When I open, with care, every new blog post, I also open, with care, my photo app.
Today I care to open with this photo:
I open my car door with care and I also open with care other things, including:
My mind.
My heart.
My mouth.
My eyes.
Every blog post.
Therapy groups.
Meetings.
Communication.
Presents.
Books.
Conversations.
Songs.
Poems.
Emails.
Packaging.
My laptop.
What do you open with care?
I shall now re-open my photo app with care.
“I’m not anti-social” (displayed with care on those socks, above) is an interesting way to open a conversation.
Note that I opened my list of favorite movies with “Singin’ in the Rain.” I’ve opened up, here, about how much I love musicals. Today, I opened my eyes and thought, “I’m seeing Hamilton today!!!”
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?
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.
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.”
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:
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
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.
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.
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:
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.
