly as well.

One of Katja’s middle names is Elizabeth. That name is for two women: my maternal grandmother, who was funny and acerbic and smart, and this Elizabeth, my friend, the author, the person who cared about everyone, fed squirrels in the park, fenced, boxed, and pushed herself farther than anyone thought she could go. Both women meant a lot to me, and Katja will hear stories of both. Elizabeth McClung was big-F Family.

The world is a lesser place because Elizabeth has died.

Several years ago, an acquaintance of mine asked if I’d bought my car used.

“No, I bought it new. Why?”

“Well, there’s a rainbow on the back and I wasn’t sure you knew what it meant.”

I started laughing. I couldn’t help it. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area; I’m not sure I could have ignored the meaning of the rainbow symbol if I tried. There was more that needed to be said, though, once I caught my breath.

“I’m not straight. The rainbow is on my car because I support people who are LGBT, but also because I’m bisexual.”

“You are? But…but…you’re just dating a guy!”

I managed to keep from laughing that time.

“Well, bisexual doesn’t mean that I’m always dating more than one person. It’s a common misconception and it is really irritating. I tend towards monogamy. It’s less complicated. If I’m single, though, it could go either way. I lean a little more towards men, but I had a serious relationship with a woman, too.”

“I don’t understand.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re bisexual. You can’t do monogamy.”

For some reason, that acquaintance didn’t blossom into a friendship.

I have had various people tell me that I’m just confused, that I can’t be bisexual, that I must be interested in sleeping with anything that moves, and that at some point I’ll grow up and realize who I really am. The most provoking part of this is that I’ve gotten it from both the straight and queer communities. I don’t feel much like I fit in either place because both groups want me to just settle down and decide. I don’t fit into their boxes.

At this point in my life, I mostly don’t make a big deal out of it. I’m married to a man. I’m happy with him. I’ve never cheated on him and I won’t; I love what we have together and I wouldn’t jeopardize it for the world. When I’m in a relationship I don’t look outside it for completion. I work, as he does, to make our life together as good as it can be. From what most people can see, I’m a straight woman. They don’t look farther than that because, chances are, that’s all I am.

I’m not just straight, though. I loved a woman. It was a good relationship in many ways, too. It’s over now, but that doesn’t make it meaningless.

I haven’t had many relationships in my life. I am pretty comfortable with that. I do know, however, that if I were single again (which I don’t want to be – I love my life!) that it really could go either way. I guess that’s what makes people uncomfortable. I’m not as predictable as I seem to be. I’m a stable, reasonable person in general (well, I think I am, anyway) but if my life changed, they might not be happy with me if I showed up with a date for a dinner party. The other person might not be who they expect.

I don’t talk about this much. I’m not embarrassed by it, but it isn’t a huge part of my life right now. It is a part of my identity, just as being Daniel’s sister is, or being right handed. It’s part of me, but I don’t see it as a huge revelation. Once in a while I catch people off guard with an offhand comment that I’m not straight because it happens to come up in conversation. I’ve lost a few friends that way. That’s life.

I’m a married bisexual woman in a strong relationship. I exist. I’m not that weird.

I realized I hadn’t written about this before. I thought, somehow, it was about time. We’re working on raising Katja to know that families are made with love, not with rigid guidelines. She already knows people who are not in straight relationships and she will grow up being comfortable with that. It shouldn’t matter very much. In some areas it doesn’t. Just because I ended up with a man does not mean that the LGBT community is no longer important to me. I’m still part of it. I’m just not very visible at the moment.

So, yes, in case you didn’t know before, I’m bisexual. Doesn’t actually change anything, does it?

I’ve been doing some things differently recently. Running is one, and I love that I ran three miles on Sunday without stopping. I just kept going and it kept feeling good. My pace was reasonable and I was happy with my time, so it’s going well.

Another thing I’m working on is reframing how I think about things. On weekends I am often catching up on housework and spending time with Katja, and the overlap between those two things has caused me some problems. When I’m playing with her I feel like I ought to be doing other things and when I’m, for instance, doing laundry, I often feel like I should really be paying more attention to Katja. This constant pull on my attention is frustrating and I often end the weekend feeling tired and stressed out.

