I love dancing and I have since I was a little kid — dancing to musical comedy albums in my family’s basement.
I heard a lot about dancing back then because my first cousin Liane made it to Broadway, dancing in the original production of West Side Story.
While I knew I never would be a professional dancer, dancing was always an expression of joy that I loved to watch and to participate in as best I could.
When I went through many heart-related operations starting at age 10, one of my coping strategies was watching amazing and athletic dancing in movie musicals like Singin’ in the Rain, The Bandwagon, and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and musical compilation films like That’s Entertainment.
When I was in my 20s, I got very good at disco dancing, even though I had a fixed-rate cardiac pacemaker and had to rest frequently between dances.
I’ve taken lessons in tap dancing, swing dancing, and — most recently — tango dancing with my husband Michael.
As I’m writing about the obstacles I’ve overcome to participate in dancing, I’m feeling more confidence about the obstacles I need to overcome to put on my first show of original songs next month.
In order to do that, I’ll need to be dancing past several fears. What I’ve discovered about dancing is that partner dancing can be more fun than dancing alone, so I will rely on my partners in this enterprise (including my friend Jeanette who is helping me with ticketing and my videographer Riccardo Pearlman who is also teaching me how to play the drums). Since I did a lot of dancing alone when I was a small child, I need to remember that these people are eager to be dancing with me in this process.
Do you see any dancing in my images for today?
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On National Honesty Day, I can honestly say that I don’t understand why so many people keep dancing around the truth in politics.
There are times when life seems like a collection of bad movies. Today’s news headlines suggest that now is one of those times.
What seems like a bad movie is that I know that previous line will work no matter when you are reading this blog post.
Decades ago, when my personal bad movies were an unwanted series of sequels called Ann Goes to the Hospital, Part n,” I distracted myself by reading The Golden Turkey Awardsby the Medved brothers, which was all about bad movies.
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Somehow, reading about all those bad movies made me feel much better about living through my own personal bad movie. I remember being in the hospital recovering from my nth heart-condition-related surgery laughing out loud at the Medved brothers describing a flubbed line in an Ed Wood movie with Tor Johnson – “He’s as harmless as kitchen” (instead of kitten).
Lately, I’ve been trying to improve my personal movie by rewriting bad narratives including “Every time I shoot for the stars, I shoot myself in the foot.” That’s a bad movie of my own making and there is no reason to believe that my worst-fear scripts will come true.
After I got out of the hospital yesterday and rejoined the tour of the Georgia islands, I’ve been making up for lost time, which you can probably tell by my images for today.
Even as I’m making up for lost time, there is no way I have the time today to observe all those National Days. I don’t even have the time to check YouTube for a video.
There’s always time for me to express gratitude to you!
As usual, I’m winging it here this morning, which seems particularly appropriate on National Chicken Boy Day.
I’ll be winging it today as I facilitate two therapy groups and prepare to meet a new electrophysiologist/cardiologist tomorrow. Next week, I’ll be winging it down south for my vacation.
Do you see anybody winging it in my images for today?
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Winging it makes even more sense on National No Rhyme (Nor Reason) Day.
Orange you glad that this woman whose hair is silver and who often wears purple is winging it with spirit in the month of September?
Here’s what I find when I’m winging it on YouTube.
Any chance you’ll be winging it in the comments section, below?
Thanks to all who are winging it, here and now, including YOU.
We’ve all had transformative experiences — events that fundamentally change us.
Last month, I had a conversation about these transformative experiences with my son Aaron. He defined these experiences as demarcation points, where you know that you were different before and after they occurred. He could identify one transformative experience in his life so far and I could identify two in mine — one of which was his arrival on this earth 23 years ago. (The other was my first heart surgery at age 10 on November 22, 1963 — the day President Kennedy was assassinated.)
Apparently, I have provided a sort of transformative experience for some of my clients. My annual review, which I saw yesterday, quotes people saying that therapy with me has been “life changing.” That felt transformative to me.
I don’t expect that looking at the images in today’s blog will be a transformative experience, but who knows?
I think our new cat Joan’s arrival has been a transformative experience for Harley. Here’s Joan …
… still waiting for the transformative experience of being rid of that ?&&@!! cone!
Here’s something I find on YouTube when I search for “transformative experiences.”
Consider transforming this blog by leaving a comment about transformative experiences, below.
