A piece of very good karma

The point of the kind of meditation we call zazen is to recognize what's happening.  That would be now.  I think it's important to make a point of acknowledging your good karma - that which maybe you lucked into, and also that which you created.  So this leads me to a small story.

Since I got home from my transplant surgery in mid-October, I have been plagued by the bird feeder that hangs outside the front door, visible from my seat at the kitchen table. We've had a warm fall, and for a while there the birds were keeping busy with berries.  They still visited the feeder sometimes, standing on the cardinal ring at the bottom and doing their best to get the last seed out of the bottom of the tube.  But last week it got colder.  The juncos were back, too, finding seeds the chickadees kicked over onto the ground.  So I worried about filling the feeder.

Worry because at first I didn't feel I could stretch up to get the thing.  But that passed.  Then I worried because my discharge instructions are explicit about birds - if you have pet birds, get rid of them:  they carry dangerous diseases.  So I knew I would have to wear a mask and gloves to handle the feeder, and it still made me nervous.

Skip the next paragraph if you are impatient with illness.
There's always much more to any story, and this one included the fact that my energy is still limited, and now I have to do all the driving, since Tom had that unexplained fall with amnesia.  We are guessing the neurologist is worried about the possibility of seizure, but of course the whole medical profession takes off Thanksgiving week, so we couldn't get an answer to our plaintive question, which would be, Do you really mean it, I can't drive?  Then there's the whole thing of trying to keep food in the house, trying to cook something, and trying to get back into an exercise routine.  I am definitely not as well as I thought I would be after six weeks.  So suiting up to do the feeder was going to be a thing.
Okay, enough.

But the other day - maybe Saturday, a good day, I did it.  Parka, mask, nitrile gloves.  Found the seed in the garage, in a blessedly convenient bag with a spout.  Went out and did it.  And I did it because I felt for the birds - so small and fragile, their lives so perilous even in good weather.

This morning I was rewarded, and that's my point today.  I was diligently eating my yogurt etc. to buffer the mean pills I have to take punctually at 8:00 (yes, that's a complaint too) and watching a chickadee eat with more appreciation than I was evidencing, when a downy woodpecker landed on the cardinal ring.  All birds are beautiful, well, some are a stretch, but the downy has a flashy broad stripe of red on his head.  His body is an intricate black and white pattern, inspiring one to question the idea of accidental creation.  The sight of him on that feeder, poking his long, sharp beak into the feeding slot, made me gasp.

I filled that feeder, and here was my direct reward.  Seldom is good karma so obvious.  And the sun's out today, again.  Now, at least.
[image:  a tube feeder with the shelf at the bottom called a cardinal ring.]

Some post-holiday advice

from Wikipedia on mood - 

According to psychologist Robert Thayer, mood is a product of two dimensions: energy and tension.^[2] A person can be energetic or tired while also being tense or calm. According to Thayer, people feel best when they are in a calm-energy mood. They feel worse when in a tense-tired state. People often use food to regulate mood. Thayer identifies a fundamental food-mood connection^[3] , and advises against the reliance on food as a mood regulator. The low energy arousal coupled with tension, as experienced in a bad mood, can be counteracted by walking. Thayer suggests walking as a means to enhanced happiness.

Not much to say here (people are not creative when in what psychologists call a "deactivating" mood, a term that makes me mutter bad words).  Maybe it's my mood, but I hate Thanksgiving.  It was the worst day of all in my dysfunctional family.  Most of them are dead now, even Nikki, my daughter's exchange student who died of a roadside bomb in Iraq - he wasn't even a US citizen yet.  I have pictures of that Thanksgiving.

So we could have gone to the church potluck, despite this attitude, but something like that is a germ-laden environment for me, and I am at my most vulnerable just now.  Hopefully (which, BTW, is a perfectly good word, whatever your English teacher told you), my immunosuppression can be lowered in six more weeks, and I don't have to be so afraid that some cook didn't wash their hands.

There was more to my mood than the dread cycling brought on by the steroids, which I understand won't be out of my system for another six weeks, if then.  Steroids are okay when you're on them - suppress pain, make you cheerful and energetic.  Getting off them, however . . . Back to the subject - I've been reading the best biography I've ever read, Mountains Beyond Mountains, the story of Paul Farmer and the organization he founded, Partners in Health. They work primarily in Haiti where, as of today, 1300 people have died of cholera.  No, the number is 1,523, according to the Miami Herald, where people are rightly worried that someone will carry this in to Miami.  Cholera is, however, an easily treated bacterial infection, if caught in time, if medicated, if you have medication.  It is passed through open sewers and contaminated water supplies.

