Happy New Year!

New Year's Eve.

Sixteen years after a divorce that I though marked the end of my life.

Little did I know that it was just the beginning.

It takes a long time to make big changes and when those changes come as you approach the half century mark,  it sometimes takes years -- sixteen years to be exact.

I cannot imagine how my life might have gone had I figured things out earlier, but it truly is better to be late than never to do something at all.

I find such peace in my life now.  Such joy in the most mundane things. Such contentment in simply being me.

I like myself, maybe for the first time ever, and that is certainly a milestone along the road to both healing and growth.

How many New Year's were met with me writing about my misery?  This year I write about my satisfaction, my love of life, my eagerness to see what else the universe has in store for me. And while I don't expect it to all be good, I do expect to be able to make it through . . .

with a little help from my friends.

Miracles

I spent the first thirty years of my life playing and growing up.

I spent the next thirty years thinking I was all grown up and knew what I was doing.

I am now in what may be the last thirty years.  I still love to play.  I'm still growing and I realize these things will never end -- if I am lucky.

As long as I am true to myself, the mystery is free to carry me along through one miraculous moment after another.

I don't need to share each of these moments.  They may not be miracles to you, but that's okay. No one needs to define another's miracles. Life happens both inside and out and when the balance is right, the world is a better place than most of us could ever have imagined by reading someone else's book, or watching someone else's movies.

Life is very personal and customized for every single soul-- it IS a miracle.

The old gray (muffled) goose

I think I walked through the twilight zone today.

Oh, it looked like any old walk.  It felt that way too!

Cold and clear with those cumulus clouds floating overhead like giant sky whales.  It was relatively bright and sunny for late December.

I stopped by the office to pay my rent then took the outer path around the complex rather than disturb the Geese's sanctuary.  Yes, there are geese here again -- huge flocks of them honking and floating and leaving little piles of goose grease on the inner sidewalks.

The universe decided to reward me for exercising and my youngest son called me on his lunch break.  I couldn't answer my phone with my gloves on and I couldn't get them off with my phone in my left hand.  I actually bit my index finger trying to remove them in time to talk to him. Then I had to put the phone up inside of my hood to talk.

I huffed and I puffed and I walked around those buildings -- all the while talking to my son who was a bit concerned but understood what I was doing. At some point I was getting hot and sweaty, so I pulled off my scarf and put my arm through it so I could remove the hood and unzip my coat. 

It wasn't until I was off the phone and back in my apartment that I realized my scarf was gone!  Losing it is like losing an wooly innertube --  very difficult.  I can't imagine that I didn't notice I dropped it since it was encircling my arm or my neck the entire time.

Well, except when it wasn't.  I went back to find it and it was gone. 

In the meantime I bought a really nice new one on sale. Tomorrow I wouldn't be surprised to see some old gander wearing my scarf as he swims about in the center of the pond.

Minds and imaginations

Being the highest predator on the list is not the blessing it may appear to be. Our physical attributes and imagination allow us to do things many other creatures cannot.

That should be a blessing, but I think it is a mixed one.

The same minds and imaginations that dream up cures for diseases, machines that work for us, and art to inspire us, also conjure up other less savory things.

We are not content to be warm, fed, safe, and productive. We covet being the "best," the "biggest," "richest," "most powerful" and we come up with ways to make that happen. 

But the worst part of being human is our fear.  These minds that imagine so many good things also dream up tales of terror about things we know little or nothing about. We fear people and ideas that are new, or different. We are terrified to take the time to learn about them for fear that they will get us first. And so it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

We fear those whose skin is different, whose religions are different, whose dress is different.  We fear those who speak another language, or whose habits don't match our own. Our fears create an aura of being "not the same" when our similarities outnumber our differences 100:1.

Fear is at the root of almost all evil. People fear the police and police fear the people. The rich fear the poor and the poor fear the rich.  Diversity becomes a curse instead of an opportunity and we walk around with what appear to be chips on our shoulders when it is the uncertainty inside us that keeps us off balance.

Here we are in Eden struggling to get out.

Going home

The faithful have come and gone along with Santa and his sleigh full of miraculous gifts.  Angels singing sweetly through the night have been replaced with people lining up to return gifts.  And pennies in old men's hats have been replaced by gift cards coming out of stockings.

It's still Christmas in theory but the mad rush to hoard presents has eased off.

And now there is time to savor the simpler joys of a season so commercialized that they have become almost meaningless to the newest generation of children.

The darkest evening of the year was lit with a million lights strung on trees and roofs, fences and windows. . .and tonight there was finally time to go look at them.

I took all of the Christmas songs Bestest recorded for me and hooked them up to the speakers in the car.  Then we drove down memory lane from one neighborhood to another until we had visited all of our old houses.

It was not a silent night, but it was one of reverence, awe, and gratitude, for all the myths of our own being.  Tonight we truly took the long road home.

A post Christmas musing

I was walking in the park today and ran across a herd of wooden reindeer foraging on a man made cliff.  An empty sleigh sat nearby and I could only wonder if this was where Santa Claus ended his nightly rounds this year -- and if so -- where did he go?

At least he took the time to unharness the deer.  They were frozen in various states and small clumps, but no man in a red velvet suit was anywhere in sight.

I imagined him peering out one of the windows of the pavilion, but if he was, I didn't see him.  I thought perhaps he was sleeping in among the leftover wrappings under the big tree, but there were no unusual lumps that I could see through the window.

I suppose he might have just up and left them while hitching a ride on a shooting star back to the north pole.  That seems kind of irresponsible, but then this is a man who spends most of his time cavorting with little elves.  Anything is possible.

I might have given it more thought, but I finally reached the end of my walk and I eagerly jumped into my car to rest and breathe.  Come to think of it if Santa was anywhere near as tired after his night's work as I am after my half hour walk, I can understand dropping everything when he was done.

Now if I could just figure out where he went, or how he got there . . .

This little light of mine

For all this talk about heaven, or reincarnation, or living in more than one dimension, my experience over the last sixty years, or so, seems to indicate that this one life here is pretty substantial.

Early in my life I wanted drama and excitement, but that was because I had no idea what life with, or even without, those things could be.

Now I prefer peace.

And I always find it -- sometimes in weeks, sometimes only in very small moments, but it is always here because I carry it inside me.

I didn't always understand this.  I grew up thinking people were victims of circumstance, martyrs to a situation, here to travel the dark and weary road hoping for the occasional glimpse of sunshine.

Now I understand that the light is also inside of me.  I need to turn it on and use it to my advantage, trusting that I am a good enough person so that my choices will also be in the best interests of those around me.

Finding peace or joy in life is not hedonistic. It is smart.  It is what is supposed to happen.  It is what I am here to teach those who come after me.  The darkness is the lie, the facade.  It blinds me to all the beauty in between the shadows.

And there is more than I ever imagined.

Small and sweet

Away in a manger, Oh holy night, silent night. . . traditional Christmas songs . . . carols . . . snippets of Christmases long long ago!

Tiny Tim eating a roast goose with his family, the little drummer boy making up his own song, jolly old St. Nicholas listening to a child's list for his friends . . . the joy of giving!

I'll have a blue Christmas without you, I'll be home for Christmas, dashing through the snow. . . being with those we love!

These are a few of my favorite things!

I asked my two youngest grandchildren what they wanted for Christmas.  The four year old pirouetted around the room, "A nutcracker of my very own!" The three year old was a little more pragmatic, "A space ship plane."

What was their biggest concern?  Not some tattle-tale elf, or not so jolly old elf snooping at the window with a checklist of good and bad boys and girls. They were feeling a bit contrite because they ate all the homemade cookies and Santa was going to get store bought ones.

My Christmas is perfect this year.  I spent time with Bestest making cookies, wrapping presents, singing carols.  I skyped with my youngest grandchildren as their daddy played Christmas music on the piano. We blew kisses and called out "Merry Christmas, I love you!" after they sang for me and went off to begin their own celebration. Tomorrow my daughter and granddaughters will come for Christmas dinner and we'll open presents under my tiny little tree.

It is Christmas in the smallest but sweetest way I can imagine.

Seek and find

Sometimes the best advice is hidden in the simplest things.

Remember the song, Row, row, row, your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream?

I think the secret here is in the gentle part. 

Float through life gently, be good to myself and others, try to be positive and not muddy the waters.

It's okay to make waves, just do it thoughtfully and with reason.

Then when life becomes the dream be grateful, accept it with grace and just enjoy it.

There will always be highs and lows, but if I roll with them and don't become too much of a drama queen, it will all be okay, because . . .

Life really is a dream.

Beautiful Life

I may not be writing a thot for the next few days.

I write because I need to, but lately my needs have been so well met, I sometimes find it difficult to write!

When life overflows into every part of my being I feel blessed beyond expression. There is nothing I can think of, or do that can come close to expressing the way I feel. Everything pales beside living.

That is a beautiful life.

Lucky or not

Why do some people seem to have all the luck and others attract problems like iron filings to a magnet?