I thought a lot about how I want to be able to enjoy the time I have, whatever I’m doing. I don’t mind doing laundry, but I don’t like feeling as if I should be doing something else. All of last weekend when I caught myself feeling bad for not doing something else, I thought, “Is there anything else I should be doing that’s more important than what I’m doing right now?” The answer was always no, and I could let go of feeling like I ought to be doing something else. By the end of the weekend, almost all of the normal things had gotten done. All the necessary things were done, at least, though the sheets, while clean, were not folded and put away. I ended the weekend feeling happy and relaxed, and if unfolded sheets are the price, I can live with that. They’ll get folded at some point during the week and we don’t need them to be folded right now.

It’s hard for me to put things into perspective. Making sure everything runs smoothly in our busy household is sometimes challenging and I have been letting myself get caught up in the minutiae. I get stressed when things are left undone, but it doesn’t help anything. I have lists of what should be done, but the world won’t end if one doesn’t get done immediately. I need to enjoy what I am doing while I am doing it, and the only limitation to that enjoyment is what goes on in my head.

Reframing everything seems to be helping. I like spending time with Katja. She’s a neat little person and she’s learning and growing so much that it’s fascinating watching her develop personality and curiosity. I also enjoy running, and she loves spending time with Xander while I do. Running is good for me physically, mentally, and emotionally. It gives me a sense of accomplishment, clears my head, puts things in perspective, and is something that I’m doing just for myself, which feels very good on many levels. I like cleaning house, too, strange as that may seem. It’s nice seeing something go from chaos to order and I enjoy seeing the results of something I have done.

There are very few things in my life right now that I dislike. That’s important. I just have to keep holding that in mind and enjoying life as it comes. I cannot walk away from the work that needs to be done, but the work is not drudgery and there is joy to be found there.

Every time I feel impatient or irritated at where I am and what I’m doing, I think, again, ”Is there anything else I should be doing that’s more important than what I’m doing right now?” It’s quite impressive how often the answer is no. So far it hasn’t been yes, and life is much better since I started asking that question.

I started a training program a few months ago and I’m getting rather excited about it. I didn’t think I’d make it through when I started, but I have learned that I am enough of a cheapskate that if I put money into something, I will almost definitely use the service. I do not like to waste money. As a result, very soon after I joined Nicole’s 0 to 13.1 training program, I also signed up to run a half marathon in June.

This is not something I would have imagined myself doing a year or even six months ago, but Katja has changed my perspective on a few things. I’m 38 this year. I’m not a young mother, to say the least, and people have actually asked if I’m Katja’s grandmother a few times. This amuses rather than offends me, but it does bring the point home that I’m older than many women who have a very young child. I could also stand to lose some weight, which I’ve been rather successful at so far (twenty pounds in six months and working on the next twenty now). I want Katja to have a healthy, happy mother. I want to see her graduate from high school. I want to get to enjoy her company as an adult. That means I need to take care of myself now.

In addition to all of this, I’m a happier person when I’m exercising regularly. Some people in my family have issues with depression. I am lucky enough to be able to control it in two ways: exercise and get enough sleep. For a while right after Katja was born, I wasn’t getting either one of those things. I decided it was time to get back on track and do what I wanted with my life, and Nicole’s program showed up at exactly the right time.

The program is interesting in a few ways. Nicole built it thinking about people, like herself, who wanted to run despite not being currently active. She also included a trainer who helps answer questions as they come up, and both of them have been extremely responsive. There is a Facebook group where we can share the highs and lows, which is really nice. I have made a couple of friends there.

It is an online community, which works well for me since I usually run at times that normal people are tucked comfortably into nice, warm beds. Nyx and I have run in cold weather (my limit is ten degrees Fahrenheit, below which I will find a treadmill at a gym), snow, rain, fog, and once in a while really nice weather. Nyx has taken a while to settle into running, especially since my speed is a trot for her. She still sometimes gets distracted by a scent, but she’s getting better at not stopping, at least. She is also much better at not responding to other dogs than she used to be. I like having her as my running buddy, though I worry a little about how the longer distances will work for her.

