Windows, Mexico, ?

[Link to Texture Thursday; thanks to Flypaper Textures]

This post will evolve as the day goes on; relaxing on the couch while my Loved One dozes in his chair.  He's still recovering from the two surgeries, and while he's doing fine, being up two or three times during the night for various reasons, as we've been doing, is taking it's toll and we're both pretty tired out.  At this point, he's growing very weary of being an invalid, so when he wakes up we'll go for a drive, just to try to relieve some of his cabin fever.

I wasn't sure what to write about today -- it happens to be our fifth wedding anniversary, a happy occasion for sure, though we won't do much celebrating.  But that's okay -- I celebrate every day the good fortune that brought us together.  I have some lilacs in a vase, but they're not far enough along in blooming to take pictures of them yet, so that has to wait. 

The picture is of a window in a church in El Triunfo, Mexico, where we visited on a recent trip.  The LO had won a trip to Cabo at work, all expenses paid, so we jetted off for four days.  Though Mexico isn't at the top of my list (I'd much prefer Canada or Alaska, continentally speaking), we had a very nice time there.  Here's what I liked about it:

1.    The people.  Everyone there was extremely gracious and welcoming.  The employees at the hotel were as helpful as they could be, they always had a smile and seemed very focused on making sure everyone had a nice time.

2.  The food.  The food at the hotel (RIU Santa Fe) was not all gourmet, for sure, but the Mexican food they served was very nice, as was the meal we had at a roadside place while on a tour to La Paz and back, and the lunch we had in La Paz was excellent too.

3.    The sunset cruise.  We had booked a cruise with "Day Sail Cabo," and it was one of the best times we've ever had.  The weather was gorgeous, the sea pretty calm; we saw many whales and dolphins, the sunset was spectacular.  We were the only customers that day, and so had the 52' sailboat to ourselves! (Well, except for Capt. Bob and his crew, Alfredo.)  It was four absolutely perfect hours of our lives.

4.  The fact that we know more Spanish than we think we do.  At lunch on the La Paz tour, we sat next to a lady whose entire vocabulary in English was "please" and "thank you."  I was delighted to discover that having lived in California for nearly 40 years, I have a fairly good Spanish vocabulary, enough anyway to carry on a reasonable facsimile of a conversation with her.  Between that and LO's "kitchen Spanish" (acquired over many years of being a chef), we had a decent conversation.

More on Mexico at some point, I'm sure.  The resort was lovely and we really had a nice time.  I'd go back.    

My plans for the wee hours of April 29th --

They (Buckingham Palace, I guess) have released the schedule for the Royal Wedding, and by googling the time difference, I calculate that I'll need to be up around 2 AM to see all the festivities I want to see.  The wedding itself should start around 3 AM, my time, but I don't want to miss anything.

I wouldn't miss it for the world, because in a way, Prince William and I are related.  In a way.  When I was 9 or 10 or so, I had two goals in life:  to be Miss America and to marry Prince Charles.  The Miss America thing fell rather quickly by the wayside, and I decided to be a doctor, but the Prince Charles thing kind of hung around for quite a while.  So I have ever since then taken a keen interest in the Waleses, and just as I was up at 2 AM for the wedding of Charles and Diana, I will be up at the end of the month to see Wills and Kate wed.

Though the years have more than dimmed my appreciation for Prince Charles, it seems as though Wills is a decent sort and has a lot of his mother in him, which is all to the good.  And Kate seems like a lovely young woman.  I will sit with a full box of kleenex and wish them all the happiness in the world.

Will you be getting up with me?  We could chat while the ceremony is going on :)

10 Things I Love to Do -- Part II

[Link to KK Texture Tuesday]

Continuing the list from the other day: 

6.  I love to watch a good movie.  Don't we all?  Don't you love it, when you're transported out of your ordinary life for a couple of hours?  Some of my favorites:  Cinema Paradiso; Casablanca; Jean de Florette; Love, Actually (a bathtub CD, but an excellent one).  I could go on but will save further discussion of movies for another day.

