A Hopeful Friday Five

The RevGalBlogPals' Friday Five challenge this week: In the last week, have you experienced:

1. Sign of hope?
Fellow Traveler and I have both been sick -- she with asthma issues, I with an upper respiratory infection that just wouldn't go away -- for the better art of a month. We both finally went to our respective doctors, and are both finally getting better, slowly. It's not even the physical discomfort of such ailments, but the overwhelming fatigue they cause, that's just been sucking the life out of us. But we're beginning to see some results from our medication.

2. An unexpected word of light in a dark place?
Okay...this is giving me a little shiver up me spine, but just before I read the Friday Five I'd gone to the Content Moderation page on Blogger to see if anyone had checked in on the blog. I saw a couple sentences in Latin. Without reading the entire post, I okayed its publishing. Then I wondered, "What post of mine was that in regard to?" So I went searching. I couldn't find it. But the one word that stuck in my memory from my cursory glance at that first Latin sentence was caritas. In the context of our dealings with the neighbors, and then in the context of the Friday Five, this was something of a "God moment" for me...a reassurance and a call for continued active compassion, at the same time.

3. A sign of spring?
For the last couple of weeks the cardinals have been singing their hearts out in my yard and in the trees around my office. It doesn't feel like spring yet, but at least it sounds like it.

4. Challenging/surprising?
That would be the education of young Gertie. There are times when I think, "What did we get ourselves into?" I mean -- Gertie is a baby; we two middle-aged broads have adopted a baby, and are now responsible for raising her into adult dogdom. What were we thinking? On the other hand -- Gertie is a quick study. She has been astoundingly good about waking us up to go outside and do her thing. She's learned to sit for treats. She copies our behaviors to a comic degree, which tells us that she's very observant, and also wants to please. And although it's taken almost a month -- she has started to become a loving pup. In the beginning, while she wanted to run and play with us humans, there wasn't a lot of doggy affection involved; unlike Cassie, whom she regarded with complete starry-eyed little-sister adoration, we seemed to be simply novel, and somewhat goofy, two-legged hit-and-miss playmates for her. Now she snuggles and kisses. In the morning when I get up for work, and when I get home from work, we have our special "hello" time; when FT lies on the floor, Gertie will sidle next to her and curl up, maybe with a paw on her arm.

5. Share a hope for the coming week/month/year....
I want to continue to become physically healthy. I began the year with good intentions, but illness sapped me not only of physical energy but of the mental energy needed to be mindful and proactive. I now feel that I'm at least beginning to crawl out of that miry mental slough.

Bonus play... a piece of music/ poem guaranteed to cheer you?
Last night while channel-surfing we came across our local PBS station's broadcast of James Taylor in concert. It was great. For me James Taylor's voice and lyrics are like aural Lexapro; they seem to contain, as Garrison Keillor might put it, natural mellowing agents. "Carolina in My Mind" -- oh, yeah.