Day 2018: 2018

What kind of number is 2018? The website Numbermatics tells us that

2018 is an even composite number. It is composed of two distinct prime numbers multiplied together. It has a total of four divisors.

2018 squared (20182) is 4072324
2018 cubed (20183) is 8217949832
The square root of 2018 is 44.9221548905
The cube root of 2018 is 12.6368953011

To count from 1 to 2018 would take you about thirty-three minutes.

It takes me about thirty-three minutes to create my daily blog posts, including one where the number of the post equals the number of the year.

2018 is also approximately the number of thoughts I had about how to mark this special number today. I spent about 2018 seconds searching for “mathematical puns” and I found Yan’s One Minute Math Blog, which included these mathematical puns from Stewart Francis:

I’m the youngest of three, my parents are both older.

Of the twenty-seven
students in my maths class,
I was the only one who failed.
What are the odds of that, one
in a million?

What are the odds of my blogging consecutively for 2018 days?  What are the odds of 2018 being the kind of year it’s been?

The number of photos I’m sharing today is approximately the cube root of 2018:

 

After spending approximately 2018 seconds creating this blog, I can see glimmers of light at the end of the tunnel.  Can you?

Here‘s what comes up for “2018” on YouTube:

One more mathematical fact: that has 6.5K likes and 6.7K dislikes on YouTube.

I wonder what number of comments I’ll get on this 2018 post?

I’ve been grateful 2018 times to those who help me create this blog and — of course! — to YOU.

 

 

Day 2005: Here are the questions …

If you’re searching for the answer behind today’s title, here it is:

Here are the questions …

• Who is welcome?
• Where are the safe places?
• How should we enter?
• What is the next step forward?
• Why don’t more people vote?
• What will they vote for next?
• Who’s in charge?
• What is justice?
• Who are the justices?
• Who is corrupt?
• Who is fighting for the rights of the people?
• Why should we build walls?
• What would make you happy?
• What endures?
• What does it mean to be strong?
• When will strong women no longer be called “bitchy”?
• Why should I smile today?
• Who  listens to radio?
• What are people listening to?
• Why can’t I get to sleep after checking the news?
• What important questions are missing here?
• What other photos did I take yesterday?

Where is there a space reserved for your comments?  Below.

Here are questions and answers by Pat Metheny:

 

Who is grateful for all who helped me create this questionable post and for all who are reading it? Ann is.

Day 1991: Untold stories

I’ve told many stories in this blog over the years, but many remain untold.

We all have untold stories, including Boston’s Public Garden.

In my profession as a group and individual therapist, I hear many previously untold stories.  Because of patient confidentiality, those stories remain  untold outside the room (unless the story is mine).

Every picture tells a story, I’m told, but there are many untold stories in my pictures today.

 

 

 

 

I know there are untold stories in the news these days, but hope, respect, joy, peace, kindness, patience, healing, inspiration, comfort, and love seem to be missing in the stories that are being told.

Here‘s “Untold Stories” told by Sinead O’Connor:

 

I look forward to reading some untold stories in the comments, below.

My gratitude — for all who help me create these posts and for all who read them — is not untold.

 

Day 1895: Forget Regret

Yesterday, in a group therapy session, people talked about regret.  I said, “Regret is really present in this room. Should we invite Regret to sit down?”   People looked a little less regretful when they invited Regret to sit in a corner.  They also asked Regret questions like “Why won’t you go away?”  I answered in the voice of Regret: “I won’t go away because I think I help you. What would you do without me?”  People said that as the session went on, Regret was still there but was getting smaller.

Near the end of the session, I went over to the chair where Regret was sitting, picked it up by the scruff of the neck, opened the door with my other hand, threw Regret into the hallway, and slammed the door.  I asked people how it felt now that Regret was out of the room.  “Wonderful,” was one reply.

Later that day, I went to physical therapy for my torn rotator cuff, and Regret visited me there.  I got so discouraged about my lack of progress that I focused on my regret for slipping and falling on January 31.  Then, I remembered the group, took Regret by the scruff of the neck and threw it out the door.

Here‘s the song I heard yesterday with the lyrics “Forget Regret.”

There’s only us

There’s only this

Forget regret

Or life is yours to miss

No other road

No other way

No day but today.

Kind and wonderful people — like Dr. Maria Gonzalez Del Castillo and Kate at Beacon Hill Dental Associates — help me forget regret.