Putting this book down, I did not feel it was funny, the cartoons and jokes about people stuffing themselves until they're half-sick at this annual parody of a harvest feast.  The merest attempt is made to express gratitude, get that over with. Then off to the store for a door-buster special on something you don't need that will not bring happiness.  It all struck me as a feast of greed and gluttony. 

If you're stuck for something to be grateful for - in view of the fact that you had to travel in horrible traffic in horrible weather, and spend time with your family, and now there's all that leftover turkey to do something creative with - you can be grateful that you can turn a tap and have safe drinking water.  You have a flush toilet and Clorox wipes to keep it clean.  No one you know has ever died of cholera.  Happy Thanksgiving.

If, on the other hand, you have that state of disillusion and disappointment too often brought on by these unholy days, the advice above is pretty good, I think.  Food won't cure you, walking won't hurt.

This morning I am soberly reading a blog (Chronic Positivity) by jsher, who's had more health problems than me, and who set out to specifically chronicle for family and friends what it was like waiting for, and getting, a transplant. He does this so well that it makes me think I don't need to do it, actually haven't with his kind of specificity.  So I'm wondering, what do I do here?  I wrote to him that I chronicle this journey through a Buddhist lense.  More of a spiritual journey.  Which is not from here to there, but here (again), now here (again.)

Right now "here" is time to stretch and meditate.  It will be six weeks Tuesday since the transplant, and I've beeen meditating and praying spontaneously at different times, but not with a discipline.  It has been a comfort to me to remember that Issan stopped trying to meditate as he was dying - too much work.  It is, when you feel exhausted.  And when mood is down, you have no motivation.  And these are explanations, or excuses.

Did it.  Time for breakfast.

Thank you, Pema

I suspect Pema Chodron is the second best-known Buddhist in America, for good reason - she is such a good teacher.  I have all her books, and used to listen to her on tapes.  Somewhere she told about her experience going through the long formal ceremony to become a Buddhist nun.  Afterward, she said, she was hot and tired, and had never been happier in her whole life. That struck me.  Really? I thought.

Today, Tom and I are both very tired - haven't caught up from the sleep lost Tuesday night when he was in the ER, though we've both had two good nights' sleep.  For me, fatigue from driving and walking those long halls.  Then there's the remaining uncertainty - was that fall caused by a seizure?  Is that possibility why the discharge instructions tell him not to drive until his followup with a neurologist? 

Wun used to have some mental structures around this kind of thing, believing, for instance, you won't be happy until you're well-rested.  I see in other people, too, that we tend to believe that maintaining a state of anxiety will protect us and maybe prevent the feared event, the next fall, the possible seizure.  I clearly remember my mother sitting by my brother's hospital bed when his back had blown out, staring at him fixedly for hours, frowning.  Magical thinking. 

Prayer can help, I know, though I believe the rules of the material world generally hold sway.  But I doubt that worrying and ruminating are of any help. And anxiety is not the same as caution, and may interfere with reasonable precautions.