I ran a 5k race a couple of Saturdays ago. To my surprise, I actually enjoyed it. I did walk some, but I’m comfortable with that. My speed was faster than I’d been running in prior weeks. That made me very happy. I didn’t come in last, though I did get lapped twice. Most of the people in the race were high school students. I wanted to know what a race would be like and now I know that I can hold my pace despite being passed. I learned a few things, too. I need to bring my own food for the end of the race. They had Quaker chewy granola bars which were much too sweet and made me a little sick to my stomach. They had bananas, too, but they were very green and difficult to peel. The orange slices were a good idea, though.

I think I might end up being somewhat picky.

I have been reading a lot about marathoners and ultra runners, and one of the comments that showed up in a few of them was that they eat real food while they run. I really like this idea. I have a hard time stomaching the gels. I’m sure I could learn how, but pita and hummus sounds like a much better way to go, especially since I know exactly what goes into that food. There’s a mountain biker, Gary Fisher, who eats things like burritos, nuts, and bananas. I will experiment as I run longer distances to see what my stomach can take and what works best for me, but I think that gels are not really my thing.

I have made one other decision since I started this program. I will run a marathon by the time I’m forty. It’s a somewhat scary declaration, especially in a public forum, but I’d like to do it and I think it’s a good goal.

Running does not come easily to me. I spent much of my life with patellar tendonitis. That has gone away because I’ve been running in Vibrams, referred to in our house as toesy shoes. I’m not fast, I am probably not graceful, and I sweat a lot. On the other hand, I keep going. I’m on week ten of the program now (I had to take a break and then go back a week due to the gallbladder surgery). I like running most of the time, even when it’s cold and nasty out. I come home feeling like I’ve accomplished something. I also come home in a much better frame of mind, more likely to be cheerful and helpful. Nyx is happier, too, because she gets regular exercise, even if she isn’t quite sure if there’s a point to running around in circles.

This is good for me. Strangely enough, it is even kind of fun. I ran 1.6 miles this morning, which isn’t far, but it’s 1.6 miles farther than I would have run had I stayed in bed, so that’s something. It was 22 degrees out, too, so I felt just a tiny bit smug about being tough enough to run when it was below freezing. Once I get over my latest cold I should be moving a little faster. Even if I don’t, though, even if I stay slow, I’m getting to the point that I can settle into a rhythm and just keep going. That’s something I have never been able to do on land before. I could do it while swimming, but this is a first for running. It is starting to feel natural, easy, and comfortable, even on days that aren’t good.

Running has never been my thing, but I think I am beginning to think of myself as a runner. That’s kind of cool.

We spent five days in the San Francisco Bay Area week before last. I grew up in Oakland, so coming back is almost always a good thing. The green of the hills, the sun bouncing off the bay, and the salt tang in the air all make me happy.

BART stations seem much quieter than when I lived there because everyone is listening to music, reading, or engrossed in something on a cell phone. I remember more noise and more discussions, so the silence was almost eerie. I may be misremembering, but I think people used to talk more. I’m not sure if it’s a positive or negative change. It’s nice to not have to listen to the drama of someone’s aunt’s sister-in-law’s two boyfriends, but at the same time I feel like some of what makes us human, our connections to each other, is getting lost.

I had forgotten how many people live and work here. There’s a constant hum once I step out onto the street. Traffic, footsteps, horns, construction, yelling, laughing, and the other noises made by thousands of people moving through the day are sometimes overwhelming. At home I go out running early in the morning and it’s quiet. There are few cars and fewer people. In big cities, there are always a lot of people moving and talking and out. I went walking at lunch, two or three miles, and my body started adjusting to the large numbers of people almost without having to think about it. Walk past someone, careful not to bump them, then slide abck into the flow. Head up, watching everything, though these days I’m watching out of curiosity rather than paranoia. The first day I felt off balance and out of step; by the second day I felt more like a fish in a school, not standing out as much. I still got funny looks, mostly for my shoes, but I didn’t feel out of place in this multicultural hodgepodge of people.