Taking photos for this blog helps me forget regret.

 

Forget regret but don’t forget to comment!

I never forget to send a big thank-you to everyone who helps me create this daily blog, especially YOU.

Day 1613: Home

Welcome to my blogging home, dear readers.

Yesterday, in the home office of a major medical institution in Boston, a therapy group discussed the topic of “home.”   This hit home for me, because soon I’ll be changing my current home for a different one.

I asked the group to write, draw, or otherwise express thoughts and feelings about home. Here’s what I did:

From my home this morning, I’d like to share this music about home.

As I look at my list of “What Makes a Home a Home?” from the comfort of my home,  I see that I wrote “pictures.”  Here are more pictures from yesterday.

 

 

I also wrote that “People make the home” and listed gratitude on “What makes a home a home?”  Many thanks to the people in my therapy groups, to  my bass-playing dentist Dr. Del Castillo, to my friend Deb, to Simon & Garfunkel, to all the other people who help make this my blogging home, and to you — of course! — for visiting me in my home, here and now.

---

In honor of the 50th anniversary of the release in the USA of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper, here’s another Home song:

Day 1494: Groundhog Day

Today is Groundhog Day!

Groundhog Day is my birthday.  Can you guess how old I am today? Here‘s a hint:

While there are many things out there on Groundhog Day 2017 that are making me afraid of my own shadow, there’s still a lot of sunshine.

Do you see shadows or sunshine in the photos I took the day before Groundhog Day?

Happy Groundhog Day to all my readers and Happy Birthday to me!

Day 1172: The most amazing thing I’ve ever seen

Amazingly, yesterday somebody said to me, “That’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.”

The person expressing that amazement did so during one amazing moment of an amazingly busy day for me, when I did individual and group therapy at work, went to my amazing dentist’s office, walked around Boston and its amazing environs, went to an amazing group psychotherapy organization board meeting, and took photos of many amazing things.

Would you be amazed if I asked you to guess which amazing photo below shows the amazing thing that person found remarkably amazing?

The most amazing thing I can think of doing right now is to try to remember if I’ve ever said, “That’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen!” out loud.   I’d be amazed if I haven’t, at some point in my amazing life,  but my memory isn’t amazing enough to come up with amazing specifics. My amazing guess is that I could have easily said that about

• my son, Aaron,
• my father, Aaron,
• one of my cats,
• my very unusual heart,
• a new place I’d never seen before (like Yosemite, Monument Valley, the Yucatan, London, Edinburgh, etc.),
• a live stand-up comedy performance,
• professional dancers,
• a work of art,
• a piece of architecture,
• the Beatles,
• a Pat Metheny concert,
• another amazing person, or
• a kashmillion other amazing sights.

I just googled “Pat Metheny most amazing” and found this site, which recommends this amazing performance of this amazing Beatles song as one of his 10 best:

Amazingly, it’s time for me to end this amazed and amazing post with one more amazing photo from amazing yesterday.

Day 969: Hooks

Yesterday, while I was walking to work, I was hooked by the title and by the music of a Sting song, “Sky Hooks and Tartan Paint.”

If you are hooked by that song, you can find it here on YouTube, which contains a lot of musical hooks.

Immediately after I was hooked by that tune, I was hooked by the sight of an actual hook in the sky:

  
When I got to work, I was hooked by my Wednesday morning therapy group, especially by their expressed relief and gratitude about my return from a two-week vacation.

I was also hooked by some anxiety, because:

• I felt a little out of practice, facilitating a group, and
• I had a 2 PM appointment with my wonderful dentist, Dr. Del Castillo, and — for the first time in years — I  would NOT be hooked up to an IV an hour before a dental procedure to receive endocarditis-preventing antibiotics.

Lest you be hooked by any concern about that, my doctors have decided that taking a single oral antibiotic is enough protection to prevent my heart from the dastardly hooks of endocarditis-causing bacteria (which have gotten their hooks onto my heart valve three times in the last 18 years).

As I am writing this hooky post, I’m being hooked by an unpleasant reaction to the oral antibiotic which is “off the hook, as the kids like to say” (which my boyfriend Michael likes to say). I shall be ringing my doctors’ phones off the hook, and  I won’t let them off the hook until we find an oral antibiotic with fewer yucky side effects.

I’m going to let you off the hook, now, and quit writing about my antibiotics. Instead, here are some other images that hooked me, yesterday:

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Which one of those hook-y shots hooked you?

