Day 1939: First AND last

The first thing I want to do in this post is let you know that my walking team at work is in first place  at this point in the six-week competition.  The six people on my team have walked more steps than any other team at the hospital where we all work: 1,162,290 combined steps in two weeks.

However, with 163,275 steps, I’m in last place on my team.

Despite being first AND last, I’m meeting the competition goal of 10,000 steps per day. The last thing I just saw on the challenge website was this:

Congratulations! You’re right on track!

So how do I feel about being first AND last?

Well,  I know I’ve been doing my best.  That’s paramount. And the team leader, Barbara, just messaged me

We are all part of the team….Go Ann!!!

Barbara makes you feel like you’re first, no matter where you are.  That — and the exercise benefits of walking in this competition — are going to last, for me.

Yesterday, I facilitated a retreat for group therapists — neither my first such retreat nor  my last.  It was the first warm and sunny day of Spring around here but (I hope) not the last. Even though I had to spend most of  that beautiful Sunday inside, my good feelings about the day are going to last.

I shall now share  my photos from yesterday’s retreat, from first to last.

 

 

What’s the first and last thing you notice in those photos?

The first thing I have to do today is get to work on time, so I’ll quickly go to the last blogging business of the day.  I hope that you

… and — last but not least — thanks to all who helped me create today’s first-AND-last post and  (of course!)  YOU.

 

Day 979: Last Works

Last night, one of the last things I heard was somebody who works at WCRB-FM announcing that the radio station was featuring last works by great composers, all weekend.

I wrote that down

as I was working on my latest (but not last, I hope) Games Magazine, because I wanted that idea to last.

Last night, I also heard a beautiful work by Beethoven.

The String Quarter no. 14 in C# minor, Op. 131, one of the last works by Beethoven, is, obviously, going to last. According to Wikipedia, Beethoven dedicated that work to a baron who accepted his nephew into the army after a “failed suicide attempt.”

In my work last week as a psychotherapist, I heard several people talk about “failed” suicide attempts. I hope my work encouraging that kind of “failure” is going to last, too.

Here’s the latest (but not last)  work of my cat, Oscar:

See  the “////////////////////////////” in that photo? That works to show you that Oscar …

… likes to work on the keyboard while I’m working on my blog posts (which I hope will last, too).

Speaking of cats who work on me, last night — while we were working our way through our neighborhood on a walk —  my boyfriend Michael and I saw this cat …

  

… who we last saw many, many months ago. Before last night, I’d been working on a fear that cat had breathed its last. Obviously, that cat is working fine.

So what else would I like to work in here about “Last Works,” before I work on the last word of this post?
Tomorrow is Labor Day in the USA, and my son might work more on his idea — perhaps working it into a lasting stand-up comedy routine — that the name “Labor Day” is lastingly ironic, because it is a day when people who labor do NOT labor. Both Aaron and I, when we were working on lasting through a long walk yesterday, worked on a discussion of whether “Ironic” by Alanis Morissette

should be rewritten to include something that is actually ironic, like “Labor Day.”

“Ironic” is going to last, don’t you think?

This is the last thing I’m going to work into this “Last Works” post: Today, I’m going to a funeral of the mother of some friends I last saw many decades ago. I have many lasting memories of this mother and her daughters. After I publish this “Last Works” post, my lasting friend Deb and I will be working our way to our hometown on the North Shore of Boston, to pay our last respects.

Lasting thanks to that mother and her daughters, to my son Aaron, to Michael, to Deb,  to Beethoven, to radio station WCRB-FM, to Leonard Bernstein, to Alanis Morissette, to lasting friendships, to people who “fail” at suicide, to Oscar, to our neighborhood cats, to all things that last as best they can and — last but not least — to you, for lasting here, today.