Gratitude always transforms my day into a better one, so thanks for sharing my experience, here and now.
Today, September 1, is National No Rhyme (Nor Reason) Day in the USA.
I started looking at and sharing National Days some time in July, and this is the first day where there seems to be no rhyme nor reason for any of the designations. Why do we need a day for any of these? There seems to be no rhyme nor reason.
Also, every other list of National Days I’ve seen has included some kind of food or drink. Therefore, when I ask on Twitter how people are going to celebrate the precious day, there seems to be a rhyme or reason for that question. For example …
Actually, the more I think about it, No Rhyme Nor Reason Day seems like the perfect day for me to head back into the hospital, since the nose balloon that we hoped would fix my cat-claw-Coumadin nose bleed doesn’t seem to be working. When things don’t work, it can seem like there is no rhyme nor reason to anything. Also, National Burnt Ends Day seems appropriate, since they’ll probably cauterize the end of my nose, where our new kitty Joan scratched me three nights ago.
Maybe there seems to be no rhyme nor reason for me to be writing this blog at 3:45 AM. However, I’m distracting myself because the Ear Nose Throat on-call doctor I spoke to on the phone at 2 AM suggested that I wait some hours before coming in to be seen. The Emergency Room at my hospital is all filled up, she said, and it would be better to wait until 5 AM to show up there and even better if I could wait for my scheduled 10 AM appointment in the ENT clinic.
Maybe the doctor thought there was no rhyme nor reason to my disappointment and discouragement about the balloon not solving the problem as we had hoped. I tend to catastrophize and assume the worst for no rhyme nor reason, and when I expressed my worst fear — that the doctors would not be able to fix this problem for me — she seemed to think there was no rhyme nor reason to my despair.
For no rhyme nor reason, just writing those words is helping me feel better, here and now.
For no rhyme nor reason, I can’t load more images from my phone for this blog post, so I’m going to switch to my laptop to finish creating it.
Is there no rhyme nor reason for these images in today’s post?
Sayings like “We grow through what we go through” help provide some rhyme and reason, don’t you think?
I love George Duke, so here’s “No Rhyme No Reason” from one of my favorite keyboardists, who left this earth for no rhyme nor reason too soon.
How not to be wrong starting a blog post? I’m just repeating today’s title and letting it flow from there.
“How Not to Be Wrong” is one of the books I’m reading/not reading on my two-week vacation from work.
Personally, I think I spend too much time thinking about how not to be wrong, which can inhibit what I say and do. These days, I’m embracing mistakes as learning experiences and spending less time worrying about the consequences of being wrong.
Granted, it’s very important for us not to be wrong about our health and safety — for ourselves and others. For example, if I forget to take my Coumadin and if I don’t eat a consistent amount of vitamin K, my mechanical heart valve might clog and fail. So I need to think about not being wrong about THAT every day. Also, there are a lot of creatures that depend on me, so I don’t want to be wrong in such a way that jeopardizes their future.
However, I’m not wrong about knowing myself well enough to choose to focus on accepting that I WILL be wrong, every day, and that not every mistake will result in disaster.
Do you see any examples of how not to be wrong in my other images for today?
How not to be wrong on August 26, 2021 MIGHT include having a cherry popsicle, but I don’t think I’m wrong in saying that women’s equality day should be every day.
By the way, usually I spend more time arranging the order of the images in my blog posts — is it wrong that today I’m not worrying about how not to be wrong in creating a good enough post for you?
Here’s what I find on YouTube when I search for “how not to be wrong”:
How not to be wrong about guessing how much time you have to watch a video today:
How not to be wrong about sharing your thoughts and feelings about any of my blog posts? Leave a comment, below.
How not to be wrong about any interaction with other people? Express gratitude when you can.
I want to tell about something beautiful that happened yesterday, when I went to a doctor’s appointment at one Boston hospital and then went to another Boston hospital for the first time since February to retrieve some beautiful items from my office and to see some beautiful co-workers. The main beautiful item I wanted to retrieve from my office was a collection of beautiful questions a beautiful person had put together for my Coping and Healing groups. After I got back to my beautiful home, I realized that the beautiful bag I had placed my beautiful items in had a big, beautiful hole in it, and that beautiful collection of questions was gone.