There are many reasons to live in a larger city again. I miss having a better art, music, and dance scene. I would love to have a wider variety of restaurants. I like the energy in big cities. At the same time, I like the relative quiet of where we live now. I’m not sure how we will balance that out in the future. I’d like Katja to grow up in a place where she doesn’t stand out a lot unless she chooses to, and the bigger cities can provide that. I’d also like to be able to expose her to a wide variety of experiences, which is easier in a city. I think an ideal situation would be to live within reasonable driving distance of a big city; we could go in to see performances and eat good food, but there would be a balance, too, of more space and fewer people. I would also really enjoy living in a high rise apartment in the middle of downtown, though, and visiting wide open spaces on weekends.

In other words, the future is wide open, but I think medium or small cities are not going to be places we will seek out in the future.

There’s a website, Open Adoption Bloggers, that has gone a long way towards educating me on open adoption. The Roundtable is a periodic writing prompt designed to get people thinking about adoption. I don’t always participate, mostly because we are so new to open adoption, but I thought I would take a stab at this one.

The prompt this time is “Are you approaching openness differently in 2013? What experiences from in the past year influenced you most?”

We’re still feeling our way through what, exactly, open adoption means to our family. Katja isn’t big enough to provide an opinion about how much contact she wants to have. We live a few hours away from her biological family, so just dropping in is really not an option. We’re going to see them this weekend, though, and we are going to make sure we see them at least once a year as long as it is logistically possible for everyone concerned.

A long time ago I wrote a post about little-f family and big-F Family. Little-f family is made up of the family you are born with, the ones you don’t choose. Big-F Family is made up of the people you choose, the ones you absolutely know will always support you, and the ones you call first when something happens. Sometimes you are lucky and they overlap. I learned this definition from friends in San Francisco when I was in college. They were two gay men who had little-f family who walked away from them when they needed them most. They had a huge a loving big-F Family, though, and I was lucky enough to be part of that.

B and E are Katja’s family. They are our family, too. I’m not sure if they will end up being Family, since it’s hard to get really close to them with the distance involved. We stay in touch through the internet and phones, though. I send pictures, Katja’s website has pictures and information, and we are in contact through social media. I don’t feel like I need to shove Katja at them, but I want the option to be there. They are good people. We’re not likely to end up living really close by just because of what our life is like, but we don’t live near other people we are related to, either. They will keep being part of our lives.

What will be different in 2013? I don’t know. This year will be busy and full of change. There are several interesting things on the horizon, all of which are tenuous and mostly undefined right now. We’ll see B and E soon, though, and we’ll get pictures of Katja with them. We’ll hopefully get to see them in June, too, when I run my half marathon. We don’t see them in the winter because of driving the passes; we don’t drive in snow unless we absolutely have to for safety reasons. I think, though, that we will come a little closer to defining what this open adoption means for us, how we will continue to interact, and a little more of what to expect over the next few years.

There isn’t a road map for this. Open adoption is created by each group of people, be they family or Family. We’re figuring out where we fit in their lives and vice versa, what kinds of contact we will continue to have, and what we want to see. Katja will define this for herself as she gets older. In the meantime, we are responsible for doing what we promised and staying in touch.

We were asked recently if we wanted to adopt another child. The answer was “No.”

When we first started thinking about children, Xander only ever wanted one. I went back and forth between one and two. I didn’t want an only child to be lonely, I was worried about socialization, and I wasn’t sure I would be good enough, in some way, to provide everything to make sure an only child had a full and enriching life.

It’s not that my childhood with my siblings was wonderful. We fought a lot, in many creative ways, and I wasn’t really close with anyone except my youngest brother until I became an adult. Even now there is sometimes some discomfort when I say the wrong thing. It has gotten better, but I haven’t ever had the “My sibling is my best friend ever!” kind of relationship, and I am not sure I could raise two children differently enough from how my parents raised us to avoid that kind of rivalry. I’m not sure why I was considering more than one, but there were moments when I felt rather strongly about it.

Since Katja came home, though, I have been almost imperceptibly migrating towards Xander’s position. When the question came up again recently, my response was “No.” I was sure that was the right answer.