Anyway, my take on it is that you don't have to have a perfectly desirable situation to be happy.  That's what Pema says, and I like it.
~~~~~
image:  Edge of our back yard last week, looking over the ravine.

Home is the sailor, home from sea

update:  The doctors discharged Tom yesterday, having found nothing on the many high-tech tests they ran.  No cardiac problem, no evidence of stroke.  Then why did he not remember falling down Tuesday, and why was he dazed for half an hour afterward?  Well, seizure is still a possibility, they say.  On the other hand, if you fall and strike your head just right, around the temple, it can be this traumatic.  Now we are waiting to hear from the doctor as to whether the discharge instructions are right - no driving.

The fall was Tuesday afternoon, then there was ER until 1:00 a.m.  Then Wednesday, me driving for the first time since my transplant.  Thursday, fear and exhaustion switched me into running on adrenaline.  I avoid making that self public.  Here's where some practice in self-discipline comes in handy:  when the doctor comes in, not pausing to use the hand sterilizer that is inside every patient room, and extends his hand to shake yours, you don't snarl.

I said, not for the first or last time, "Sorry, I'm immuno-suppressed."  Umm, yes.  And it turned out he did know I was post-transplant, by the way.  I hate to do this.  People seem to feel hurt, that they've made a mistake.  The alternative is to carry hand sterilizer, which I do, and meticulously not touch your face until you use it . . . As it was, I was acutely aware that I was in a hospital, the source of MERSA, and not wearing a mask as long as I was in Tom's room.  A mistake, I think, since hospital people are constantly in and out.  (Follow this link to see how serious MERSA is - you are virtually thrown back into the pre-antibiotic era. Be glad every day that you don't have it.)

All this made me acutely aware that you can lose someone you love - or your health - or anything, in a flash.


On a much lighter note - 
I had spread the news of Tom's hospitalization through a brief status update on facebook.  Good friends came forward right away, sitting with us in the ER, offering healing energy and rides, bringing Tom flowers at the hospital, calling him.  And a woman we know socially through church specifically offered food, asking if we had any dietary restrictions. Six hours later, home from the hospital, exhausted, we opened the front door to find she had left us six servings of a wonderful, nourishing soup, and a loaf of ciabatta bread as well. Again and again, since Laurie offered the kidney, gifts have come from unexpected places.  And what I realized from this, as I ate the soup with great enjoyment, was how much gratitude is like love, thus what good karma generosity creates for the giver.

Don't even think it

I just spent ten minutes searching for a button that would say

When this is over, I'm going to have a nervous breakdown.

I remember that saying.  Didn't it go on -
I've earned it, and nobody can deny me.

Really, I like the humor in that.  But this is all I could find. And maybe the idea of breaking through your habitual mind to a difficult/different reality  is a good one.

This is that now it's Tom in the hospital - went in through the ER Tuesday night, on doctor's orders - getting all kinds of cardiac and neurological tests.  He took a fall that left him dazed, and which he can't remember.  The amnesia is a red flag.  The doctors are "leaning toward" a diagnosis of a seizure related to his post-polio syndrome.  If it's that, he will not be allowed by Ohio law to drive for six months.  I'm guessing they will need proof that seizures are under control.  But it could be some other mental event, TIA or stroke. 

He is not "himself" - usually a quiet, reserved introvert, a listener, he became very talkative and outgoing once his confusion left.  A whole new person.  It reminds me of the way my mother was after her first stroke.  He had an MRI last night, and hopes they will have a diagnosis this morning.  I'll drive to the hospital in the van, in case they do release him.

Well, there you are.  A surprise, turning your world upside down, the way sudden sickness does.  I went from being a talker to a listener, from being a convalescent to being in charge.  Will this transform into an emotional storm once we have an answer and he is home?  I don't know.  Right now I feel like myself, an efficient mode I get into if planning a big party or doing a program.  Who knows who either one of us is?

It has helped a great deal to be aware whenever my mind goes to imagining possible futures, like a series of strokes, and to be able to pull it back to the present.  I know from experience that no matter how I try to pin it down conceptually, I have never been able to predict the future.  Just being here is easier when you have lots of things to do and remember, and a book on your Kindle for quiet times. 

Of course, just being here is what we have done in meditation year after year - practice being with the present situation, your breath, your pain or itch etc., practice bringing the wandering mind back from its fantasies.  Okay, that's my lecture.  Meanwhile, off to the lab for my Thursday 10 a.m. blood draw, then to the hospital.

Signs of life

I am happy to see the snow juncos back, though they signal winter's coming.  And I am happy to notice myself thinking hard this Sunday morning about political action.  I haven't had the energy for that in at least five years.

I began by thinking about the young people I have known through the transplant and dialysis e-lists who blow out a transplant.  College age kids who want to live like their peers, getting drunk and doing drugs, which is called "partying" these days, neglecting their studies and assignments and then staying up all night to do them.  I thought, How these kids need a new peer group, need to make radically different friends - and there are some sober, mature kids to be found.  I thought, Wun could start something like that.  As it is, we don't even have a general support group for us new abdominal transplants in this city of a million - it apparently withered away.

My thoughts went to the national Opt-Out Law, which does not yet exist. Currently, you get a chance to donate your organs when you apply for a new driver's license; you have to opt in, that is, say Yes.  Otherwise, the heart, pancreas, two kidneys, liver, corneas, and I don't even know what all will be buried or burned with you.

An Opt-Out Law would simply change the procedure so that if you don't want to donate after death, you have to say that.  I don't know whether this exists anywhere but in a kidney doctor's dreams, but it sounds simple.  (A quick search found that such a law was introduced in New York state, but I didn't find anything to say it passed.)  Thousands of people die every year waiting for a transplant.

I thought about how I would seek out a legislator and talk to them - someone has to introduce this as a bill, I think (more study is needed), and surely it should be federal.  I thought how I would point out the financial advantage to oh, everyone, but especially the US budget.  Medicare is covering 80% of the cost of my transplant, or about $144,000.  That cost will be made up in less than three years, since dialysis costs about $60,000 a year, and that's just the basic cost.  People on dialysis usually have all sorts of health problems, more cost.  There is a greater social cost in a seriously shortened life span; and well less than half of those on dialysis are able to work, because it is an inadequate treatment.  But it's the savings that should make a good argument for a legislator.
~~~
later - A status update
Everyone I know tells me my color is so good - that's how pale and wan I was.  But I am noticing now the difference in my thoughts.  Even if only for an hour this morning, I was imagining taking action, doing something.  Thinking. 

