I know I will regret all the mean things I said about Winter as soon as July hits Maine. I moved to Maine to escape the soggy summers of New Jersey. I hate the heat and humidity and can get behind a climate that is mostly mud and dampness and wood stove weather, as long as it’s not hot for too long. I love it that you still have to run the woodstove into June and that sometimes there is a bit of freezing weather at the end of August. Of course, with climate change, the nature of the “normal” seasons is changing and I will be faced with the choice of getting over it or moving further north.

First, about the name

I never paid much attention to this strange nickname. Some of his clammer friends, men Don worked with in the bay, began calling him Hodaddy and I figured it was just some form of male bonding weirdness. Probably thinking it was related to a hoe, just another tool for digging clams? Who knows? I didn’t really care what he was called by his male friends — locker room talk, right? Besides, I rarely worried about his morals. Don was and is a good person. And I love him.

Ok, so I overate in all categories last night. We were invited to our friends’ house for supper. I was in need of some fun and had an extra glass of wine, then another, then ate half the box of ice cream. (As my hosts looked on aghast?) That was Jean in party mode. Now it’s over and I need to move on. After seventy-some years, I have accumulated some experience and wisdom about this situation. I no longer waste time beating myself up for food already eaten. I try to figure out a way to help myself.

Someone said once that February is a month cut short a few days because by the end of it you don’t think you could stand another freaking day. I won’t go that far. February has been OK so far. Snowy, icy cold, boring, not much to do outside, not much to get excited about. But, I don’t think it’s exactly the fault of the month. Besides if I continue in this vein, I may end up wishing the rest of the year away.

I just wish I had something exciting to look forward to. Like a vacation. Or a new

I find that I am eating better this week. Yesterday we gave the remaining cookies to the birds, put the candy away, and gave away the second half of my only stollen this year to a good friend. Despite my sincere intentions to stop eating the wrong stuff and to give things away whenever I had the opportunity, I found myself almost mourning the loss of this little fruit-and-nut-studded half-a-loaf. What is up with that? Giving bread to a friend needn’t be painful, but it felt that way. The Stollen I make at Christmas is a symbol of the joys of the season, is carefully sliced and presented, mainly from me to me, as a treat each morning of the holiday.

I have always enjoyed celebrating each new month and season. I like to mark the start of something, maybe it’s just a small excuse to celebrate. Recently, I have been paying extra attention to the changing of the seasons because of a new writing project I’m involved with. So, writing about each month as it arrives has been a thing. But darned if I felt inspired to write about January.

I searched for many years for a spiritual practice, not realizing that my love of playing music on the piano could provide this for me. Now they have become one and the same. I can see benefits in my spiritual growth as well as my piano playing from this habit. I practice the piano not as a chore but as a devotion. The act of doing it day after day is a gift for myself and the world. Through the very concrete act of gradually building my skills with music, I am learning to know myself better. The practice gives me the chance to push toward goals, to try and fail, and get back up again, over and over. To treat my struggles with patience and kindness. To be grateful for my opportunities and accept my limitations.

It’s bad enough that everyone under fifty thinks we are senile, helpless, and boring. Sometimes, all we have to keep us going is our own belief in ourselves. It is critical that older people take care of themselves emotionally as well as physically. We need to care about our needs, our priorities, our values, our desires and take steps to honor them. This is our job, especially at this age. If we abandon ourselves, look out!

Yes, I know. I have much to be grateful for. I complain more than I ought. Just because my beloved dances around the house pumping his arms back and forth across his chest like some demented wind-up toy. Or gives away everything he gets. Or requests NO gifts for Christmas or birthdays. Or wears the same clothes for decades. It’s not so much to bear.

I don’t like that I haven’t figured out the meaning of life yet. I’ve already put a lot of work into this problem—how to understand life and suffering and why people have to die and what happens after death. Or what to do about any of it.

I have always had ”a touch of the ADHD”. Plus I am 72 and have a lot of things, information and emotions and memories, stuffed into my brain. Paying attention when I only have one precious hour to play the piano is always difficult but is critical to my success. My most challenging task is to find ways to ensure that I am learning what I need to learn during each portion of the hour. Not daydreaming about being discovered or becoming enraptured by the gorgeous sounds I am making or wandering off on a memory, even a nice one. They call this “teaching the piano.”

This Seventyish Woman Can be Found in Many Flavors, Like Ice Cream. What flavor are you?

Well, as I was saying, I was drying my hair this morning and starting to see a new version of myself emerge from the mass of strands. I remembered a friend saying again, yesterday, that she liked my hair in the picture from my birthday party in 2019. Well, that’s nice to know. But I like the beach hair picture of me. And I sort of liked this new short and strange haircut as it was drying and the phrase popped into my mind: I guess I come in many flavors. Maybe it’s because I got a new ice cream machine for my birthday and have been trying different flavors of ice cream. But I started thinking about the different flavors of me.