Part of it really is luck, of course, but not all of it.

Life is a series of decisions and way back when we make our first decision, our path in life begins to take shape.

It's not fair, because many of our first decisions are almost out of our control.  "Spoiled" children have the odds stacked against them, as do abused children, or children born in third world countries, or children whose parents make lots of bad decisions.

Eventually, though, we escape our childhood and then it is up to each individual to decide which way to head.  Romantic notions are highly over-rated.  Choosing many things requires plain old cold logic.

Good health is a great harbinger of good luck.  That means not smoking, or over eating and finding a way to keep moving.  Financial comfort requires a bit of thinking too.  Willy nilly giving up the money it takes to have peace of mind may look heroic, or kind hearted, but it can also cause stress -- lots of stress.  And finding a way to deal with stress is paramount, it erodes bodies like wind does rocks.

The luckiest people are the best decision makers.

Loving life to the fullest

Sometimes I find so much vicarious joy in the things my friends are doing that I feel like I am doing it too!

I think that's one of the reasons I share so much on Facebook.  I want my friends to do the same thing when I am loving life to the fullest.

We can give gifts and stories and possibilities, but we can't really give feelings.  Those have to be felt by the person they belong to.

If you can find happiness in another's joy, you are among the richest on earth.

Questions

Geese flying over my apartment are not unusual, but this morning I was awakened by honking and looked up to see them flying south.  That is unusual.

I didn't think too much more about it until I walked later today.

Coming up on the goose pond I felt a sort of let down.  Something was not right.  The whole area looked bleak and weathered. The few geese, about twenty, that lay between me and the sidewalk around the pond didn't panic and run like they usually did.

And that was when I noticed it.

There were still a lot of ducks on the water and sitting in the grass around it, but all the rest of the geese were gone.

Sometime since yesterday and today there had been a mass migration!  Maybe I saw the tail of it when I woke up?

I wondered what precipitates such a huge move?  How do geese decide when it is time to leave?

We've already had snow and ice this year.  We've even had the pond freeze right up to the middle, but they stayed.  Now they were gone.

I wonder how many different flocks were here?  I wonder a lot of things, like when will they return?

And if the ones still here will spend the winter?

Visitors

I think I am making progress. 

Today I walked, like I have done every day now for two weeks, and I found myself thinking of Christmas songs instead of just focusing on getting through it.

In fact, I noticed the Canadian geese, the Mallard ducks and two other kinds of ducks who must have dropped in for a visit.  There was only one pair each of the new ones, but probably hundreds of all the others.

Our pond seems to be a very popular place for water fowl.

Maybe because very few humans come there in person.  They look out their windows.  They glance at it from afar when they drive around the complex. But they just don't seem to want to get out and walk through.

I'm sure that's good for the ducks and geese.  When I walk around it, on the sidewalk, they waddle, walk, fly and stumble down onto the ice and water no matter how quiet or careful I am.  I'd feel guiltier except that if it weren't for people like me there would be no pond here.

And it could be worse for them.  I could walk around actually singing those Christmas Carols rambling through my head.

Lions and tigers

Nature movies are one of those anomalies that I enjoy.

I love to watch the Tasmanian devil in its natural habitat.  I find it endlessly fascinating to watch lions in the wild.  I think kangaroos are the most amazing mothers in the world.

The language is clean, the facial expressions adorable, the actions honest and above board.

The music is generally geared to snag the emotions of a three year old and the narrator has one of those Disney voices that lead me to believe he is a certified animal speak interpreter.

And this is where the anomaly begins.  I noticed it when my almost three year old grandson was watching a documentary about dinosaurs and it shows cute little allosauruses running away from predators -- except for the ones that get caught and eaten.  It down played that last part, but my grandson didn't miss it.  As it happened he sat straight up on the couch and said, "It caught that one!" A mixture of awe and horror in his little voice.

Don't get me wrong.  There was no blood, no gnashing of teeth, no squeals of pain, just a meat eating dinosaur catching his dinner among a score of little ones racing for their lives. And the narrator, like all good nature narrators, kept the same upbeat, cute little tone in his voice as he mentioned it and went on.

Like nature herself, he made it seem simply natural and normal, which it is -- but still pretty hair raising when you have an imagination like me and my grandson who fill in all those unspoken details.

Sweet little nature movies, horror shows for the younger set.

Feeling grinchy

I think I am about to join the ranks of grouchy old people.

I have decided:

I do not fill out the same form twice.

I do not talk to recordings.

I do not stand in long lines when there are registers without cashiers.

I would rather go without than continue to promote such rude, irresponsible, and greed driven behaviors.

So there!

When all else fails

People used to go to the old medicine woman at the edge of the woods, give her a chicken and she would give them something for whatever ailed them.  They did the same with shamans, witch doctors, and old Doc Martin.

Sometimes it worked.  Sometimes it didn't.  What none of them realized was that given enough time, or if they believed, an awful lot of these cures could have occurred if they had run around the house three times and shouted, "Abracadabra!"

Our bodies are designed to heal themselves. And when that doesn't happen, making a change in life styles can bring about near miraculous cures.

I know people who believe depression is an integral part of life.  People who believe they cannot avoid the high blood pressure because it runs in their families. People who feel hopeless because the pills don't work for them. They are willing to change pills, change doctors, change almost everything -- except their lifestyles.

I know because it is hard for me to change my lifestyle. Eating the food I am accustomed to, intermingling with the people I am accustomed to, doing the things I am accustomed to, are difficult enough when I feel good, but when I feel bad?  It's almost impossible to deny myself the comfort of known things over unknown ones.

Yet, it has been proved to me time after time that life can be immeasurably better when I make certain changes.

I can't take a pill to erase great aunt Martha, or make an ice cream sundaes fifty calories. I can't swallow anything that will exercise for me, or bring more money into the house, but I can change the way I allot my time with all of the above!

Then when all else fails, I try the pills.

Best friends

What are best friends for?

That question is usually rhetorical.  People use it to validate what they just said, or did, but this morning, during a conversation with my best friend, the reality of it flittered through my mind like a butterfly on a warm spring day.

Best friends are our last bastion of comfort once we grow up.  As children most of us had a parent who was a natural sounding board, someone who listened intently and tried to give us a a rational, honest opinion, suggest healthy and logical directives, and do it all from a warm, safe and loving place. No one else will ever have our backs like that again -- unless we have a best friend.

A best friend is more than a "yes man."  He is truth spoken as kindly as possible and clearly as necessary. He has no underhanded agenda.  He is there because he loves me and wants me to be happy.  He has no need to be jealous, or envious, or compete on any level.

A best friend has no shelf life or due date when things will change because it is a relationship that isn't dependent on worldly worries.

So . . . what are best friends for?

To be a teddy bear with a voice . . .

Food counts

I woke up feeling terrible this morning.

My joints ached. My fingers and toes were puffy.  My stomach was upset.

My first thought was flu, but it wasn't that kind of feeling bad.

Lately I have felt better than I have in years. 

Then I realized that last night, after over two weeks of healthy eating, I ate a fast food sandwich on a white Kaiser roll, had a few bites of my daughter's chili cheese fries and topped it off with a brownie concrete.

Inflammation and system upset seem like a reasonable response to that.  I began feeling more normal late this afternoon, which might be expected as those poisons pass through my system.

Talk about validation! 

Be picky

Why do I watch television? (I would say we, but I suppose everyone has their own reasons for doing everything, even something as passive as turning on the TV.)

I like the company -- sometimes.  I don't want histrionics, or contrived plots most of the time. I don't want to be bombarded with other peoples problems, or stupidity. Consequently, I often turn on the weather channel, or HGTV (Or used to, it is also becoming a bit melodramatic for my tastes lately.) And if I want to be deeply touched I am particular about how that happens -- I pick my movies and events carefully.

News programs are an iffy proposition.  If it's just your run of the mill, repetitive news stories repeated over and over, approached from every angle, beat to death until I am numb to the atrocities of human kind -- I only watch it when I feel a need to rise up in ire, or am angry about something. Otherwise I get the important news on PBS in the car.

People seem to think that talking about something is the same thing as doing something and it can be, but it can also be like almost everything else in our society -- drug companies are creating customers, doctors, dentists, hospitals, are creating customers, charity events, and television companies are all creating customers.  The bottom line is often about money -- not information, or really even quality care or entertainment.

Television is running itself out of business with poor programming now that we have other resources for finding those things that truly appeal to us. And maybe that is a good thing.  Maybe it has run its course with the big cable companies and big networks giving us what makes them the most money for the cheapest price.

Studies show that depression is linked to television watching and so are attention spans in children, so having to actively pick and choose each item viewed might have other benefits besides just more apt programs. In the interim of changing shows, people might discover themselves.

I often find you much more interesting than the evening's scheduled programs.

A mind of its own

My brain has a mind of its own.  Well, duh, you say, what else is new?

Last summer when I attempted to walk here I had to be alert and on my toes at all times.  The lawnmower man, the one who whipped through here at forty miles an hour spewing grass like a corn reaper gone mad, nearly ran me down twice.