7.  I love to travel.  Well, okay, actually I don't like the traveling part at all, but I like it once I get to where I'm going and am settled in my home-away-from-home and able to relax and enjoy a new place.  My husband and I have a long list, which we're hoping to be able to start checking off:  London, Paris, Italy (Rome, Florence, Venice), Greece to Istanbul, St. Petersburg . . . the list goes on.  Hope to be blogging about these places soon.

8.  I love to play computer games, RPGs* in particular.  Okay, I've said it.  I'm sure it seems somewhat incongruous for someone who's supposed to be an academic, but I've been playing them since my ex went into the computer industry in the late '70's.  I've played everything from the original Bard's Tale and Castle Wolfenstein to Assassin's Creed:  Brotherhood and Dragon Age II, both of which are calling my name right now, but I don't have time to play.  :(  I love the experience of becoming immersed in a world for a few weeks or months, building up a character that's a reflection of yourself (I always wind up a human Paladin), and living out an interesting story that's much more exciting than your real life could ever be.  More on that another time as well.

9.  I love to write.  But you probably knew that.

10.  I love spending time with my husband.  I have been blessed, this late in life, to find the man of my dreams, an excellent man, who supports me in everything I do, who allows me to be who I am, and who takes care of me in the ways I like/need to be taken care of.  I hope I return the favor to him, every day.

This has given me lots of ideas for future blog posts.  Thanks, Cat!  I invite you to do the same, on your blog.

[*Role playing games, mostly of  the fantasy kind.]

Hospital Waiting Rooms

The waiting room outside the OR in a hospital is a very strange kind of place.  On the one hand, you're bored out of your skull, sitting there for hours, can't concentrate (I got my laptop out of the car and fired it up, and couldn't even get interested in surfing or messing around, can you imagine?), can't do a crossword puzzle, can't leave to go take a walk, in case the doctor chooses that moment to come out to talk to you, if you have to go pee you beg someone to watch your stuff and tell the doctor to WAIT if he comes out at that exact moment . . .

[Link to The Creative Exchange]

At the same time, it is a place of highest anxiety.  You have clung to every word the surgeon says, and if he says it will take 1-1/2 hours, at exactly 1-1/2 hours and one minute, you are panicked, sure that something has gone wrong, that your Loved One is Code Blue and emergency teams are rushing from all corners of the hospital at that very second . . . you watch the other people who are waiting, and as they get good news, you think, Yes!  It's a good day, everything is going well, but then you think OMG, what if the good luck runs out right before it gets to me . . . To me, a nervous flier, it's like being on a plane, when I have to direct the full concentration of my mind toward keeping the plane in the air.  It's the same in a hospital waiting room outside the OR -- only the power of my concentrated thoughts is keeping my Loved One safe and alive . . .


It's happened to me twice in the past three days.  The first time, the surgeon (a really nice and good doctor) either didn't know I was out in the waiting room or forgot that I was there and never came out to talk to me, so I sat there until everyone was gone, until four hours had ticked away, until I grabbed a likely person walking by, asked if she worked in Recovery, begged for news on my Loved One . . . she was very kind and came back with information for me.  Today the same surgeon was attentive and empathetic, and I appreciated it very much.


Thank God for iPods -- On Friday, I had an excellent book I was listening to and that distracted me, at a time when even moving my eyes across the page would have required too much effort.  I'm sure the other people thought I was just a little odd, staring off into space (probably with my mouth hanging open), not realizing I was absorbed in a really good book (Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone.  Read. It.).   On Sunday, I had a very nice man, whose sister was in the ICU, chat with me for a long time, distracting me from the descending vortex of my thoughts.


Let this be the last time for quite some time that I have to sit and wait like that.  Let it be so.

10 Things I Love To Do -- Part I

[Linking to The Simple Things]

Cat at The Whimsical Gardener (a lovely blog -- go visit!) joined my blog yesterday (thanks, Cat!) and when I went off to explore her site, I came across her "10 Things I Love to Do" post.  She invites others to write a similar post as a way of letting their readers get to know them better . . . so here goes, in no particular order, some appropriately illustrated with photographs:

 1.  I love to read; I started when I was four, and I have never stopped.  Because I've been an English professor for 30 years, and an English major before that, I can be a little picky about what I read, but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy what my friend calls "bathtub books" (books it's okay to drop in the water while you're reading in the bath) -- they just have to be the right kinds of books.  I love "the classics" (though I certainly haven't read all of them), and I love mysteries (by James Lee Burke and John Lescroart especially).  I'm sure I'll talk more about books as time goes on.