I am now going to unhook myself from writing this post and take some more probiotics. I wonder if one can get hooked on those?

Sky-hooks-and-tartan-paint thanks to Sting, everybody playing musical hooks in that video,  Michael, Dr. Luis Del Castillo (who is hooked on reading this blog), my therapy groups, PetSmart, Whole Foods Market,  probiotics, every single hook I encountered yesterday, and you — of course! — for getting hooked here, today.

Day 934: Feelers

Yesterday, I found out that Kerri,

a nurse I’ve happily known for years, is leaving Boston for sunny Florida next month. As we were bidding each other a fond “adieu,” I said to her

I always have my feelers out for kind, wonderful people, and from the moment I met you in the Emergency Room all those years ago, I recognized how amazing you were.

Feeling the need, just now,  to looked up “feelers” in the dictionary, I found this:

An animal organ such as antenna or palp that is used for testing things by touch or for searching for food.

I don’t know about you, but my definition-seeking feelers have never previously  touched on  “palp,” before today.

And, my blog-creating feelers would change

searching for food

to

searching for nourishment

… but otherwise, I feel that definition is fine, for the feeling purposes of this post.

Speaking of feelings, I told Kerri I was glad for her but sad for me and other feeling, Boston-based people who know her.

As you might have felt before, I often have my feelers out for images that strike my feeling fancy, as I feel my way through a day. Here’s what my photographic feelers found yesterday:
  

  
  
  


  

  
  
  
  

  

What do your feelers tell you about those photos?

My feelers are telling me that other  feelers might assume — from those feeling photos — that I have cancer. I do not. I have a cardiac condition that necessitates my getting antibiotics before I visit my dentist, and I get those antibiotics in a cancer infusion center, where my fine-feeling-friend Kerri works (until August).

Also, there were many things my feelers encountered yesterday that did NOT make it to this post and — as usual — I’m hoping I didn’t hurt any feelings.

Here‘s what my musical feelers have brought back from YouTube:

Bernadette Peters is singing “I Feel You, Johanna” from Stephen Sondheim‘s Sweeney Todd.
Also, my feelers found this:

“I Peel You, Banana” by Robert Adams.

Feeling thanks to Kerri, the Infusion Center at Tufts Medical Center, Cam Neely, Dr. Del Castillo, Dr. Gonzalez and Michel (not pictured) at Beacon Hill Dental Associates, everybody at my high school reunion planning meeting last night (not pictured), Bernadette Peters, Stephen Sondheim, Robert Adams, and you — of course! — for bringing your feelers here, today.

Day 675: Eyes

Eye — I mean I — am shocked that there are no posts I’ve written, since I first eyed writing a daily blog, with the word “Eye” in the title.

I shall now eye how many posts I’ve written with the word “I” in the title.  Would U like to guess how many posts THAT might be?

I love guessing games, as you may have noticed, if you’ve eyed many of my 675 posts.

I just changed my mind, which I’ve heard is a “women’s prerogative.” I think everybody should have the choice to change her or his mind, don’t you?

How have I changed my mind?  Rather than have you guess how many times I’ve used the word “I” in a blog post title, here they all R (in reverse chronological order):