It's much less eventful in the winter, especially if I wear a hooded jacket. Turn to the right and what do I see?  The inside of my black and white herringbone coat!  Same goes for the left.

It's eyes straight ahead and after a while the stark flat land with a man made lake ceases to be quite the wonder it was when things were green -- and warm, did I mention warm?  It's freezing out there!

After a while my brain, like a sheep dog desperate for something to do, takes on a life of its own. I find myself chanting (only in my head, thank goodness), "Miss that turd, miss that turd, miss that turd. . . "

Instead of trying to avoid Blinky, Pinky, and Clyde, I am avoiding little brown barrels. It's a combination of PacMan and Donkey Kong.  There is no beeping, but there is honking and occasionally there is a great flutter of wings. And my job?

Just keep going, just keep going . . .

Talk to the animals

Have you ever wondered how we know we are the most intelligent species?

I mean, sure, we can measure brains, but exactly what are we measuring them for?  We can only measure them for things we know about.

We can build machines.  We can build houses.  We can control lots of things, or think we can, with our machinery and chicanery.

We can catch other creatures and put them in zoos or force them to do tricks for us, or work for us.

We can do so many things that are important to us and we assume other intelligent life forms would do the same if they could.

But what if those things are not important to other species?  What if they don't need cell phones to communicate across long distances?  What if they don't want to isolate themselves inside homes that destroy the earth's resources to build?  What if they don't need to own things to find fulfillment and meaning in their lives?

We only guess at what they want and need.  Because -- we have not learned their language.  We cannot sit down and have a conversation with them.  We can't even understand their most basic commands like stay, or come.

Just because they are different does not mean they are inferior.

Ice skating geese

They know that I approach and there is a ripple through the crowd
A shifting, an awareness, a gentle nudge towards the pond
Honking, shuffling, flying forward, one great surge,
Time to move, time to go, time to make decisions.

Safety waits on slippery rectangles of frozen water
Synchronized minds, robotic feet, marching towards the ice
Waddling, limping, flying up, a mass evacuation
Follow the crowd, follow the one before you, go, go, go!

Cleared for landing, they approach the icy black water
Feet skidding, wings dragging, voices loud in protest
Skating, slipping, sliding, then into the waves
And they are safe -- from me.

I watch these ice skating geese both sorry
And glad to have been a part of it all.

Less miserable

I grew up active and playing.  Then . . . I really grew up and learned I was supposed to go for the burn!  Push harder!  Don't stop till you drop!  The one who gets to heaven with the most stuff wins.  The magic dream is to have a mortgage I can't quite afford, cars that aren't paid off, more clothes than I could possibly wear in a year, a subscription to add two pairs of shoes to my wardrobe every month, the most modern update of every electronic device imaginable and enough medical tests to kill an elephant in the hope that life will be eternal.

It made me ashamed to live in an apartment with one rather small closet, a thirteen year old car, one computer, a phone, a camera and three pairs of shoes.

Walking twenty minutes a day seemed shameful because it wasn't at a gym on a two thousand dollar treadmill and I only ache a bit when I do it -- not burn.

I volunteer because I find full time jobs suffocating and I can afford to -- if I am willing to live within my means.

I cannot buy my children and grandchildren car loads of presents, but I do spend a considerable amount of time picking out what I can give them. 

I don't buy many souvenirs, but I take tons of pictures.

And today, as I walked around the goose pond looking at creatures who only own the feathers on their back and two webbed feet, it occurred to me that I like my lifestyle very much.

Finding the joy and love comes to each of us on different levels and whatever that is for me, has to be okay even if it isn't what it is for you. It only marks me as different -- not less successful, or less happy, or less anything -- except possibly less miserable.

Not intolerable

After spending a week with my son and his family I am trying to get healthy again.  I'm trying something new this year with the hope that it will "stick."

Last time I spent a year losing 90 pounds and promptly gained 100 back.

This time I am not trying to go low calorie, or all exercise.  I am simply trying to eat healthier and increase my exercise.  It should be simple, right?

It's not.

Even after a week of healthy eating I sometimes find myself drawn back towards those gooey mushy yummy things that make my bones ache, my ankles swell, and my heart work overtime.

But I'm trying.  This time with small changes that are not intolerable, so maybe they will last.

Friends treat people like people

I have to say something here.  I was trying to avoid it, but in the end I think it needs to be said.

I was driving home last winter when I came to an intersection near my apartment.  It was an area mostly inhabited by low income people, students, and people from the mission.  The light turned green and the sign above said, "right turn yield to oncoming traffic." I waited what seemed like eons and no one moved, so I went ahead and turned.  I was half way down the block when a police car zoomed up behind me, lights flashing, siren going full blast.  I pulled over.

The officer stormed up to my car and said gruffly, "You did not yield!"  I apologized profusely.  Then he asked, "Do you live near here?"  I told him I did.  "Do you have a license?"  Of course I did and I showed it to him.  He looked at it as he asked for my car registration, IF I had one. I gave it to him.  Then he said he needed proof I was insured.  I showed him my insurance card. He went back to his car where I'm sure he checked me out and found out I had a record so perfect I receive little commendations whenever my driver's license needs to be renewed and this year they told me I could just renew it through the mail unless something had changed.

He returned and said that I had better learn to follow the rules and that my insurance was almost expired so I BETTER GET IT RENEWED.  I meekly told him they have always sent me a new card  and I was sure they would this year too.

He told me I could go, but to be more careful, then he returned to his car.  I waited for him to turn the spotlight off so I could see if there were any cars coming before I pulled out, but he never did that.  I finally signaled, pulled out cautiously hoping no one would hit me and drove home.

Had I been a more volatile person, or younger, I might not have been as meek and cowed as I was.  This man was confrontative and even made me angry.

We will continue to have incidents like Ferguson as long as police officers feel they have the right to treat people this way.  I taught my children that a policeman was their friend, but this man was not my friend.  He was a man in charge of bad people he had to brow beat into submission.

The joy of breathing

No one lives forever, but some people barely live at all.

The fear that I might look foolish, or be a bit reckless, or make someone else unhappy, or behave in a less than "adult" way, was incorporated into many people my age.  And in some places it is still a vital part of "growing up."

It is true that I need to be able to take care of myself, but that alone is not enough to live a wonderful life.  I am not a biological creature here only to breed, raise children and then slowly fade into oblivion.

For one thing, I am an example for those coming after me.  If I slowly draw inward like a little hermit crab, only exiting my shell when others need, or want me, that is a poor example of how to live joyfully.

Every moment that I draw a breath I have the possibility of learning something, or doing something, new.  It's not a test.  No one worth knowing is going to grade me on how well I do it.  It is the doing that is the most important.

I loved raising my children.  I doubt that I will ever do anything more important, or more fulfilling (and I made lots of mistakes along that way.) Now I am free to do a million more things and who knows how important they may be?

It should be against the law to bury people before they die.  The joy of waking up excited about life keeps us breathing a lot longer than people used to think.

Seize the second!

All my life I have heard phrases like, "Go for the gusto," "Seize the day," "Live life like it is your last day."

This week I experienced all these things and more. 

For eight days I rolled out of bed before seven and spent my day literally wallowing in love and water and scenery so beautiful it makes my eyes water just to think of it. 

There is no one as honestly droll as a pair of young grandchildren.  They could make me laugh with a single look, a gesture, a simple comment, and my granddaughter gave me enough hugs and kisses to last until next year. (If I have to wait that long.)

If you want lessons in living ask a three and four year old.  Their joie de vivre was contagious! Like children of old, they went out every day, appropriately dressed for puddle jumping and fun.

We watched an octopus eat his lunch just before we ate ours.  We got to pet sea urchins and prod anemones.  We watched fish on the bottom of the sound through a window at the aquarium. We went to parks that had zip line swings for children.

And my grandson was so excited when he opened his birthday present he shrieked with uncontrollable joy as he tore the paper off --he was still playing with it when I left.

Every detail is important. A birthday?  Everyone in the family took part in making a carrot cake from scratch!  Everyone! 

It is truly the journey that counts and this journey has been stunning.

Wake up call

I slept hard last night, dreaming of escaping from a demonic person who kept us (children) there with a large toy train engine and barbed wire fences.  We were watched over by another who kept us in line by watching our faces.  If we turned red, he knew we were lying and could fling us across the room with a flick of his finger.

I figured out how we could escape and we did, only we ended up at George's Candy Shop and they were both there.  We hid and I pointed my camera at them, but it wouldn't work, so we crept back to our prisoner status in fear, the toy train in sections we were madly trying to reassemble before they got back.

Still we knew it was in vain.  Our only hope was that they would not be too mad at us.

Suddenly I was awakened by the fact that I remembered a section in my Agee work that I didn't remember transcribing.  I lay there wondering if I was still dreaming and finally got up to check it out.  Sure enough I had not typed the teacher's remarks at the end of one of the papers!