2.  I love Shakespeare, reading, watching, reciting . . . .  In the picture above is a volume of Shakespeare that I picked up when I was about 12 and has never left me since; it has traveled from the Midwest to the East Coast, to the West Coast, and up and down California in the last 40 years.  I love everything about Shakespeare, and especially I love to teach it to students who are positive they hate Shakespeare . . . and then they find out that, really, they don't.  Surprise!

 3.  I love taking pictures.    No, this is not me, but some crazy guy I caught while out with a class at Bean Hollow.  The surf was incredibly high, and our teacher forbade us from going anywhere near the waterline, but this guy was not with our class and went right down there.  This picture encapsulates some of what I love about photography -- the "ah" moment, frozen in time, forever.  It's a thrill when something comes out right.

4.  While we're on that picture . . . I love being near the ocean.  I have lived within a mile or two of the ocean for the past 40 years, and at this point, I don't think I could live away from it.  I'm not the kind of person who hangs out on the beach, but I love driving or walking along the cliff, seeing it, hearing it, smelling it, and knowing it's there, the "vasty deep" (1 Henry IV) that rolls on forever.

5.   I love having flowers in my garden, having them in my house, taking pictures of them (see tulips, above).  I don't know what it is about flowers -- yes, they're beautiful, they're fragrant, but it's more than that.  They bring happiness, whether they've been given to me or I've given them to myself.  My favorites:  lilacs, peonies, ranunculus, tulips.  Oh and dahlias, which I fervently hope are making their way to the surface of the garden this year, because last year, they didn't.  :(

This is clearly going to be a long post, so I'll stop here.  To be continued, on another day . . .

My Muse? Flora, Goddess of Flowers

[Louise Abbema, "Flora," 1913]

Over at Shutter Sisters, a great site (check it out), Kim raises the question, "What is your muse?"  For me, I guess it's flowers.  I'm stalking the elusive shot in my garden all the time; my calendar is full of the dates of the annual show of every kind of flower society in Santa Cruz and Monterey counties.  I love to go to those flower shows because they present a wonderful challenge -- they're often held in the high school cafeteria (horrible lighting), people are milling around (can't use a tripod, can't get in people's way), the backgrounds are awful (worn-out cafeteria tables with labels all over them).  I love seeing what I can get in these awful conditions and consequently am tickled to death when something comes out right.

Most recently, I've gone to the Santa Cruz Orchid Society show.  The orchids were fabulous, but the conditions even worse than usual -- it was overcast and rainy outside, rendering the lighting even more inadequate.  Still, it was fun, and I came out with some good pictures, using my trusty 40D and a monopod (one of my favorite camera accessories).  

The background image on my blog is from that day; here's the complete picture:

The flowers on this orchid (I don't know it's official name) are the little orange string-of-beads things -- it's a neat plant.  I really enjoy the ones that have odd little "flowers" -- some of the orchids are very strange.

[Life-n-Reflection, Weekend Texture Twist]

This is a beautiful orchid -- it was sitting right by the window so the light coming in was very nice, and with some judicious cloning, I got it to look pretty good, I think.

[All textures are from Flypaper Textures]

This one came out well, too -- I like the way the flowers look like they're spilling down the frame.  


Although textures won't go far in fixing bad photography, they can be very helpful in camouflaging messy or otherwise inappropriate backgrounds, and they can cover up some of the cloning you will need to do in those cases, to get the attention onto the main subject where it belongs.  


I hope that Flora would be pleased with my offering.

