Midpoints

Today is the last day of the first half of the year. It is also Canada's birthday as well as mine. I am quite pleased to share a birthday with a country we resemble less and less every day. According to the daily horoscope column in The Washington Post, the next year will go as follows. I do not think this applies to countries, but if Canada wants to share it with me I'm cool.

This year, you open up to many new ideas. You might not be ready to live them out, but your parameters around life are changing. If single, the person you choose to date today might be quite different from the person you would choose a year from now. Do not make any commitments unless you are 100% sure. If attached, your sweetie needs to understand where you are coming from more often. Take the time to explain. Let your sweetie know they are valued and include them in your outside life as well. Gemini reads and understands you well.

I'm not sure what, if anything, all that means. What does including my sweetie in my outside life really mean? Would that be outside my relationship with that person? Should I not hide anything from him? I don't really hide much at all of anything in which he'd be interested. The not making commitments part is really the most understandable one and one to which I really should pay more attention.

"If you were born this day" aside, I usually use this post to look back at the pesky resolutions I made for the year now halfway gone. Here we go. (I actually have to look back at what I wrote on December 31, 2018, to know what specific resolutions I made.)

The second (saving the best/worst for last) was to do one artsy-crafty project each month. That would mean six. I did finish two of the three quilts I put in this year's guild show; if adding a hanging sleeve can count as a finish, that would made three. I also finished two small quilts that are supposed to be delivered today. Once I hear that they have been, I will post photos of them. They were a joy to make, made out of love as much as skill. I can't think of anything else that would count as "finished," which I guess leaves me one short, but I'll take that.

Third was to complete a wellness challenge through the university that employs(ed) me. The challenge was to do a certain number of strength training sessions each month as well as another number of 15-minute meditation or otherwise "quiet" time. Those flew out the window in the abyss that was May. (I've actually started but not yet finished a post about that dark time.) I may also have quit my work position. I actually did send in my resignation, but the boss-lady persuaded me to call it a three-month sabbatical and give her a final answer at the end of August. I do hope to get back to the strength training and meditating, but at least the strength training has to wait until I've recovered from the pneumonia currently wreaking havoc on my body.

Fourth was to do things at a slower pace and not feel as if I needed to keep up with other people. This is a hard one to assess given the times in which I legitimately had no real time in which to make a decision or do something. I'll call this one a work-in-progress.

Next was to waste less time. I've struggled with this one in the last couple of months. Twice I've installed then removed a solitaire app from my phone. It was too easy to fill waiting time with the  mindless moving of cards. I then find myself spending too much time on Facebook or reading news sites, but I'm working on this one as well as the slowing-down one.

So the first resolution, and the biggie, was to get back into some reasonable shape without hurting myself. I was working hard at it until May happened followed by the pneumonia currently wrapping up (or so I hope) after a week on antibiotics. That has taken more out of me than I would have thought. I get out of breath reading something aloud or taking even a short walk. In other words, I'll be starting over yet again.

As for May, in the event I don't get back to finish the post I've started, I went through my mom's being hospitalized, having emergency surgery to remove a fungal mass from one of her sinuses, being admitted to hospice care with a total intestinal blockage, leaving hospice care when said blockage somehow disappeared, moving to a nursing home horribly depressed only to start to recover when she finally agreed to start physical and occupational therapy. Along the way, she has an offer on her condominium unit leaving me to clean and empty it. Things progressed, and by mid-June the husband and I were scouting assisted living options. I'd had a cold and cough for two weeks when the husband basically dragged me into Med Express where I was diagnosed with pneumonia and told to be glad I'd come in when I did, because of how bad it was. The antibiotics end tomorrow, though the cough remains, and I can feel that my lungs are still somewhat not all there. All that said, the next two months have to be better than the last two, eh?