This, too, will probably pass, as I ride the moodswings brought on by the massive doses of steroids.  This one bottomed out last Thursday, which found me irritable and pessimistic, wondering who I am, anyway.  Today, calm and happy.  Tomorrow the mood may go higher, and I'll be scattered and talking too much, though I try not to have expectations.  I mention this because I glossed over it in my last post, Oh yes, moodswings.  They're not fun and games - but still infinitely better than the alternatives.

Where I've Been

A week since I've posted.  I've been on a steep learning curve in terms of the new habits I've had to form.  One is being up and sensible by 8:00 a.m., when I take my first dose of immunosuppressant.  Then remembering the second, different, immuno at noon.  The third at 8:00 p.m., which it is right now . . .

Counting these, I take 40 prescribed pills every day, having to spend an hour once a week distributing them (and double-checking that they're right) into a special pillbox the major med pharmacy sent, with four slots for each day. 

I'm also taking 2 extra-strength Tylenol 3 times a day.  All told, that means pills at nine different times of the day.  I am supposed to use a prescription sort of mouthwash four times a day to prevent the mouth sores or thrush some people get from one of the immunos and the two antibiotics, but I confess to getting casual about it, and just using it at bedtime.  I need to get better about that.

First thing every morning you weigh yourself in near-identical circumstances (i.e. always naked, or always in pajamas), and write it down.  Evaluate:  if you've gained two pounds, call your nurse.  You're holding water, that could be a sign the kidney's not doing its job.  Then there's taking vitals four times a day - blood pressure, pulse, and temp - and writing it down.  If these are stable, you're not in rejection, a very real possibility in these first months.  Every day, enter one of yesterday's vitals on the electronic chart.  If one is weird, enter that. 

Being a scientist, Tom made a chart of all my vitals, and it showed us that every day I happen to catch one where my BP and pulse are too high, so Monday we'll be going to the cardiologist.  Maybe the immunos are interfering with the medicine that keeps me from going into atrial fibrillation again. The nurse instructed me exactly when to know it's time for the ER.  I told Tom that if another fib starts, get the squad here, they carry oxygen.  All this is scary, but there's only so much you can do about it.  On good days, I understand that fear is about a mental construct of a possible future, and that I am safe right now.  Also, the heart hospital is just short of being a Hilton.

I'm forgetting something.  Oh, go to the transplant center, which fortunately is only 15 minutes from us, and get labs drawn twice a week, exactly two hours from that first dose of immunos.  They're measuring lots of levels.  The important one is creatinine - mine is as good as yours, if you are a healthy person with no kidney damage.  All you need is one good kidney.  Remember that when you consider saving a life by being a live donor.

And then there's drinking three (3!) liters of water a day.  Trying to set up a system to make sure you do.  And getting refills from two distant and one local pharmacy.  Following the transplant e-list.  Trying to slowly, carefully increase activity.  I intend to drive tomorrow, a short trip, if the terrific pain in my right lower back keeps diminishing.  That was the result of very carefully trying a very basic exercise/balance class.  If I were Elizabeth Taylor's dog, someone would have clearly mapped out an exercise plan for me. 