Katja has a habit of picking up a book, bringing it over to me or Xander, and holding it up. Whoever she hands it to takes the book, sits down, and reads it to her. While we’re at home, as long as we aren’t in the middle of cooking, we have worked our schedules out so we have time for each other. That matters to me. I like being able to sit down and read anytime she wants me to.  I couldn’t do that as easily with a second child in the house. This coming year would be much more challenging if we were to try to adopt again; the process is very time consuming, and I’d like to spend that time with the daughter we have, not chasing some idea that may or may not work out. I don’t want to have to focus as much on making sure another family is okay. I drove down to California at least a couple of times a month and sometimes more often than to visit, bring food, and provide transportation. It took a lot of energy. I want to be home with my family now.

Sometimes being a good parent means I have to be selfish. On an airplane, they always say “If you are traveling with a child and the oxygen masks drop, make sure your mask is secure before putting a mask on your child.” I have to take care of myself first to make sure that I can take care of Katja to the best of my ability. I’ve changed my exercise and eating habits since she was born. I’m running more and enjoying it. I’m not eating as much as I used to and we’re paying more attention to what we eat because we need to make sure she gets proper nutrition, too. I keep housework on a schedule so we don’t get behind, since there is less time to catch up on it.

I feel a little bit like not wanting another child is selfish. I don’t want to put forth the time, effort, and emotional energy required to make an adoption work. I don’t want to fill out all of the paperwork again. I don’t want months of home visits. I don’t want to deal with it anymore. We have a wonderful daughter and we are happy. Why mess with that? Maybe Katja would be better off with a sibling. I don’t know. She’s a remarkably outgoing little person, though. She gets lots of interaction with other people at her daycare and she clearly enjoys her time there. She enjoys her time at home, too, and likes being able to come over for a snuggle or a book whenever she feels like it.

I don’t want to change this. Life is good. We’re doing well. I’m being selfish, perhaps, but I can live with that. I like what we have and I love our little family.

When we moved a few months ago, we got rid of a lot of stuff. We moved to a slightly smaller place, so it was necessary, but part of it was also that we’d been in one place for a long time. A lot accumulates when there’s space and time, especially when life is busy. When it’s time to move, though, the question of “Do you care about this?” often got the response “Not enough to move it!”

I don’t like clutter. It’s frustrating for me. I can’t find what I want when I need it. Unfortunately, I’m good at making things cluttered. Items come into our house and I don’t find a place for them. The flat surfaces eventually end up covered.

It’s time to change. Whenever we move again, I have determined that we will not move a lot of stuff we don’t want or need. I’m starting slowly, just working on a small area. I’ve set up a better filing system this year so that when I bring in paperwork I need it just goes directly into the folder. I’m starting to go through books, slowly, to see what we will keep and what we won’t. I have a bad habit (which I’ve gotten better about) of wandering into a used bookstore, staying for a few hours, and coming out with a large pile of books. I do read all of them, but I often don’t care enough about them to read them again or even to give them to someone I know. These should really be donated. I’m also going through the boxes we haven’t unpacked yet to figure out if what’s in them is anything we care about or if they haven’t been unpacked because we just won’t use any of it.

It’s not necessarily comfortable. I like my stuff. It’s kind of like a security blanket. I think about moving it again, though, and suddenly it isn’t as important anymore. I want the next move to be as easy as possible, and the best way to do that is to only move what we want and need.

I’ve only gotten through a little of what I need to sort, but it is already making a difference in how I look at much of life. Do I want to buy something? Will I really use it? Do I want to move it in a year or whenever? I am not acquiring anything as easily and when I bring something home, it finds a place. I think I’m slowly rewiring my brain to stop being comforted as much by things. I don’t need them and I certainly don’t want to move them. I want to be less tied down. I still like having books and those will always be the biggest thing that we need to move, but I can pare down some and have the books we actively want rather than just the books that end up in our house.

It’s a new way of thinking for me. It’s spurred by moving but also by my recent surgery. I was irritated by some things when I came home, like the stuff on the chess table that didn’t need to be there and the piles of paper that I need to sort through. It’s time to clean up a bit.

This isn’t a New Year’s resolution. I’m bad at making those and I end up not keeping them. This is a lifestyle change, and hopefully it will stick.