Some people are saved by the bell, I was saved by Agee! (And so, I typed in the last of my transcription before my trip.)

Thankful

In the past I often tried to keep up this writing while I was away from home, but I am finding I prefer to be in the moment more often now and that is difficult when I have to interrupt what I am doing to find a computer and sit down for the time it takes to think of something to write about.

So I probably will not be writing My Thots until November 29th.  Although you never know!

I hope everyone has a happy Thanksgiving and finds many things they are thankful for. 

I am thankful for almost every single thing in my life right now.  I am so grateful for those I love and their part in my life.  I love my home and my town, my volunteer jobs and even my new doctor.  I love that I can afford to pay the bills and bring home the bacon as well as travel some.  It's hard to imagine life being much better.

The best parts

I am fascinated by people who are good at something.

Of course people can be good at many somethings, but that just makes watching them, studying them, loving them, more fun.

I suppose in a sense that makes me a voyeur, but only in a good way.  I am not lurking outside your bedroom windows, or sneaking around your house.  I am just enjoying your pictures, your work, your public antics.

I read your work and wonder at your brilliance.

I look at your dog and smile.

I like the innocent way your pillows are piled up beside the dog on your bed in a picture on Facebook.

The inflections of your voice on the phone.

I love knowing what makes you laugh and cry. 

People are the best part of my life.

Coincidence?

Coincidences happen all the time.

It's almost like setting up a room full of dominoes and then knocking one down. If I knock the right one down, they all fall over.  Otherwise just one or two tip over.

I remember working in a flower shop.  No one would come in for hours.  Then one person would appear and suddenly we would be deluged by tons of shoppers.

Or I wait and wait for someone to respond to my text, then the moment I get up and walk away, my cell phone announces its arrival.

I have waited over two years for my life to get back on track and up until today it seemed that it might just become more cluttered.

But today my doctor offered me some hope in solving a problem and I suddenly realized that my life is starting to take on order and shape.  I am sewing up loose ends right and left.

I am back in the real world where I, myself, have some control over my own life and that feels really good.

oh so fleeting thoughts

I was shopping today when I saw one of those young girls who walks arms straight down at her sides, back perfectly straight, eyes preternaturally wide open, hair braided absolutely immaculately like a doll from the fifties and a doll like smile on her unmoving face.

She was probably 12 to 14 years old and with her adoring parents who were asking her opinion. She turned on one foot, never loosing the pose that spoke to me of a doll attached to a stand hidden under her arms from behind. Reaching with her left arm she pulled a picture frame from the shelf and pivoted back, presenting it to her parent.  Smile brightly pasted on her strangely emotionless face.

She was perfection.  Frightening perfection.  Animated doll-like perfection. If she had been older I might have thought she was over-botxed and  maybe even a Stepford wife, but she was a child, infinitely more terrifying than Wednesday Addams and yet, very like more and more girls and women I have been seeing lately.

When did plastic girl become popular?  This calculated look and lack of unconscious movement is more disconcerting than the usual self conscious actions of teens in the past.

I wonder if it is possible that she looks normal to her parents? Of course I didn't have time to watch mom or dad.  I was so taken aback by her I was afraid of looking too nosey, so I breezed on by looking for a fake Christmas tree and trying to decide if I wanted a real looking fake one, or an outrageously fake-fake one.

Maybe that's what the world is coming to.

Prince and his people

I met a rooster once, out in the far out countryside of Indiana.

He had his own hen house, a big structure with a screened in porch and a cozy little cottage for all his ladies who were madly laying eggs for him, so I have to believe he was one fine rooster by chicken standards.

He had a sleek white cape and gorgeous black back and saddle.  His comb was a deep rich red and so was his wattle, but it was his feet that really changed his life.  That and the perceptive people he lived with.

Those feet were just the color of human skin.  Soft suedey pale gams with handsome claws and toes.  He was a prince of a fellow and that was actually his name. Prince! A name he definitely deserved.

Prince, as you might surmise, ran both the hen house and the people house. He was wont to sit upon tables and eye the drinks and food of his people as well as march smartly through the large garden out back.

He also worked as a watch rooster, flying up to startle those who walked too close to the garden.

And on top of everything else, he was kind of cuddly, although I had to be gentle of all those fragile feathers and delicate bones, but I suppose you expect that with royalty like him.

Prince is the first rooster I ever really got to know personally, but he is one memorable bird!

Labor of love

I always think of "real" work as being manual.  Real work is my sister mowing the lawn, tearing down dead vines along her fence, scrubbing her kitchen floor with a cotton tip on her knees!

Real work is my sister coming for a visit with two of her friends and washing my windows inside and out. I am not a fan of "real" work.

Not that I don't enjoy mowed lawns and clean houses, I just don't enjoy getting them there, so I do what I have to do, but I save my energy for MY real work.

And even though I may spend ten hours a day doing it sometimes, I never really considered it "real" before. Partly because it is a labor of love and partly because I do it sitting down, often moving only my fingers, or perhaps my eyes.

But I have been sick the past two weeks and for the first time I have noticed that after one of these marathon moments, my headache comes back, my body is exhausted and I am starting to cough again.  I might as well have been out running around the block.

Except it wouldn't have been as much fun.

One drop of water

I have lived through some hard times in my life.  Times when I thought there was no hope.  Times when any improvement seemed so unlikely that I couldn't even imagine what it could be.

In the beginning I would sometimes despair to the point where I considered rash actions.

Looking back still gives me pause sometimes, but mostly now I can see that if I hadn't been there, I might not be here.  I sometimes amaze myself with my resiliency even if I can't see it except in hindsight.

I guess if I had a mantra for my life, it would be this, "This too will pass."

That got me through the biggest life change I ever had to make -- just barely.

Now, most of the time, those difficult times seem so far away I don't even really remember how awful they felt. But at the time they seemed like they went on forever.

The secret for me, is to grab hold of any bright spots as they fly by -- no matter how small, or how fleeting I know they will be.  On those days I am a thirsty woman in the desert, one drop of water seems meager, but I still scrabble for it.

Dream

Sometimes I am amazed at the ease with which I am moved, or touched.

A casual mention on the radio, a flashing thought after a commercial on television, a line in a book I am reading at bedtime, the scribbling of a man who died in 1955. . . all of these things burrow into my mind and morph into personal viruses.

They crawl into my creative consciousness, eating holes into memories so long forgotten I don't dare claim them as mine, opening worm holes into adventures I have yet to have.

I call them dreams. My body thinks they are real and maybe they are -- for the moment.  My heart races, I perspire, my muscles ache from the exertion.  My moods flow from terrified, to morose, to ethereally in love. 

I can see why some Native American tribes believed the dream world was the real one.  It certainly seems like a viable other-one.

I wonder if "crazy people" are only those who have got one foot stuck in both worlds, or if Rip Van Winkle was only vacationing in this chaotic world where the power of the human mind is recognized and realized in all its potential.

When I am asleep I experience the purest form of time present, time past and time immemorial.  It is kind of like playing a musical instrument.  I use the same fingers to play the keys, blow into the same hole, but it's only in tune when I get it just right and that is an infinitesimal difference in the shape of my lips, the direction of my breath, the speed with which I blow.

My dreams make me believe that life is much more malleable than I truly believe and that it is in the believing that these things come to pass.  You can't fake believing.

I suppose the next best thing is acting like I believe. In a way, that is like practicing.  The longer I do it, the better my chances are for discovering my own potential -- I just have to believe that is enormous.

The truth, or most of the truth

How much is truth worth?

My world has lots of little white lies because, no matter how hard I want to be totally truthful, a part of me is afraid of the unnecessary pain, or damage it might do.

And yet.

If I am not truthful, how much honesty can I expect from those I am around?

I tend to lean towards the idea that if it really isn't important then a little white lie is okay.  For instance, I honestly don't care how you wear your hair, or your clothes if it makes you feel better about yourself.  And yet, if those choices are going to hurt you career wise, or socially, isn't it kinder for me to express my opinion?

What if I voice my real concerns about something you are contemplating doing?  In a way I am only transferring my own experiences, insecurities, and worries to you when you many never experience those things at all.  Am I only causing you unnecessary sorrow, or am I helping by laying out my own problems?

Life is a series of decisions.  It is almost never black and white.  There are way more than fifty shades of gray between one thought and its polar opposite.

I would say that it all depends on how much my thoughts influence your life, but who ever really  knows how important their opinion is to someone else? 

In the end I think it pays to be as honest as possible all the time, but always temper the sharing of opinions with true love and kindness.

And even that is hard, because people tend to skew their feelings about what is loving and kind to fit their current mood, so perhaps the most important thing of all is:

Always be truthful to yourself.

Belonging

Up until 1999, when I thought of football, it was more likely to be about the time I lost my shoe playing in the band and marching around the track before our Homecoming game.

