Shattered dignity?

I fell this morning over my elderly golden retriever who was deeply asleep on the steps to my office at the time. A case of not paying attention to what I was doing because I was trying to do too many things at once. So instead of edging out of my office door keeping the other two shut in I was already talking to the guys who had come to service the generator. My crashing tumble had a number of witnesses. The generator guys, my assistant, and a newly arrived client.

Landing heavily on my shoulder I rolled across the veranda. It was not a graceful flight to earth for I am not a small or light woman. More like timber coming down.

Stunned I lay there for half a moment very much aware that any dignity I might have had was in tatters. Then, as sometimes happens to me in such situations, I was overtaken by a fit of the giggles which exploded into full blown laughter. My audience seemed dumbfounded and uncertain as to which move to make next when confronted with a toppled accountant lying on her back laughing.

Eventually the laughter subsided and I was assisted to my feet and dusted down with much solicitousness.

I will have some spectacular bruises in the morning and my ankle is gently swollen. I have used it as an excuse to take the afternoon off and sit in the sun listening to Margaret Rizza's Light in our Darkness which soothed the last of my shattered dignity.

And if you should be wondering my beautiful "old boy" escaped the incident unscathed.

It's cold

I know it doesn't snow here and a lovely sunny winters day is around 18 C. Hardly cold at all by some standards. But cold enough in houses with out double glazing and central heating.

My best friend thrives in the cool. Energized and full of vigour. I just get miserable, and cranky and long for hot summer days. This year I am especially out of sorts as we had a long wet summer which wasn't any fun either. I am sitting snuggled with a warm cat on my lap feeling only marginally less chilled than since I got up this morning.

The weather has major effects on my mood, and just right now I am depressed and sad. Some of the grief arises from the death of my close friend and therapist a couple of months ago but some of it is definitely weather related. I am wondering how to reorder my attitude so that the cold does affect my mood so much.

But no bright ideas come to mind.

What do you do when the weather gets to you?

Magnolia mistiming

Today my magnificent magnolia is all but bare of leaves in the winter cold, but just a month ago it was flourishing and prolific with flowers. It occurs to me that magnolia's must flower in spring in the northern hemisphere, and mine keeps faith with that timing in the southern hemisphere but is then driven by the cold into winter and leaf loss. A case of mistiming. It does flower in the brief period that passes for spring here, but nothing like the magnificence of its autumn show.

It makes me consider faithfulness on one hand and inflexibility on the other.

It is faithful to its "programming" and flowers when magnolias flower. Just as in the heat of summer we in the south are faithful to the Christmas story with its winter images. Christmas to us usually means summer thunderstorms and baking heat and humidity, very alien to much of the imagery portrayed on European and American TV and in books. None the less we celebrate Advent and the Christmas Feast with as much joy and splendour as anywhere else in the world, observing the same liturgy as Catholics anywhere do. Much as my magnolia celebrates life by flowering in the autumn.

Yet, fortunately it is a grafted tree and so not expected to reproduce itself. The winter cold would kill off any seedlings that grew out of the bountiful autumn flowering. Perhaps inflexibility is not the right word, but a lack of adaptability to a different situation. The tree doggedly pursues its rhythm even when that seasonal rhythm makes no sense. I reflect this morning that sometimes I am like my magnolia and that I can't get in sync with the seasons, flowering when it is right and losing my leaves when the cold winds blow.