Monthly Archives: July 2015

Day 922: Thumbs

Because my thumbs are sore this morning  —  from typing so much on my iPhone keyboard — I am focusing on sayings about thumbs, including:

  1. “Thumbs up” (meaning approval)
  2. “Thumbs down” (meaning a negative judgment)
  3. “All thumbs” (meaning clumsy), and
  4. “Stick out like a sore thumb” (which is what my first heart surgeon told my parents my first cardiac pacemaker would do, when I was 10 years old).

Pain makes things stick out like a sore thumb, so it’s no wonder my mind is thumbing through  thumb-related associations and memories.

My calves are sore too, today, but I can’t think of any sayings about calves. If you can, I certainly won’t thumb my nose at that.

Are there any thumbs in the photos I snapped yesterday, always using my left thumb?


No thumbs to be seen in that photo, but I am giving a big thumbs down to myself for leaving my car’s moonroof open during a night of rain.


Something’s up in that photo, but it’s not a thumb.

I can see several thumbs in that last photo. Can you?

No thumbs there.

See that guy, to the left, holding his thumb at his side? He’s wearing a New York Yankee shirt and hat, right next to Boston’s Fenway Park. Moments later, two Boston fans verbally thumbed their noses at him, with

“You’re in the wrong city, buddy.”


There he is again, after that thumbs down.

Speaking of thumbs down, that’s how I feel about one of my favorite Starbucks baristas, Kevin, leaving the Boston hospital where we both work.


Kevin is using his thumb to put the going-away card I just gave him into his apron pocket.


Thumbs up to Kevin for  going to another Starbucks closer to where he lives and thumbs up to Alex, for staying.

Personally, I give two thumbs up to these next two photos, from where I work:

Thumbs up or down to any of these photos I took after work?


  
  
  
That’s Tom, who said he’d give me a thumbs up if I contributed just $1 to a campaign to fight hunger.

Here’s Tom’s  reaction


… when I told him I’d thumbed over five times that amount.


There’s one of the nice guys who works where I park my car near Fenway Park. I gave him a thumbs up for putting my car near that door, so I could make a quick escape.

I always give two thumbs up to spending a Friday evening with my 17-year-old son Aaron and my 50-something-year-old boyfriend, Michael. Last night, I used my thumbs on the steering wheel of my cat* to drive us to Harvard Square in Cambridge. A big thumbs up to all the fun we had there.


  


  


  

After I used my thumbs to eat a “Longy School of Music” ( not pictured) and was all thumbs enough to spill some of that Smores Frappe (pictured) on myself, we went next door to the Harvard Book Store, where we thumbed through lots of books:


  
  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  

  

  
I bought one of those dozens of books, pictured above . A gigantic thumbs up to anybody who can guess which book that is.

What thumb-related music am I using for this all-thumbs post?

Here’s a hint:

It’s “Thumbelina” from the movie, Hans Christian Andersen!

My thumbs are too sore for me to give a proper thumbs up to all who helped me write this post, so I’ll just say


to them and to you, too!


* That’s a typo. I drove my car to Harvard Square, not my cat.

Categories: gratitude, personal growth, photojournalism | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 58 Comments

Day 921: Messages

Has everybody gotten the message that I love my work — doing group and individual therapy at a Boston hospital-based primary care practice ?

Part of that work involves helping people let go of  esteem-damaging messages they’ve heard from others (and internalized), including

You haven’t accomplished enough

You’re never good enough

Parts of you are unacceptable

You’re not worthy of love

I encourage people to challenge these toxic and habitual messages with health-promoting, affirmative messages, such as

I deserve to be seen, heard, and loved, exactly the way I am.

What kinds of messages do you give yourself?

At work, I receive lots of messages, every day, through email and voicemail.

Yesterday, I received one of the best voicemail messages, ever:

My doctor said you were good at talking to people who are not good at talking to people.

What messages do you get from these photos I took yesterday, before and after I heard that voicemail message?


  
  

 
  
  



Here’s some message music for you all:

The first public performance of “Message in a Bottle” by The Police is still sending out messages here, on YouTube.

Any messages — bottled or otherwise — you’d like to cast up on the shores of this post?

I hope you get the message that I’m grateful for people I work with, for my bf Michael (who cooked me something delicious when I got home last night at 9 PM), for Edmund Bourne (who wrote a great book about letting go of unhelpful messages), for Yankees, for ducks, for dogs, for cats, for bicyclists, for  flowers, for bright colors, for The Police, and — of course — for you!