1. Day 613: I don’t know what I look like
2. Day 603: What I missed
3. Day 591: And When I Die
4. Day 578: I don’t care
5. Day 574: I don’t know why
6. Day 573: Why?  Because I thought it was _____.
7. Day 568: How am I supposed to feel?
8. Day 540: I Spy
9. Day 449: Variations on “I Don’t Want to Go”
10. Day 430: What I learned at the group therapy conference
11. Day 424: Things I learned from groups this week
12. Day 407: Two Images (before I leave for Panama)
13. Day 399: What I wanted for my birthday
14. Day 382: Why I was judgmental about yesterday’s blog post
15. Day 373: Guilt (and a metaphor I made up!)
16. Day 352: Snow (It’s safer than I feared)
17. Day 330: What I am doing differently
18. Day 303: What I know/What I don’t know
19. Day 299: Why haven’t I published anything (outside of here)?
20. Day 225: Reasons why I should move to Edinburgh, Scotland
21. Day 224: Reasons why I shouldn’t spend too much time in our hotel room blogging this morning
22. Day 223:  Reasons why I should move to London, Part 3
23. Day 221: Reasons why I should move to London, Part 2
24. Day 220: Reasons why I should move to London, Part 1
25. Day 199: I dared to tweet some tweets
26. Day 171: I Look
27. Day 153: Do I Dare to Tweet a Tweet?
28. Day 148: Dreams I Have Known
29. Day 141: I am singing differently this year
30. Day 132: What I learned on my spring vacation.
31. Day 131: How I spent my spring vacation
32. Day 128: I get by with a little help from my friends
33. Day 124: Why I love the show “Dinner for Five”
34. Day 121: Why I relate to the Boston Carjacking “victim”
35. Day 119: I woke up differently, this morning
36. Day 116: I just rewrote yesterday’s blog
37. Day 114: Questions in my brain, as I woke up this morning
38. Day 113: I am solving problems in my my sleep!
39. Day 110: Arrrghh! I might still be in this guy’s movie!
40. Day 107: Has the external world changed? I haven’t.
41. Day 104: Things I know about groups
42. Day 100: I confess
43. Day 90: How I got back to sleep last night (featuring selling and sound effects)
44. Day 55: There is NOTHING I have to do today (AND antidotes)
45. Day 38:  Reasons why I should move to Charleston, SC
46. Day 27: This blog is good enough AND I can make it better.
47. Day 17: I think I wake up most mornings feeling uneasy
48. Day 10: I’ve learned to leave the house before I feel ready
49. Day 5: What I SHOULD (and SHOULDN’T) be doing

Wow.

Am I the only one who thinks it would have been cooler if there were EXACTLY 50 posts there? Maybe WordPress’s search function missed something. I don’t have time to check that now, though.

What else do I want to say about that list, right now?

• That’s a big list.
• When I think about it, though, only a small-ish percentage (49 divided by 675 = 7.26%)  of the number of posts I’ve written have had the word “I” in the title.
• Maybe that’s proof that I am not a narcissist, after all.

I also notice that:

• I wrote more posts using the word “I” in the title during the first part of my blogging journey.
• I wrote several posts, in a row, with the word “I” in the title, during the Boston Marathon bombing and its aftermath.

Does that mean I use the word “I” more when I’m new and/or anxious? I’ll let future generations  — who may study my every word — decide that.

I wish.

Anyway, Y did I choose the word “Eye” for today’s title?

Was it just an excuse to post one of my favorite songs, from many years ago?

(Loggins and Messina performing “Angry Eyes” found here on YouTube)

Was it just an excuse to introduce you to Elizabeth, my I.V. nurse  — whom I eyed (that is, met) for the first time yesterday? (For reasons why I need an I.V. before I go to the dentist, I suggest you eye this post.)

In that second photo, how do Elizabeth’s eyes (and the rest of her facial expression) look, to you? What do you think she was saying?

Elizabeth (who, like me, lives in all-male household) is demonstrating, in that photo, the look guys get on their face when they say things like:

• I can’t find the milk.
• Do you know where I put my belt?

I guess Elizabeth and I are both sexist.

What else did I eye yesterday?

That’s my dentist, Dr. Del Castillo. He’s told me that he reads this blog every day, so

Hi, Dr. Del Castillo!

As you can C, Dr. Del Castillo is growing a beard, and his wonderful dental hygienist, Michel (not pictured) is taking a poll of the patients in his practice, even as I am writing this post, to see what they think.

I’m sorry, but i don’t have the results of that poll, right now.

I did ask Dr. Del Castillo’s beautiful wife, Dr. Gonzalez Del Castillo (also not pictured) — who co-owns the practice and is a periodontist (not an oral surgeon, as I originally wrote) — what she thought of her husband’s beard.

You should have seen the look in her eyes, about that.

I didn’t capture THAT displeased expression, but I did take these other pictures yesterday:

When Elizabeth — my I.V. nurse — and I were talking about guys losing track of things, I showed her that last photo, which I had taken earlier in the morning on my walk to work, as proof of  …

What?  I don’t even want to think about it, right now. I mean,  that’s just _____! (Feel free to fill in any word you like, in the comments or elsewhere.)

Before I end this post, I’d like to add a few more things I spied, with my little eye, yesterday.

I predicted, last night in Whole Foods Market, that my bf Michael and I would eye those EXACT cupcakes.

Thanks to Elizabeth, to everybody at Dr. Del Castillo’s dental practice, to U (for reading), to I (or more grammatically, me) (for writing), to Loggins & Messina, and to everybody else who helped me write this post, today.