Sunday, March 28, 2021

 Sunday, March 28, 2021

             I slept until 6:30. I couldn't reach Dorothy and didn't hear back from her until late afternoon. I would have worried, except that she was visiting her daughter and her family in Seattle. If she didn't show up, Karin would have been in action. Later in the day, I learned she had been busy with family activities, as I suspected.

            I only did a short walk because my leg bothered me, but not in the joint where I received the shot. There it was itching. It was the second time I had forgotten about the band-aids. The doctor uses these little round ones that are good for covering a pimple. 

            While I was working on the updates, Judy called. Xander, Adam, and Jazzy's dog was missing. Adam and Jazzy had gone away for the weekend and left Judy in charge. Xander is a lovely, somewhat older German Shepherd. He is the gentlest, sweetest dog ever. When Leon, Adam and Jazzy's son, was five, he and Xander stood eye to eye. There was a scene where Leon stood at the top of his driveway with his arm around Xander's neck, 'restraining' him from coming after Elsa and me. Right!   

   We've had some window drama here. I ordered a new window for Yvette's yoga studio. She has a casement window in there now. Because that room was an add-on after the house was built, the overhang isn't large enough to protect that window; the rain comes flooding in. I ordered a double-hung, so the bottom half could be closed while the top was open to let in air.

        Since the window was a special order, it took several months to arrive. Then Scott, who was going to install it, had other projects to work on. It was just last week that he finally started to work on it. Yvette and Scott came up to tell me that the top window doesn't work; the top window doesn't open. Then Scott told me he looked it up online; he found a video that showed how it worked. He showed me the video. As I watched the demonstrator drop the bottom window into the room,  my immediate reaction was, 'Oh, this is for cleaning." But Scott said this was how the window worked. It was some weird model.   Returning it wasn't an option: it was a special order, and it was well over the 90-day limit. I had plans of going in on Monday morning to figure out how I got this weird model and make sure it never happened to anyone again. In preparation for that confrontation with Home Depot and possibly Milgard, I watched the video – and the one after it.

            When I watched the first video to the end, I saw that opening the windows that way, dropping them into the room was for washing purposes only. I had double-hung windows like that installed in my house in Ohio. I loved them. In Scott's defense, the demonstrator said, "This is how you operate this window," and he never said anything about washing them.  

            There was a second video that followed the first. That demonstrated the regular use of the window and the window washing feature. I called Scott to tell him.  

            Today was the third session with the Yoga Farms Ithaca workshop on the Awareness Keys to Excellent Living. Last week's key was noticing change, as in everything changes. In preparation for today's session, we were to listen to the Awareness Keys Primer Video. I was exhausted, probably due to the ozone injection, I had yesterday. I lay down to listen and fell asleep. I know me; if something interested me came on, I would wake to pay conscious attention. 

            Much of what the presenter was teaching was familiar. There was one bit that was helpful. I don't know what the bit was, but I remember what I got out of it. It wasn't something I hadn't thought of before; it felt new. It was probably from a different perspective. The thought: whenever we find ourselves being contrasted to others as not as good, we will have one of two immediate responses: anger or self-denigration. This insight was significant for me because I have been having a lot of angry responses. Some of this may be my preference for this feeling over the feeling of grief. Anger gives energy, fight. I remembered the clear insight: arrogant people believe they are better. It's a defense against not being good enough, but so is self-denigration. The latter serves to appease the 'superior' through submission.

            The leader discussed what was once thought of as the four Fs Fighting, fleeing, feeding, and mating. Which recently became the five Fs: fighting, fleeing, freezing, feeding, and mating. The presenter talked about a new F: fighting, fleeing, freezing, fawning, feeding, and mating. I thought of a seventh one: Fighting, fleeing, feeding, fawning, outfoxing, feeding and mating.