In 1999 I met someone who was a huge fan of the St.Louis Rams.  What a team and what a year!  I thought all football was people running the length of the field to make a touchdown, or perhaps throwing the ball halfway there first where it would be adeptly caught.  Kurt Warner and Marshal Faulk became as familiar to me as Sousa's Stars and Stripes Forever.

Last year I began to follow the Crimson Tide at the University of Alabama.  Bestest teaches there and his enthusiasm caught me up almost immediately. College football is different than the NFL, but it has an excitement all it's own and if you want to watch it, Bama is one of the best.

My old self would never believe that I was up tonight, groaning and cheering through an agonizing game that was tied up right until the end when LSU was three points ahead until The Tide tied it up again in the last seven seconds.  Then, in overtime, after being reconciled to loosing, we won!

This game was nearly four hours long and they were not fun hours.  One of the announcers equated it with a game in 2011 where sixteen players were later inducted into the NFL, meaning both teams were so good and so evenly matched that it kinda looked like a comedy of errors to me.  Good players were dropping the ball and doing things I've seldom seen them do. It was awful and yet, I couldn't turn off that television and go to bed.

I don't understand how I can feel so happy watching someone else play a game, but I do. It's as if I am part of that team in some way and have achieved a personal triumph.When I was younger I was only interested in Tennis and even then, mostly only if I was playing. Team sports didn't interest me.  The idea that a bunch of other people might rely on me to carry the team forward, or that my mistake could lay them all low, was too terrifying to contemplate.

And the idea that I would care to watch what I could not do, seemed ridiculous.  Perhaps now the fact that I really long to play tennis changes things?  But . . . I think it is more than that.  I think that I enjoy it now because I am familiar with the players and the rules and, too, I am old enough that I can't really play any sport, so the Crimson Tide fills up all these little holes in me and makes me feel like I belong too.

Belonging is nice -- even if it is only in my head.

Manufacturing reasons

It is so much easier to change a word, a name, a story, than it is to change an idea, an action, or a  belief.

Society sanitizes words to make them more palatable, but as long as a need remains for special words, the situations from which they arose, still exist.

As long as we are counting, categorizing, naming, distinguishing something as unique, different, strange, needing special consideration, that situation still is.

People have always been wary of differences.

Not understanding something causes us to draw together into similar groups and it is when we begin to categorize our differences instead of our similarities that we set ourselves up for the long haul of ignorance and loss.

There are so many obstacles already in this world and each of them keeps us from finding the cure for cancer, the way to fight viruses, the way to feed the world wholesome food, the knowledge to live together in peace, the ability to live in the utopia earth could be.

Manufacturing more reasons to keep these things at bay by pretending the color of person's skin, the nationality they are born to, the person they choose to love, the size of their body, or it's shape, or any of a thousand other surface differences, makes any real difference in our basic humanity as human beings, keeps us all suffering.

There are people out there who still believe these things do matter and until we find a way to educate them, their ignorance holds us all back.  Changing a word may draw attention to the fact that things are changing, but it also indicates that we have a long way to go.

The day my cell phone died

A long, long time ago
I can still remember how that phone used to make me smile
And I knew if I could text
My friends would not be vexed
And maybe they'd be happy for a while

But when those cups fell on my phone
Shattering every word I honed
Bad news on the doorstep
I couldn't take one more step

I can't remember if I cried
When the crystal was cracked and fried
But something touched me deep inside
The day my cell phone died

[Chorus]
So bye-bye, Verizon good bye
Drove my Honda to the store, but the store was sly
And them good old boys were waitin on friends and guys
Singin' "She is stuck and her hands are tied
She is stuck and her hands are tied"

Now for two years I've been sittin at home
And no one grows happy on a broken phone
But that's not how they said it would be
In a store where it they sold it to me

Oh, and when I moved out farther from town
The bars just slowly slid down
The texts were so slow they adjourned
No verdict was ever returned

And while others talked on phones and texted
Verizon left me in the dark
And I begged for bars in the park
The day my cell phone died

I flew to AT& T today
They waited on me right away
And the plan was less than I now pay
For a phone that never worked anyway

 [Chorus]
So bye-bye, Verizon good bye
Drove my Honda to the store, but the store was sly
And them good old boys were waitin on friends and guys
Singin' "She is stuck and her hands are tied
She is stuck and her hands are tied"

Lucky

Once upon a time doctors were readily available to almost everyone, as long as they could find one.

There were a few glory years when doctors were available and affordable.

The past twenty years has seen the decline of modern medicine.  Doctors were, and are, being substituted for by Nurse practitioners.  Nurse practitioners can be very well educated and they are more willing to spend time with patients.  They are also cheaper, or were.  Now many people pay for doctors, but see nurse practitioners and there is a difference.

One big difference are the years of schooling and training.  Nurse practitioners get a four year degree and then another 2-4 years.  A doctor gets eight years plus extra training, up to 14 years total, and the end result can be huge.

I could not get, or afford insurance for the last fifteen years, so I was grateful for whatever medical attention I could get, or afford. Our local clinic was good.

Now that I qualify for medicare and have a supplemental PPO I can afford to go to a doctor of my choice and my prescriptions are free.  The small amount I pay for the PPO is about what I paid for the prescriptions in the past, so I come out way ahead.  A fifteen dollar copay gives me access to a full fledged doctor who seems to really care and makes the time to do what is necessary, including calling me herself this morning!

I couldn't be happier, but it is a shame that everyone in this country cannot have this same experience.  I get it because I am retired . . . and probably just pretty lucky.

Creative Ailing

Nothing is as boring as health issues -- unless you are not feeling well.

Then my imagination kicks into overtime.  I find myself imagining all sorts of awful things and yet, history tells me that almost every one of them was a wrong guess in the past.

Right now I am battling a bad cold, dealing with plantar fasciitis, and now my new doctor, who I like very much so far, is trying to find the right blood pressure medicine for me, so that is an issue.

Any and all of them can affect the others.  Standing up, lying down, walking, even breathing, or talking is an issue right now.

Stopping my old blood pressure medicine can cause a headache.  So can a cold. Add to that, I am not going into school this week.  I just don't feel good enough.

Now I have all the time I need to obsess over and research dire diseases. Creative Ailing 101 is my specialty. In fact, I could probably write a book called: Everything you ever wanted to know about what you don't have.

So . . . instead I guess I should get back to transcribing.  All the puzzles hidden in these tiny half formed scratchings should keep my mind off of me!

Old timer's lament

It's not enough that my heel feels bruised (plantar fasciitis) or that my allergies are causing my eyes to gum up, or that my voice is gone due to a head cold, but now I am coughing and running a low grade fever.

Add that to the worry of missing my volunteer jobs and that I want to be healthy when I go to visit my grandchildren later this month.

And . . . add to that my fear that I won't be able to get through the airport on the bum heel and my mouth is full of sensitive places that show up when I am nervous about things.

As I grow older I heal slower.

I don't have to do as much as I used to, but I WANT to do pretty much the same as always, so if I thought I had developed patience and tolerance before, now is the time to really hone those things.

On the edge of a great big sneeze

It has been a strange weekend.  Pleasant in most respects, but unusual.

My brother and his son dropped in unexpectedly and surprised me.  Bestest called yesterday and today, like he usually does.  My youngest son called to chat. I skyped with my youngest grandchildren; and their father, my older son, sent me beautiful pictures of the family outing up on Puget Sound.

I have seldom been so well loved and thought about in such a short period of time. 

In between all this love and attention I have either worked on transcribing, or sat half-asleep and ill in my big recliner. I have a head cold of mammoth proportions and no amount of steaming, or vitamin C, or Coricidan helps much.

I have almost no voice and even my youngest granddaughter mentioned that I probably had lots of germs!

If only the people at school felt the same way and stayed home when they had "germs."

I am going to Seattle for my birthday and Thanksgiving and don't want to be sick!

On the up side, I am seeing a new doctor for the first time tomorrow, but it's supposed to be just a well person check up and a refill of my prescriptions.  I hope that's all it turns out to be.

Generational puzzles

I've known several people, in my life, who enjoyed doing puzzles.  Jigsaw puzzles, crossword puzzles, seek and find puzzles, even three dimensional puzzles like Rubik's cubes and those old wooden cubes and spheres.

I've never considered myself a real puzzle aficionado.  I leave a crossword book in the bathroom and I've done a few jigsaw puzzles in my lifetime, mostly with children because they are good for building pre-reading skills.

I never realized that the most difficult puzzle in the world, the one that challenged every part of my mind would be transcribing.

Transcribing the miniscule, hand written work of a man about the same age as my grandfather turns out to be the most difficult thing I've ever done.

Not only is the script small and hastily scribbled so that just making out the letters and words can be almost impossible, but there are bigger problems.

If he were to try and make sense of my work , even though it is carefully typed, I suspect he might have some of the same difficulties.

The jargon, the popular phrases, magazines and books, the slang, even the nicknames for the musicians and writers as well as the trending hobbies are so different from generation to generation and when one generation is skipped it can become almost impossible to figure out.

Thank goodness for the Internet, it is the best tool I have beyond my own imagination, but this transcribing is the hardest puzzle I could ever imagine.