Categories: personal growth, photojournalism, Psychotherapy | Tags: , , , , , , | 39 Comments

Day 920: Honeys

First thing, yesterday morning, I snapped three photos of a honey of a cat:

Then, on my walk to a honey of a job, I captured a honey of a Fenway Park mascot:


At work, as busy as a bee, I met with people —  in individual and group therapy — trying to change unhelpful thought and behavior patterns (which can be sticky, like honey).


During my walk away from work — through a warm and humid afternoon — I heard a honey of a song:

“Slow like Honey” by Fiona Apple

… also here in a live version

… which was a  sweet match for the heavy mood outside, where people moved slow, like honey.



Later in the day, I discovered this honey of a poem that Maria F. — a complete honey of a WordPresser — had written about me in the comments section of yesterday’s post:

‘Honeydew News’

“Your beautiful images of your whereabouts

Chime with details that make the difference.

.
Show us your journey

Your Heart’s desire

.
Filling our glasses with psychic elixir

To enjoy a ride

.
In this cyber cafe

of life-long choices

.
To accompany you outdoors-

and indoor’s, and meet sublime

.
Memorabilia of stunning voyage

Return to life just tonight…

.
and remind me of glittering lives

Yes, of bursting, yellow, honey beehives.

.
-M. Firpi

.
I couldn’t copy that amazingly sweet, wonderfully beautiful  honey of a poem perfectly just now, with my iPhone keyboard.

Because of the work I am doing with a honey of an EMDR therapist — where I am letting go of my own sticky-like-honey, unhelpful thought patterns — I know that sweet Maria F.  will forgive those imperfections.

Here are more Heart’s-desire photos I captured, during my day:


  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Most of those photos were taken at the honey of a home of my honey of a classmate, Darlene. Several of us gathered outside, yesterday evening, planning a 45th high school reunion — protected from mosquitoes, ants, and other non-honey-producing insects by some fresh basil on the table (not pictured, my honeys).

Our honey of a class president, Peter, was there at the reunion-planning meeting, visiting from the land of Michigan — 877 miles away, as the honeybee flies.

Here’s some honey-tinged memorabilia — a 1967 photo of the officers of our 9th grade class:

I’m hoping that my honey of a friend, Lawry Siskind, who lives in the Bay Area of San Francisco (3000 miles away,  as the sweet honeybee flies)  can attend our high school reunion in September.

Okay! Are you going to leave a honey of a comment about this post? Bee yourself, please!

Sweet thanks to Maria F., Fiona A., George S., Lawry S., Darlene B., Peter M., all the other reunion planners from last night (including Peter B., Butch B.,  Tom O., Karen E., Maria C., Janice P.,  and Sandy T.), cats and dogs (with or without last-name initials), and special, honeydew thanks to you — of course! — for buzzing by here, today.

Categories: gratitude, personal growth, photojournalism | Tags: , , , , , | 40 Comments

Day 919: The News

Is it news to you that the news in these posts includes what’s news to you and also to me?

New paragraph: What are your associations with “The News”?

Here are some new and old associations of mine, with “The News”:

 

Here’s news to me: the Woody Herman Band did a cover version of “I Got the News”!

News flash! As I’m typing this post on my iPhone, Oscar


is chewing on my arm.

The latest news: Taking that photo seemed to stop him.

Before Oscar starts up again, here’s all the news from the photos I snapped yesterday:


                              
What news do you see, in those photos?

More news, before this post becomes old news:

  • This morning, I’m facilitating a therapy group in a new room, because there are too many people signed up to fit in my office.
  •  This afternoon, I am having an Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy session, to have new, healthier reactions to old memories.
  • Tonight, I’m facilitating a planning meeting for my 45th high school reunion.

In case the word “facilitating” is news to anybody, it just means “making an action or process easy or easier.”

Final news of this post: Today, WordPress isn’t facilitating my use of quotes in text the way it usually does. I wonder if that’s headline news to anyone?

New thanks to my family, Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, Steely Dan, Michael McDonald, the Woody Herman band, Oscar, everybody who attends my therapy groups, my high school classmates, the Fenway Park area of Boston, people who practice EMDR, Yarrow and other magicians, dogs, flowers, parkers,  WordPress, facilitators everywhere, and you — of course! — for whatever news you bring here, today.

Categories: personal growth, photojournalism | Tags: , , , , , , | 57 Comments

Day 918: Tangled up

Yesterday morning, these earphones …

… got tangled up, and it took me a while to untangle them before I left for work.

Immediately, some music got tangled up in my head.