Inbetween that you deal with the exertion of taking a shower, the super-exertion of washing your hair.  Eating.  Having clean clothes.  Order clothes online, because you have a swollen abdomen and need pants that are really loose.  Dealing with insomnia, caused by the immunos, and moodswings set up by the steroids.    And finally feeling the anesthetic and the steroids leave your system, which leads to a big uptick in pain.  No wonder I haven't balanced my checkbook or written thank-you notes.

And oh yes, daily very careful stretches/chi gong, and meditation.  Yes.  Important, second only to staying alive.  Very important.  It helps you remember that you are a little better every day - and this, too, will pass. 

Resenting the Cat

resentment: a feeling of indignant displeasure or persistent ill will at something regarded as a wrong, insult, or injury.  Merriam Webster

I once read a joking remark in a novel.  One man criticized another, and the second man said complacently, not “I resent that” but “I resemble that.”  Cool, I thought - admitting what others see as a fault, instead of our usual defensiveness/aggression right back.  Somewhere John Tarrant writes about this - people tell him he’s fat, he says.  His reply is, “Well, yeah I am.”  So why would you be upset.

When I look back at my sssssself, I am humbled by how often I resented some action or failure to act on someone else’s part.  Something I thought wrong about the way they treated me.

One of the flaws with that thinking was what you call Taking it Personally.  That is, you think someone is doing something to you when in fact, they just like to get drunk.  Or they gossip about everyone, or forget everyone’s birthday.  This is allied to the belief that you are the center of the universe, much in other people’s thoughts.  You can be very into that if you had a hyper-aware and critical parent, for instance.  But I also think we are born that way, concerned only about being fed, warm, and dry.

Moreover, you can think that other people should live up to your standards.  I did at one time resent a man at church whom I had entertained, and who said to me every time we ran into each other, “We’ve got to have you people over.”  I thought that would be nice, but the invitation never came.  After a while he was in danger of being put into The Difficult Person slot in my lovingkindness meditation (but there were other people in line ahead of him).  Finally, somehow I realized that this might be a cultural habit of speech, and what he meant was, I like you.  There could be a lot of reasons the invitation wasn’t forthcoming, including the fact that a lot of people just don’t entertain. 

Tom pointed out that resentment grows out of desire, such as my desire for that invitation.  Yes, desire again.  I suspect the antidote in this case - since I’m talking about problems with humans - is compassion.  Think deeply about that person, their constraints, all the possible reasons they didn’t invite you to their big party, reasons that may have nothing to do with you and everything to do with their generally scattered ways, or the fact that a lot of liquor will flow, and they know you don’t drink, or the fact that they think you don’t like one of the other guests, or . . . 

An odd example came to me just now, as Sheba forcefully yowled for a petting (and maybe thinks it’s lunch time).  When I was in college, I had a friend who was on the impulsive side.  Once she told me her cat had chewed one of her new kid leather pumps and ruined them, and when she discovered that she hit him. 

Since she didn’t catch the cat in the act, I said, “Susan, he wouldn’t have any idea what he was being hit for.” 

“I don’t care,” she said.  “I was mad.”  I don’t think she understood the nature of cats. I bet that leather smelled good to the cat.  It was the most natural thing in the world for him to chew on it a while.  He certainly didn't like being smacked, but I doubt that he was equipped to resent it.

Why not me?

Talking to a friend last night made me realize how accepting I’ve been about all this, the medical mistakes, the many discomforts of hospitalization, including dreadful food, the pain and difficulty doing the smallest things, the low-calcium event, the tremors and other side effects.  Now I have reason to think I have a UTI.  Hope it’s not in the new kidney - but I know that hoping won’t make any difference. It is not just my personal will and desire that’s running this convalescence, though I can take care of myself and take my meds on time.

Even five years ago this UTI would have frustrated and scared me.  But I know I’ve had a very good recovery so far, and that these things happen - when you take immunosuppressants, you get infections.  I have other helpful knowledge; having had many UTIs over the years, I know antibiotics kick them out.  But if I look back at the person I once was, any medical threat sent me into a very anxious state.

This relates to something I contemplated last week - my dislike of a really low mood.  I was alternating days low, fine, low, fine, and by “low” I mean absolutely flat and anhedonic, not able to take a walk in the sun, though I knew it would do me good.  Just trying to pass time, knowing that things change and I could start to feel better any time, at 6 pm, or next morning.  What I really didn’t like about the low moods was the tendency to pessimistic and cynical thoughts.  It reminded me unpleasantly of my father’s attitude.