This is a test

A new human being comes into the world and parents are overwhelmed by their love and sense of responsibility.

They want to give that child the best food possible, devoid of chemicals and artificial hormones, food to build a strong body and mind with.

They want to provide the safest environment and most stimulating surroundings possible.

They want to give that little mind a chance to reach its full potential and that means avoiding stimuli that programs them to have short, twenty second attention spans, because that's what television and movies play to. A little bit goes a very long way.

Good parents watch them fail and wait to see how they recover, wanting to do it for them, encouraging them, but knowing that if you never fall, you never learn how to get back up.

And after all that careful tending we toss them out into the world to see if they will swim, or fly, or slither away -- and become a happy, healthy, wonderful adult.

And part of who they become is a credit to us. And part of it is a credit to themselves, because they are not our clones.  If we have done a good job they are distinctly unique human beings who provide us with our final test:

Loving them for just who they are and not who we thought they would be, or wanted them to be, or needed them to be.

A different drummer

Born to  a Midwestern couple back in the middle of the twentieth century when boys were supposed to be boys, he was all boy.  No one even had an inkling that he saw nothing at all recognizable past six feet. His teacher thought he was "retarded" and sent him for special testing with a psychiatrist.

He and the psychiatrist played chess and later the parents were informed that he was very bright, but very strong willed.  Glasses and a little talk about differences (mainly that if the words said color me blue, he was NOT to color it red even if he thought it looked better,) got him through first grade.

By second grade he'd found his groove, excelling in anything he liked or found interesting and horrifically failing at anything else.

His size made him appear to be a super candidate for sports, but early on he disabused everyone of this.  Instead the neighbors would call to tell his mother he was "sleeping" in the sun in the middle of their driveway, or sidewalk.

By fifth grade he was expected to choose an instrument and learn to play it.  He began with the oboe, but quit, telling his mother that by the time he got the sound out, the other students were already on the next one.  They switched him to Bass Violin because he was tall and strong.  He carried that to and from school for several months before he balked.  He didn't like doing that.  Music was no more his forte than sports.

It became obvious that his interests were not going to lie in that suburban ideal of the perfect son, or to put it in other words, he marched to a different drummer.  He did have other attributes. He could walk out and pick up an injured animal without a second's thought, or trouble.  He was loyal to the death when he believed in something and he was strong.

Shunning formal education left him working at a factory and later working as the custodian for a nursing home, but his health wasn't so good.  He had been expected to die before he was three from a serious kidney problem.  Add years of smoking and drinking, several bypass surgeries, seven stints in his arteries and the wear and tear of overworking his back and it was amazing he was still up and around.

He managed to weather five marriages, have four children, seven grandchildren, one great grandchild, give up drinking and draw wild animals like St. Francis of Assisi. He never learned to follow the crowd, or achieve what traditional society requires of successful people, but he was every child's favorite uncle, a loyal best friend and a brother who is still always there for me.

And today is his birthday!

A glancing moment

Autumn is my favorite season.

This morning I heard the geese calling.  Not an unusual event, since I live a block away from a lake and often hear a pair of geese flying over and honking away as if to say, "Here we come, make way for geese!"

But this morning the honking was more insistent and gradually I became aware that there were more than a few geese overhead, so I went out to my deck and looked up.

The sun was glancing off the breasts of hundreds of geese, in so many different Vees that I could not tell where one began and another ended. Yet, they seemed to know exactly what they were doing.

They curved in and over the lakes then back around and over me, following some invisible current of air I could not see.

It was an extraordinary moment, sunlight pooling around bronze leafed trees, golden breasted geese flying overhead -- like a scene from Krishna's garden.

I stood there listening and watching until there wasn't a single goose to be heard. Then realized what a let down I was experiencing as the world returned to normal.  A subtle shift returned the day to me without the magic of the previous moments.

And yet, it is mine forever, a glimpse of eternity manifesting in my own backyard, the splendor of ages that never changes, but is seldom seen.

And I am profoundly grateful.

The good, the bad and the unexpected

Life is a learning process.  Anytime I think I know it all, that I won't have any more unknowns to deal with, I am in for a surprise. Some of them are good and others not so good. 

The good things tend to get taken in stride.  I assume they come as part of the package, rewards well earned, just nice surprises.

The not so good ones can really rock the boat. The farther along I am, the more these things affect me.  They may seem unfair, or wrong, or simply out of my league-- but the fact is: they are there!

And the only way to deal with them is one step at a time.

Then, afterwards, I tuck them away as lessons learned.  I now have one more experience under my belt, one more known way of dealing with something that is uncomfortable, or awkward, or just plain ugly.

In fairy tales and myths the hero goes through a series of trials before he comes into full being.  We are the heroes of our own stories and every lesson brings us closer to fruition.

The picture you present to the world shapes your world

I saw a Facebook post today.  It was put there by a good woman who I am sure meant well, but I found it disturbing.   First of all she gave credit for the quote to someone who didn't say it, and would not have said it.  Then she misinterpreted its meaning, twisting it to fit her own small understanding of the world.

I wonder if she would have had such high praise for these words had she truly understood where they came from?

I can understand people whose opinion differs from mine.  I can appreciate intelligent debate.  I can even appreciate your right to say what you think however uninformed it is.

I do not appreciate fear mongers, or people who spread hate in any form. 

If it is "cool" in your community to think you are better than other people because of their nationality, color of their skin, who they love, how or etc. then I am glad I'm not there, because YOU are the kind of person I don't want to be near.

Carefully cultivated ignorance, hate, and fear mongering will be what destroys this world in the end.

Who could ask for anything more?

I haven't done anything to merit such a wonderful life.

Sometimes I am simply overwhelmed by all the good things that flow into, around, and over me.

I woke up early yesterday, ready to work and the day sped by.

Today was pretty much the same.

Other than my Achille's heel, which is actually pretty much my whole foot, well, really both feet, I am so fortunate.  I actually fell asleep rocking in my chair the other night and woke up with a bruised heel!

The rest of me seems to be pretty sturdy.

Life couldn't be better.  I have work to do that I love.  My children are loving and happy.  My grandchildren a joy that brightens my life in every way.

My world is filled with love.

Who could ask for anything more?

Privy

In the nearly predawn hours of this morning I set out to buy coffee.  I would like to tell you about the lovely sunrise I saw along the way, but it is an overcast day and there was only a lightning of the gloom.

I live on the edge of town where one might expect to see fog lying like a chilly blanket over cornfields now cut and waiting for next year, but the fields were up and out of bed, shivering along with me and there was nothing except stubble on those early morning fields.

Instead, as I entered the more populated part of town, tiny clouds began skittering across the road and I saw fog rolling across yellow grass like an unearthly tide coming in on the wrong side of day.

It was on an empty lot, fenced in to protect some invisible, thing that man felt was too precious to be left unguarded. I wondered why this lot and none of the others would be rolling in fog?

It occurred to me that maybe it was a cloud farm!  After all, only tiny bits and pieces were escaping through the fence and onto the road!  The rest seemed to be in a continuous state of coming, but never arriving.

It is near Halloween and time for all sorts of eerie and unexplainable events to start occurring.  Perhaps this is where it all begins and I am the only soul here to witness the birth of fog on the edge of a Midwestern town at the beginning of a dark and gloomy day the week before the spookiest night of the year.

Mind doctoring

In the beginning communication was probably a series of gestures and grunts, howls and screams.

Later when those things turned into words and we realized we had minds, people began taking advantage of them to control us with superstitions and voodoo and other mind games.

Now we have whole professions dedicated to the proposition that these minds can be doctored and fixed, dissected and bisected by science and strangers, by talking and analyzing, and charging us insane amounts of money for things that might better be handled by a best friend.

Because who knows me better than my best friend? The careful ear of a best friend is worth it's weight in earrings and then some.  A true best friend does not over react, or push me into insane action, or tell me things just because I want to hear them.

That friend will listen to me anytime of the day or night, not for the money, but just for the love of me. 

And the beauty of real, honest, intelligent love is it's the biggest miracle worker in town.

Perseverance (Tuesday's thot that somehow didn't get posted here)

 It's a great day!

Today my daughter passed a very important test and she did it all herself.

She failed it the first time which is understandable.  All the way through school she needed extra help to get through, to pass tests, but today, many years after she finished school, she passed this one all on her own.

It says a lot about her perseverance, her new ability to study on her own and her extraordinary ability to concentrate enough to pick up the nuances.  It also speaks to the ability to overcome fear, because the fear of failing was certainly there.

I know it was a tough test, because a friend of mine with a degree in English had to take it twice!

So . . .hooray!  I am so proud of her!

Imperfections

Sometimes I feel the need to defend myself when in actuality the truth should be enough.  My own personal honor code is pretty strict.  Mostly because I know what it's like to have someone step on my toes and I never want to do that to anyone else.

If I had to make up stories about something in my life, I would want to step back and re-evaluate why, because (in my experience) there will be consequences eventually.