Then, those same earphones got Tangled Up in Blue (and other colors):


Next, I got tangled up in traffic,


  
… tangled up in some confusion,


  

… tangled up in love for my friends and co-workers Jan and Mary,

… and tangled up in many found objects  (some of which were blue):




  
  


      
  
  
  
  
  




Before I get too tangled up in today’s post, I want to untangle these things:

  • The  beautiful, untangled necklace was worn by Linda, one of my favorite people at the hospital-based Primary Care Practice where we work.
  • Mary, a clinical social worker like me, told me a few weeks ago, “I’ve been doing this experiment where I look for a specific color in my surroundings, and it’s amazing how everything with that color then pops out at me!”
  • I’m not sure whether my recent cardiac surgery is helping me feel significantly better, but I’m sure I’ll untangle that and other heart-related issues when I see my chief cardiologist, Dr. Salem, eight days from now.
  • As much as I admire the incredible accomplishments of Bob Dylan, I am  tangled up in surprise that I don’t love his music and lyrics more than I do.

What are you tangled up in, right now?

Tangled-up thanks to Mary, Jan, Linda, Bob Dylan, Dr. Salem, my earphones, cats, bunnies, and  everything blue (and non-blue)  I got tangled up in yesterday. Also, special thanks to you — of course! — for untangling yourself enough to visit here, today.

Categories: personal growth, photojournalism | Tags: , , , , | 43 Comments

Day 917: How we touch the ground

I spent some time yesterday test-driving cars and exchanging a pair of new shoes for ones that fit me MUCH BETTER.

This morning, I woke up thinking this:

When we move around, we touch the ground through (1) our feet or (2) wheels.

Are there are other ways we touch the ground? Feel free to touch down below this post, with a grounding comment.

Whenever I touch upon a blog post topic, that seems to touch and transform  all the photos I’ve taken recently, with new meaning.

How did I touch the ground yesterday?


                                                                                        
Which photos touched you, down to the ground?

Here’s some touching music to ground this post:

Katrina and the Waves are “Walking on Sunshine” there, on the Tonight Show.

One more thought I care to touch on, before I touch the “publish” button.

No matter how many ways we touch the ground, there are so many ways we touch each other.

Thanks to all who helped me create today’s post and to you — of course! — for touching ground here, today.

Categories: personal growth, photojournalism | Tags: , , | 46 Comments

Day 916: Get closer

Get closer

What are your associations with that simple, two-word phrase?

Get closer and I’ll tell you some of my associations with

Get closer

Every moment, we each get closer to the end of our lives on earth. Our best hope is to get closer to our authentic selves, to whatever we value, and to each other.

Yesterday — as the day was getting closer to sunset and my bf Michael and I  got closer to seeing  July 4 fireworks — I took this photo.


By the end of the day, I did get closer to Harley:

Before I get closer to showing you some photos of fireworks, please get closer — so you can see these earlier photos, closer and closer to where I live:


  
  
  
  
  

Which of those photos say “get closer” to you?

When Michael and I got closer to the Newton, Massachusetts fireworks last night …


… the Newton Police didn’t want us to get closer than that.

However, we were able to get closer to those fireworks than I did, last year, in Boston.

As I get closer to the end of this post, I continue to get closer to Michael, who just said,

If you already know, you can’t learn.

Does that help you get closer to anything?

Get closer, so you can see these photos I took last night in Newton Massachusetts, at that closer July 4th celebration:


  
  


  
  
  
Get closer, so I can get closer to explaining how I chose

Get closer

for today’s post title.


If you get closer, you’ll see that

Get closer

is in the lower right of our TV screen.

Here are more shots of the Boston fireworks last night, with

Get closer

always in the same place on the screen:


  
  
  
  
  

  
Now I need to get closer to choosing some “Get closer” music for this post.

The closer you get to me, the more you know I like guessing games. Which of those versions of “The Closer I Get to You” — the original with Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway or the remake with Beyoncé and Luther Vandross — gets closer to 4 million views on YouTube?

I don’t think I can get closer to begging for a comment, do you?

In closing,  thanks to all who helped me create this get-closer post (including my downstairs neighbor Karen, her dog Faxy, and Karen’s daughter’s guinea pigs Sam and Pam , whose names get closer to each other’s) and even closer thanks to you — of course! — for getting closer, here and now.

Categories: personal growth, photojournalism | Tags: , , | 38 Comments

Day 915: Look at me!

Before I got my current job as a psychotherapist at a major teaching hospital in Boston, I worked for 12 years at a group-oriented  psychiatric day program — first as a clinician and then as the director.

Look at me! I’ve been a group therapist for over 16 years!

The staff at the psychiatric day program often noticed something we called

See me/Don’t see me

Here are other ways I’d describe that very common, human way of behaving, right now:

  • Fear of being exposed
  • Yearning for attention/fear of attention
  • Accepting parts of self/rejecting others
  • Trying new and unfamiliar things/the shame reaction
  • I deserve attention/I am not worthy of it

See me/Don’t see me, in this post!  I already have mixed feelings about how I’m writing it.