The Witness in my mind knew the moodswings were predictable, as massive amounts of steroids slowly left my system.  Witness looked up endorphins and serotonin, which I was clearly lacking just then.  I couldn’t go jogging, and carbohydrates and chocolate weren’t working.  I didn’t know any other way to kick-start the neurotransmitters of feeling good.  So I called and made an appointment with one of the OSU resident shrinks, who would know whether I should have a medication.  That was last Friday.

Meanwhile, I was able to actually sat upright and meditate properly with the candle and incense I love.  During meditation my mind went to the issue of low moods, how I wished I could accept them without all these mental reactions like I hate feeling like this, this book doesn’t interest me either, everything on Netflix is stupid, I haven’t had one speck of joy today, I just want this day to end.  The Witness watched my mind do that, and we went back to my breath.

Then from my right brain, God bless it, came an image - of a becalmed sea.  Flat, smooth, motionless.  There was a little sailboat on it.  The verbal mind came in with the thought, If that boat doesn’t want to go anywhere, no problem.  It’s the desire to get somewhere that creates unhappiness.  I love my right brain.  It has been a friend to me in ways like this.

This seemed to qualify as another realization that emphasizing our desires just  makes us unhappy.

By the time I saw the doctor Wednesday morning I had had a series of just-fine days, no more lows, but was now being troubled by insomnia.  Another predictable event.  As a woman I met when I was in radiation therapy for cancer many years ago said, "Why not me?"  It took me years to understand what she meant - that  there's no reason she, or I, should be exempt from sickness, aging, and death.  And no reason to stop enjoying life when they hit.
~~~~~~~
postscript: With a new prescription for Ambien, I slept well last night.  What a difference that makes!


[image:  Spirit of Mystery, becalmed, by Pete Goss]

Accepting the reality, or Another good reason to sit Zen

I say "sit Zen" rather than meditate, because of the current vogue for meditation as a sort of spa treatment. In Buddhist practice we sit in order to know the nature of our own mind - that's one way to put it.  You sit quite still, alert and relaxed, and watch the thoughts that you get involved in, the impulses and cravings, the emotions - the world of your mind.  This is mindfulness.  When you realize you have strayed into one of your fictions, you return to concentrating on your breath.  And this combines with the wisdom of Buddhism to wear down your stories, or illusions, and bring you in touch with reality. 

I am making 13 years of practice with two teachers and many books and tapes sound simple, and boy, it isn't.

What inspires me to write today is a long talk I had with Karen, my nurse coordinator, yesterday.  To give you an idea of how complex recovery from a transplant is, I have to record my weight every morning first thing and my vitals (blood pressure and temp) four times a day.  If any of this goes haywire, it could indicate that rejection is beginning.  I get labs twice a week.  My creatinine is stable around 1, which is perfect, and means that however dragged out I feel, the kidney is working well to keep my blood clean. 

It's good to remind myself of that, because I am realizing that this will be slower than I think. I questioned Karen about the abdominal pain, and she says it will be about three months until it is gone.  Surprise. As for activity, yesterday I slowly walked about two city blocks, using my walker so I could sit down if I needed to, took a few pictures, and was exhausted the rest of the day.  I don't get to have a real sharp mind with that exhausted body - my brain seems to be another organ that is affected by all this.  Not "seems to be" - is.

I had read the story of a transplant patient who woke up delighted with how great she felt.  Wisdom says I am healthier than before, every organ in my body benefiting from that clean blood.  Now and then in all this I do have a certain clarity of mind that I just love, but overall it's been, let's see, huge side effects from the initial huge doses of steroids, then from the other immunosuppressants, then pain rising once the steroids wore off, then confusion and low moods and insomnia.  Okay.

Okay.  I carry the Zen koan "Every day is a good day."  I keep revising it mentally.  I think of my hospital roommate who lay flat for two months with a colostomy and feeding tube in her, and said to herself, "I'm still alive."  How can you call that a good day?  As I said, I carry that, and have written about it before.  Today I see from my north-facing window shades of yellow, gold, brown against a blue sky - another day of sun, and long shadows on the neighbor's house - I love the long shadows this time of year, both morning and late afternoon, when they are very distinct.  Maybe the question is, What can I do to make today a good day?
[image:  a neighbor's asters, taken yesterday]