The misstep of being caught in a little white lie is probably just a tiny hiccup in the course of a life, but the cliff hanger drama of the big fib turns ant hills into mountains.  They are the stuff that ruins relationships.

Before that happens I try to ask myself what I am afraid of?  Why do I feel I can't tell the truth?  And if it's a big enough problem then how does it fit into the frame work of who I am, who you are, who we are.

Most things aren't as complicated as they seem in the beginning.

The closer we are, the fewer duck blinds I need to camouflage my imperfections.

I am an experiment

Observing is usually an interesting way of studying something first hand, but what does it mean when I am observing myself?

Occasionally I look up and see where I live.  It is the last in a long string of places I have lived in my life and especially in the last fifteen years.  Looking back on those other places I realize that I was searching for myself. 

I grew up with expectations that reflected my mother's generation.  I married a man more grounded in my parent's generation.  I felt conflicted about my own generation and raised my children accordingly.  Then, suddenly, I was free to be exactly who I was.  There could be no more blaming on anyone or anything.  

I thought I knew who I was, but each place I lived ticked one spot off the list of who is me.

I discovered I could do almost anything, but my role as a mother and preschool teacher who liked to write and paint and be creative fit me better than any nine to five well paid job.  So I retired.  One box checked off the list.

I thought I wanted to live closer to nature and farther from people, but that turned out not to be true either.  I am a city girl who enjoys visiting nature.  Box two checked off.

I thought I wanted old classical furniture and houses, but that too turned out to be untrue, at least in the price range I could afford. So here I am in an apartment complex, living in a "luxury studio apartment" with bits and pieces of furniture I liked too much to get rid of.  I am always surprised how much this seems to really be me.

Little by little, by the process of doing and undoing, I am discovering what truly suits me and sometimes I feel like a hamster under glass being observed by myself.  It is certainly not conventional by old world standards.  And by old world I mean the world I grew up in and based my values on for at least fifty years.

But it is feeling more right with every week that passes. 

It only requires that I experience and evaluate and honestly look at my life without the old censors and that is harder to do than I imagined, because censors are autonomic pieces of me carefully pressed into my psyche and sanded smooth over long years of use.  I barely notice they are here and yet, they are what make me uncomfortable in my own skin much of the time.

Learning what to let go of and what to embrace, what to create anew and what to cherish from the past is a slow painstaking process.

I am both the scientist and the experiment. The results are unknown, but the way is too rich and full of flavor to give it up.

Challenges

How easy it is to think I am the only one, or the first one, who ever thought these thoughts!

It is difficult to bring up unpopular ideas, or ideas that go against the grain of a large portion of anyone's culture, because there is always the certainty that they will not be discussed with an open mind, but merely crushed by the fear of even thinking them.

Having thought them and then finding that others in the distant past thought them too, makes me feel a little sad, knowing I was not the first.

But it also helps validate these thoughts.  If others, with much greater minds than I have, could think them, then perhaps I am closer to the truth than might be popular.

After all, being a common, or popular, thought does not guarantee that something is the truth. 

History is full of absolutes that eventually proved to be false. And not just false, but terrifyingly dangerously false.

Human beings are more comfortable with the fabrications they know than ones that challenge their traditions.

Experience the possibilities

I am always amazed at the inspiring people who are in my life.

People whose interest and enthusiasm catches me up and carries me onto new and beautiful experiences.

People whose dedication shows me what is possible with just a bit more perseverance.

People whose faith is different from mine, but whose experiences are the same.

People whose innate goodness goes way beyond what I find in most.

I am surrounded by a world succeeding and flourishing in spite of the limitations of short sightedness.

Imagine how it could be if ignorance and fear could be obliterated.

Sometimes we trim the fat and lose the pig

Simplify, simplify, simplify!

I am always trying to find the root of the problem, because it seems to me that it should be easier to fix the foundation of the leaning tower than to rebuild the whole thing, but straining to over simplify can lead to some faulty conclusions.

I've known people who take a phrase like "absent minded professor" and decide that if you act like Fred MacMurry in the movie, you must therefore be brilliant, but sometimes people are simply crazy without the added bonus of intelligence.

Just like being poor doesn't necessarily mean you are lazy, or dumb, but it also doesn't mean you are guaranteed salt of the earth humble and kind.

And being childlike doesn't mean you are angelically good any more than it means you have some kind of disability.

In our society I see people over reaching all the time.  We want our loved ones to be special, so we seek out bizarre behavior and pretend that it's something good in disguise.  It can be, but . . .

It's totally possible to just be curious and curiouser and nothing more.

Simply difficult

The boss isn't fair.  The pants are itchy.  The shirt doesn't fit  The egg yolks are yucky.

The patients are crabby.  The students are rowdy.  The world is not right.  Everything is off.

When things are not right we start close to home and begin the blaming game.

Some people never get any farther than that. 

Remember Mr. Wilson, or Mr. McOnion, or maybe you remember Lucy? All of them are famous for being crabby, but in some kind of cute way that made us smile. 

In real life, crabby people are less endearing and more annoying.  We want to fix whatever is wrong for them, or in them, or around them.  We want to pour milk down their throats and watch them turn into beings of light.

That means identifying the problem, but the problem is:  the problem is not the problem!

On children it can be as simple as being sick.  Adults are trickier.  A childhood problem that isn't solved becomes the provocation for one more problem after another and after years the roots and tendrils are all tangled up together.

Sometimes we give Lucy five cents and pretend it's all better -- and surprisingly enough that can work.  Other times we just keep fixing all those broken tendrils and the distraction is enough to make it bearable.

Figure out what the real problem is, then the problem IS the problem and life should be a lot simpler.

It's just that THAT is not so simple.

The gift of gab

I am responsible for every word that comes out of my mouth.

When I share a something I need to understand that my words make a difference and I should have some idea what that difference may be.

Spreading rumors, or information I am unsure about can cause serious repercussions. 

Sharing bad news should have a point.  Am I looking for a way to fix a problem?

Or am I one of those people who simply likes to be miserable and feel upset?

I need to be especially careful when speaking around children.  They take most things quite literally and they take them to heart.

The gift of gab is seriously abused by so many people. 

Communication is one of our most interesting abilities.  It can start wars and wreak havoc, but used judiciously it is almost magical.

Unconditional love

Why do you do that!?!

How many of us can answer that? 

I like Atticus's  words to Scout:

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view . . . until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.

And one way to step into that skin, to walk in his shoes, is to listen to what he has to say.   Really listen!  In fact, maybe listen twice as much as you talk, or even three times as much as you talk.

Sometimes the real problem is buried in among so many things that it is hard to find.  Kind of like those hidden picture books children love so much.  Given enough time people often find the answers themselves.

Nothing ever makes as much sense to me as something I discover for myself.  But it's hard to discover these things if I am busy defending myself, or trying to come with answers and excuses.  I need a safe place to think and maybe bounce my thoughts off of a loving person.

Unconditional love is one of the rarest things in our world.  I often find myself believing I have to be this, or that, or do this or that to be lovable even when it isn't true.

So when you want to help me maybe the first thing you can do is not give me advice, but just give me a safe place to talk.  Let me know you care enough to listen and if I do ask you for help then show your unconditional love by giving me nonjudgmental suggestions.

I  don't want to think I am some kind of cause, or stereotype.  I just need to know that I am me and that is okay.

Every day

Special occasions should be special!

However you decide to spend that occasion, it should not be the same thing you normally do. 

If you can't do something extraordinary, then you need to save something you CAN do, something you don't do on every day.  It is up to you to make that time unique and memorable and different from all other days.

That's not to say you can't start a tradition.  Doing the same thing every year is actually pretty special all in its self.  Like fireworks on the fourth of July or a tree at Christmas.  If we had fireworks for every holiday or a tree in the house all year, they wouldn't be half as exciting.

So when the occasion doesn't already have a traditional celebration it's your chance to be the creator of a new tradition if you like.

Maybe one night a year you watch To Kill A Mocking Bird, or maybe one day a year you get all la tea dah dressed up and go to tea, but whatever it is, it is special and means something to you.

Even peanut butter and jelly can be special if you use cookie cutters and make sandwiches in the shape of hearts, so it doesn't have to be extravagant, just different.

Wouldn't it be nice if there was one special thing about every day?

Beastly beauty

It is only in looking back that I realize that every feminine trait, in our house, was ascribed starting with the number of inches one stood above the floor.

The more petite a woman was, the better her chances of being beautiful.  One could not be tall and beautiful, or graceful, or charming, or any other adjective associated with the creme de la creme of womanhood.

Once it was ascertained that she would not be small there was no point in allowing her to take ballet, or raise her expectations of ever being pretty, or popular in the classical sense.  She could be handsome, intelligent, successful, but never a beautiful woman. That door was closed to her because of her genes.

Like all children I simply accepted the truths of my childhood.  I would never be beautiful and any attempt to do so was embarrassingly ridiculous -- rather like having one leg and expecting to be a ballet dancer.