Look at me! I’m digressing from the big news of this July 4, 2105 blog post.  Yesterday,  I had the day off from work and I went to see the musical Newsies in Boston. 

Look at me! I’m in Harvard Square, on my way to Newsies. 




  

   


Look at me! I took a picture of Peet’s in Harvard Square, where my bf Michael and I first looked at each other five years ago  (after writing each other daily for two months online at OkCupid). 
Look at me, back on my way to see Newsies!



  
  

  

  
  
      

Look at John! He’s one of the security guys at the Boston Opera House. He used to work as a parole officer and he told me, “My wife tells me to smile in pictures, but I say, ‘That hurts!'”

Look at me,  at yesterday’s matinee performance of Newsies!


  

Look at me showing you how the lead role of Jack Kelly (played by Christian Bale in the 1992 film) was performed  by an understudy, Michael Ryan.

Look at me! I don’t have any pictures of Michael Ryan and how AMAZING he was, including his grateful tears when we all gave him a standing ovation at the end of the show.

Look at these photos I took on my way back home, after seeing Newsies:


  
  


  

Look at me! I just spent an hour looking for this video made 8 years ago by three girls in the United Kingdom, performing “King of New York,” my favorite song from Newsies:

If you look at that video on YouTube, you’ll see that I wrote a comment four years ago, and they answered me!

Look at me! I forgot to mention that “King of New York” includes the line

Look at me! I’m the King of New York.

Look at all these people performing “King of New York”!

Look at you! What do you think of this post today? Look at me —  as usual,  I’m looking for comments.

Thanks to everybody I’ve ever worked with in group therapy, to Newsies, to Michael, to OkCupid, to security guy  John, to understudy/star Michael Ryan, to Harvard Square, to Boston, to all those  who have ever sung or danced to “King of New York,” to all the kings, queens, princes, and princesses I saw in Cambridge and Boston yesterday, and special thanks to you — of course! — for looking here, today.

Categories: personal growth, photojournalism | Tags: , , , , | 56 Comments

Day 914: What the hell is happening?

Last night, at a therapy group, people expressed fear, confusion, and concern about things they experienced around them.

Somebody asked, “What the hell is happening?” and that became the topic of

  • the group exercise and
  • today’s post.

What the hell is happening, in these photos?



   

  
  
  
  


  


  
  
  

  

What the hell is happening, here,  in the song “For What It’s Worth” by the Buffalo Springfield?

What the hell is happening where you are?

What the hell? I’m very thankful to all who helped me create this post and to you — of course! — for reading it.

Categories: personal growth, photojournalism | Tags: , , , , , | 53 Comments

Day 913: It takes one to know one

When somebody gives me a compliment, I often reply:

It takes one to know one.

I believe that, too. Seeing a positive attribute —  like kindness, generosity, humor, or creativity —  means you have some of that quality, also. Otherwise, you wouldn’t recognize or value it.

Yesterday, at an EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) therapy session. I said

It takes one to know one

in a very different way, about a painful and persistent memory from when I was a child in the hospital.

As I’ve described in a previous post, a very unkind, ungenerous, humorless, and non-creative Doctor Hyatt, in 1963, responded to my telling him I was in excruciating pain by:

  • calling me a “spoiled brat”
  • refusing to help in any way,
  • saying, “You’re just doing this for attention and there are really sick children here!” and
  • leaving me alone, in my hospital room.

Then, I was

  • still in pain,
  • shamed, for expressing pain,
  • worried that I had somehow caused  harm to the sick children all around me, and
  • horribly confused by why an adult had gotten so angry at me, when  all I had done was try to survive.

In some ways, I have spent my whole life, since then, trying to figure out and let go of that experience.

Yesterday, in EMDR therapy, I revisited that encounter with Dr. Hyatt, and I

  • beat the stuffing out of a pillow,
  • yelled, “You’re fired!” and
  • replied to being labeled a spoiled brat with “It takes one to know one!”

After that session, I hope to be less inclined to fear other people suddenly becoming angry at me, for no reason.

You know?

It took one to know one, yesterday, in these photos I took, one after another:


                                            
It takes one music-lover to know one wonderful piece of music, heard yesterday on one car radio, after that EMDR session:

One performance of Pachelbel‘s Canon on YouTube has taken WAY more than one to know one —  that video has over 24 million views.

One more one thing to know: it takes one blogger to know one (or more) reactions from you, with gratitude.

Knowing thanks to my EMDR therapist, George, to everybody else who contributed to my creating this post, and to you — of course! — for visiting here, today.

Categories: personal growth, photojournalism | Tags: , , , | 57 Comments

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