Then, I had a beautiful decision to make: should I take up more time during my beautiful vacation to look for those beautiful questions or just beautifully accept that my time with them was over?
I called the beautiful Lost and Found department of the big beautiful hospital, remembering that I had lost several beautiful items over the years (including my favorite beautiful red jacket) that had never been found. I struggled to come up with a beautiful description of the lost item: “It’s a collection of small rectangles with questions on them, held together with a silver ring.” The beautiful person on the phone said, “Wait a minute” and then returned with this answer, “Nothing like that has been turned in.” I asked, “Should I call again tomorrow?” and the beautiful person said, “Sure.”
Then, I spent more beautiful minutes trying to decide what to do next. I really didn’t want to get back into my beautiful car and drive in lots of beautiful traffic to retrace my steps. My beautiful husband could tell that I was very sad that I had lost those beautiful questions. He said, “Maybe it will turn up.” I told my beautiful son, who was ready to go on a beautiful walk with me, “I’m going back to try to find what I lost.”
When I got into my beautiful car, I realized that my beautiful Scream mask was also missing. I had put that beautiful mask in the beautiful bag with the big beautiful hole when beautiful people at the beautiful hospitals had told me I needed to wear the beautiful masks they were providing to their beautiful patients to keep them beautifully safe during this very unbeautiful pandemic.
When I parked my beautiful yellow car in the same beautiful place near a beautiful church in beautiful Brookline, Massachusetts, I saw my beautiful Scream mask on the ground, almost immediately. Then, I had beautiful hopes that I would find my beautiful collection of beautiful questions.
I retraced my steps with beautiful accuracy, looking everywhere for the collection of beautiful questions. I went back to the beautiful hospital where I work, returned to my beautiful office, took more beautiful photos, retrieved more beautiful items from my office, and met more beautiful co-workers. I talked to several beautiful people who I thought might be able to help me in my beautiful search, trying to share more beautiful descriptions of what I had lost. At one point, I said, “It’s a ring – no, not a jewelry ring, but a big silver ring holding together rectangles that have questions on them.” Everybody tried their beautiful best to understand my stumbling attempts to describe what I had lost, but nobody had seen or could find my beautiful questions. Knowing I had searched everywhere, I decided that some beautiful person had probably picked up the questions and might put them to beautiful use.
On my beautiful walk back to my beautiful car, I had beautiful thoughts about how we all deal with loss. Then, much to my beautiful surprise, I saw what I was seeking, as plain as the beautiful day, lying on a beautiful spot on the beautiful sidewalk where lots of beautiful people were walking. I knew that it had NOT been there when I had walked by that same beautiful spot before. I picked up the Lost and Found item with beautiful speed, placed it on a beautiful wall, and took this beautiful photo:
I am doing my beautiful best to follow the beautiful directions on that beautiful card: “Tell about something beautiful.”
Yesterday, when I was in an elevator at Tufts Medical Center, overloaded with awareness AND worry about being out and about during the coronavirus pandemic, I saw this:
Even though this blog might have an overload of photos of Dr. Salem, here is another one from my appointment with him yesterday:
During the coronavirus pandemic, frontline health workers like Dr. Salem have to wear an overload of Personal Protective Equipment. Dr. Salem, who has an overload of cardiology students wanting to work with him, told one of them yesterday that he always schedules me for his last appointment of the day because we have an overload of things to talk about. Yesterday’s overloaded conversation included
Dr. Salem’s personal experience of working with Dr. Anthony Fauci (who is “a very smart and very good guy”),
discussions of my having had the coronavirus in March and possible lasting effects of that,
scheduling an echocardiogram to make sure that there is no permanent damage to my heart because of COVID-19,
the possibility of Dr. Salem and I writing a book together,
my stating that Dr. Salem and I have an overload of respect and love for each other,
Dr. Salem saying, “I think you’re doing great,” and
scheduling our next overloaded appointment for the day after my 68th birthday in February.
Dr. Salem said he was interviewed on Boston TV recently about his experiences working with Dr. Fauci, but I can’t find that interview in the overload of videos out there about Dr. Fauci.
Here’s an overload of other photos from yesterday:
Michael overloads our plates with nutritious food, ever day.
Here‘s “Overload” by Zinnia, which has been loaded over 7 million times on YouTube.
I’m looking forward to an overload of comments, below.
As always, I have an overload of gratitude to all, including YOU.