[Sandro Boticelli, detail from "Primavera," c. 1482]

   

The Fivefold Path to Imperfection

I have spent much of my life striving to be perfect.  The psychological why's and wherefore's are not so relevant -- we all have our reasons (a difficult-to-please father, the need to control the uncontrollable, feeling "less than" and trying to compensate, blah blah blah).  Since, of course, we can never actually be perfect, this is a fool's quest, doomed to failure.  When we try to be the best, to make no mistakes, to make or do or be the most excellent whatever-it-is there ever was, we will soon come face to face with our own failings, our own ineptitude, because even if we appear to be perfect on the outside, we know the real truth and so discount all  those accolades and rewards and so on.  Thus the Impostor Syndrome is born, the nagging little voice in your head that says, "Yeah, they think you're great, but if they really knew you . . . ."

[link back to LEM Photo Challenge]

I've spent a lot of time trying to work my way around this bind, the need to be perfect, the knowing I can't be, the feeling that I'm therefore not authentic or good enough, even the rebellion that says the hell with it, I'll show them how flawed I am (this has never lasted long).  Along the way, I've learned a couple of things that might be helpful to others caught in this cycle:


1.   Be a learner.  One way my perfectionism manifests itself is by leading me to think, "If I can't be the best at something right away, I don't want to do it."  The path of my life is littered with remnants of endeavors begun and then tossed aside -- piano, French, needlepoint, a business making chutney (seriously), jewelry-making, a young adult novel, on and on.  At this late moment in life, I have finally accepted that being a learner -- during which time you have to obviously be imperfect -- is a path to doing things that you really enjoy and might someday do well.  Pushing through the discomfort of being "less than" can lead to the joys of having a new hobby or activity that you really derive pleasure from.


2.    Learn to do a "good enough" job.  One of the problems with having a challenging job is that there are never enough hours in the day to do the kind of work your perfectionism leads you to want to do.  Trying to do everything to the very best of your ability leads to endless anxiety and stress.  I had a co-worker who also suffered from the need to be perfect, and though she was extraordinarily good at what she did, her need to have everything be the best that anyone had ever done led her not to be able to meet deadlines or, on occasion, not to get the job done at all.  Since not meeting deadlines will affect other people and put a gigantic ding in your crown of perfection, learn to do a "good enough" job.  You will discover that people will be much more happy with a 75% effort that is completed on time (or early) than a 110% effort that's two weeks late or that has to be reassigned to someone else.


3.    Practice saying "I'm sorry."  Stand in front of the mirror, and say it 10 times:  "I'm sorry, I . . . " forgot, messed  up, overlooked that one little point, left my papers at home, whatever it might be.  Constantly trying to be perfect often means that we become overly concerned with our inevitable mistakes, and in the worst cases, try to cover up the mistakes or shift the blame to someone else.  Learn to say "I'm sorry," openly and honestly, and you will discover that having been so close to perfect so much of the time, you will have built up a store of goodwill that will carry you through the difficult moments.  Just focus on making whatever-it-is right, and people will say "Oh, no problem, don't worry about it."


4.    Forget about what other people think.  While I was growing up, I was aware that, like most people, my mother cared what the neighbors thought, always wanted to make the best impression, worried about our collective reputations, and so on.  But I remember clearly that once she passed her 50th birthday, a change came over her and she stopped caring so much about what other people thought.  She started living for herself more, doing what she wanted, and became happier as a result.  If you forget about what other people think and just do what is right for you (which may or may not be perfect), you will quickly discover that people care a lot less than you think they do, and this can be very liberating.


5.    Strive for imperfection in some part of your life.  I recently did a wonderful workshop on watercolor journaling with Christina Lopp and Gay Kraeger.  It was great fun, and the mantra of the day was "strive for imperfection!"  They were very accepting of our mistakes and feeble attempts, and kept the mood light-hearted throughout the day.  I'm sure I can't convince you to be imperfect in every aspect of your life (I surely can't), but find one or two areas in which you'll allow yourself to strive not to be the best, but to just do it and enjoy whatever you get as a result.  I may never show my watercolor journal to anyone else (I have yet to post one of the pages on Christina and Gay's flickr group), but I enjoy doing it, and I wouldn't enjoy it at all if I were trying to be perfect at it.


There you have it.  The Army used to run commercials that said, "Be all that you can be," and when I think about that, I try to remember that all that I can be includes being not-perfect, something I'm working on, day by day.  Like the flower above, being imperfect can be beautiful, too.