So I cultivated other things.  My heroes were mostly men like my father, which mostly served me well in the long run -- and yet, I longed to be beautiful, or adorable, or any of those things automatically out of my reach because of how tall I was. 

It wasn't until recently when someone made me feel both beautiful and adorable, that I realized how many of my habits had developed in an attempt to camouflage my "disability."

At various points in my life I was able to keep my weight down to dangerous levels, hoping that thinness would make up for height.  I have a fear of having too much "stuff" in my life, as if that, too, might pare down the inches.  I have avoided anything that might highlight my lack of beauty, preferring to be seen as an intellectual, or super woman rather than a pathetic giant trying to be what she isn't.

Looking back, and looking at some of my lovely nieces who are as much as six inches taller than me, I finally realize that beauty has nothing to do with height.  In fact, many beautiful women are much taller than me. 

The only thing awkward and ugly about me was my idea of my self. 

Now, I am retired, gray haired, fat and, amazingly, feel more beautiful than I have in my whole life.

Life enhancers

I have noticed that many people live crisis to crisis and while that is understandable, it is also a shame.

Perhaps because I work with small children, I notice there are many things in between the crises worth noticing and celebrating.

Placing my attention on a situation makes it bigger, more important, and while I can't ignore a crisis, I can certainly choose to not blow it up bigger than life.

The culture of my past tended to focus on these sad and bad moments. People remember the year of the big tornado, or the Christmas ruined by Uncle Arlo while, at the same time, forgetting the day baby Jimmy smiled for the very first time, or that time the sun came out right in the middle of a thunderstorm.

In a way, I think this is proof that good things happen more often than negative ones.  We simply don't have time to celebrate all the good times, or at least we think we don't.

The force of a negative experience seems to outweigh the pleasure of a positive one, but if I am truly present I discover there are more positive ones between the bad ones than I might have guessed and they are worth celebrating.

Life boosters, life savers, natural medicine for body and soul that are there for the taking.  Don't waste them.  Who knows what negative experiences do to us.

Positive ones, whether they are as small as a deep breath savored for ten seconds, or being licked by a happy puppy, when celebrated, are true life enhancers.

Listen and learn

I have only dreamed of flying once in my life.  All the other times I have dreamed of swimming.

In my dreams, breathing underwater seems as natural as out of it.  I love water.  I have always loved water! 

Whether we were at the lake in Minnesota, at the ocean watching the waves roll in, or in my bedroom watching the water shadows from the pool down below, there is something mesmerizing about water.

Yet, I am a very poor swimmer.  My father tossed me in the lake at two and I swam.  He towed me out to the sailboat when I was eight and I loved it.  But . . . my mother was terrified of water and she carefully and methodically passed that fear on to me.  I was a bright child.  I listened to her tales of nearly drowning when she was a child.  I heard her warning about the dirty water. I understood her story about being able to drown in a tablespoon of water if you weren't careful.

She kept me from ever taking swimming lessons, or going to the public pool until I was nearly eighteen strictly out of fear.  There were a few halcyon years when I swam in shallow water fearlessly because I knew I could stand up, but I was never able to give up that paralyzing fear that I might drown in deeper water.

I did not pass that on to my children.  They all passed their life guard tests and are fantastic swimmers.  I wish I had their confidence, but even after having our own pool for years I was never able to find that.

And that is a shame, because I think I am a water baby out of its realm and that is a great loss.

Professionals

When did we hand over our entire selves to other people?

I think the majority of people want the optimum health, whether it is physical, or mental, but in today's world there is such a glut of information on how to do that it is easy to be overwhelmed.

Embracing first one and then another "miracle" diet, vitamin, habit, or exercise and then hearing that it was not effective, even if it appeared to be for me, made me doubt my ability to care for myself in the very best way.  I don't think I am alone in this feeling.

People may say they have no doubts, but any intelligent person always has some doubts and I really believe that is how we slowly gave up ownership of our own bodies and handed it over to the "professionals."

Now many of the "professionals" lay claim to that and tell us what to do and how to do it, with an assurance that I believe is not founded in reality.

IF they really are professionals then they should be consulted, but it is not reasonable to turn our whole self over to anyone else without any reservations.  I had a friend who could afford a personal trainer.  He was god in her eyes and despite the fact that she was in continual pain from the exercises over several years, he insisted he knew best.  Until . . . she ruined her rotator cuff.

As comforting as it may seem to go back to those childhood days when Mom or Dad knew exactly what we should or should not do, we really cannot hand over responsibility for our own bodies to anyone else.

Even though it may be uncomfortable, I need to look upon doctors, nurses, dentists, and other pros on television programs and Internet ads as consultants.  If I cannot talk freely with them about my real health and feelings, then they are not in my best interests.

Anyone insecure, or egotistical enough to be offended that I am questioning them is not a real pro. 

Ears

Ears are great places to show off earrings.  Right about eye level and relatively simple backgrounds for those fancy baubles, which, if I am lucky, are not a distraction that deafens ears which should be listening.

I love good listeners!

People who really hear what I say.  People not thinking about what they are going to say when it's their turn.  People who know how to pay attention.

Listening is probably one of the most respectful things I can give you.  It says I value what you say, what you think, how you are interacting with me.

Ears are the first ambassadors of the world.

They can be deceptively dangerous if I don't use them to really listen to what others are saying.

Friends

Imagine buying a house forty years ago and the day after you move in someone knocks on your door at 6:30 A.M.  It is a tall woman bearing a warm, homemade coffee cake.  Her name is Judy and her back yard butts up against yours - sideways.

Later that day, while out on your patio, you see a man with dark brown hair, who looks a little like George Maharis, mowing the lawn.  It is John, her husband.

You are neighbors for about three years and even then you realize they are the best neighbors anyone could ever have.  You have tea with Judy almost every day and not once does she throw you out of her kitchen.  She almost becomes a surrogate mother, teaching you how to sew everything from neckties to suits and cook almost anything from scratch.  She teaches you mothering and when you adopt your first child, the two of you babysit for each other and then you move to different parts of town, but a bond has been forged.

When I am stranded, who do I call?  Nope, not ghostbusters.  John!  He has come out and picked me up late at night when the Megabus broke down and from the ER when they thought I was having a heart attack.  And today he put together these stools for me in less time than it took me to nearly ruin one.  When I asked what I could do for them in return?  They gave me their home grown tomatoes!

I remember once, when I hadn't seen them for years, I got caught out in a thunder storm on my bike and showed up at their back door before seven in the morning on Easter and they did not blink an eye!

People like this are rare in my world and so very precious I don't even really know the right words to use when talking about them.  But they are the kind of people that make "friends" an almost sacred word.

Mystery abounds

It's a fine line between sweet and scary mysteries.

Soul mates think the same thoughts in the same moments and are charmed.

A sweet voice calls from the woods and we are terrified.

Echoes from the unknown are chillingly frightening.

Brought up speaking of ethereal creatures we cling to the finite ones and anything that steps beyond the boundaries of understanding raises fear like the hackles on a black cat at midnight.

There is no supernatural.  There is only the undiscovered.  The misunderstood.  The misrepresented.

Mystery abounds!  It stands before the closed doors to beckon us forward.  Calling us to investigate, to study, to decipher, all those amazing things we think we already know.

Let science go where no man has gone before and discover our true potential.  We may be finite creatures, but I am pretty sure we are infinitely more complex than any of us believe right now.

Manipulators

Sometimes the hardest decisions turn out to be the best ones in the long run.

There is a time and a place to take care of the underdog, but not every person in need is an underdog.

Some of them are simply manipulators, people using other people because it is convenient and fun and easier than changing themselves.

And there are people who believe being manipulated is a form of love, but it's not.

Loving someone means wanting the very best for them.

No matter what you want.

That feeling I get

I experienced something today that I had forgotten even existed. 

It is the deep seated warmth and sense that all is right with my world that I used to have coming home from elementary school in Springfield, Illinois.  I don't think I ever felt it again after we moved away from Butler school.   Maybe because I was older and knew more about the world, or maybe other things changed, but whatever the reason, I feel blessed to have felt it today.

I'm not sure what brought it back, but I suspect it is because my world is full of soul deep loving people right now. 

There is no gossiping, no complaining, no mistreating in my immediate world.  Everyone in the inner circle treats everyone else with loving respect and care -- and that's the way it should be.

The rest have been relegated to the outer limits.  They still have a place, but it is at a safer distance.

Bestest says my control ends at the tip of my nose.  He's right, so if I can kiss you on the nose we must be pretty well suited for each other.  If I can touch you with my hand we need to be happy to be around each other.  If I don't want to lay eyes on you we are better off apart.

It is possible to treat people humanely, help them out, even stand up for them, without bringing them into your inner circle. 

That is not being selfish, it is being intelligent.  Negative things cause illness, aging, sadness, depression.  Eliminating as many as possible only makes sense.

That little bit of warmth I felt today?  It just might be a glimpse of heaven.