Happy New Year's Eve

What a year this has been! Next year HAS to be better!

Rather than dwell on this year I am simply finishing it with a bang and promising myself that the new one will be much much better -- for me and everyone else.

I went to St. Louis this week for the first time in nearly two years. The drive wasn't bad at all and I had a wonderful time with old friends. I put my new platform bed together today, which meant taking the old one apart. I'd been dreading this for weeks, even thought about trying to hire someone to do it, but I did it!

That just goes to show I should never under estimate myself. It was physically hard, but I just took one step at a time and it is a done deed. I want to remember that this coming year.

One step at a time I can do almost anything I put my mind to.

And so can most other people.

Now I'm going to relax, sort of, and watch Alabama play Michigan State!

The right to

What makes us human? What distinguishes us from the other mammals?

I used to think there were more differences than similarities and that somehow it made us superior, but I am beginning to wonder if this is the down side of being human. Perhaps we have progressed to the point where some of us are headed the other way.

Those wonderful things that gave us an edge might not destroy just us, but every other living creature given enough time. I think the earth will be fine. She will recoup given enough time.

Our brilliance allows us to expose nearly everyone to information they might not have had access to in the past. So a city dweller can identify a shark feeding frenzy, or wolves tracking down their prey. We recognize this sort of group activity in "primitive" animals.  We understand how cowboys herded cattle along the old western trails.

Yet we don't see how the majority of us are being herded down the trails to second class citizenship and poverty by the modern herders. We just fall into line behind those screaming whatever we want to hear in order to make us follow them. We want to believe there is a shortcut to a better life and that shortcut involves allowing the top few percent to have more and more in return for their promises that if we only do away with the scapegoats they will give us more.

They talk us into carrying guns and even try to get us to put them in classrooms so some of us can sacrifice ourselves for the greater good. Imagine Star Wars ending in a huge fire fight right there in the theater! The good guy bullets and bad guy bullets flying over our heads . . .

They cut funding for education, use social security for things other than retirees, and well you know the rest.  "They" are whoever the poorly educated, nonthinking, reacting people choose to put in power --

These tactics work: for the top percent: for the short term: for now.

In the end?

It will end life as we know it and we are choosing it!

Old Friends

How often I have heard the words, "Life is short!"

How seldom have I truly embraced them the way I did the past few days.

Old friends, and I mean we, the truly old, got together and spent a very productive time enjoying life.

Playing our favorite Upwords game. Going out to eat and ordering what we love instead of what is necessarily good for us, pub hamburgers and pot stickers the size of nectarines! Biscuits and curried hash, sugared pecans and spiced cookies!

Meeting kindred spirits, enjoying good art, discussing everything with great abandon!

Realize that all the men are in their seventies and all but one of the women in their sixties. How that can be, I don't know. We don't feel that old, but when I look at the picture, we do look it.

When we look at each other, though, it isn't gray hair, or wrinkles we talk about, or even think about. There are discussions about artistic technique, texture, and performances; teaching harp lessons via Skype, where the next gallery presentation will be and what next year's goals are!

We are not some indistinct fading group of elderly people. We are just as alive as ever and maybe more! Years of creativity gather energy over time. No longer forced to let it dribble out around the hours spent working to pay bills and punch clocks, now becomes the hour to set it free and see what happens!

The golden ring

Occasionally, the merry-go-round slows down to let someone on or off and I realize that life is not as madcap or serious as I believed.

The golden ring turns out to be a hologram and the sustenance being peddled all around me is neither as good or bad as I have been led to believe.

On the whole my life is so much better than lives three hundred years ago, or even a hundred years ago. I am not as isolated as people in my age group, or position might have been thanks to computers and cell phones and television. There are places for me to volunteer that leave me feeling grateful and fulfilled. I can maintain a long term relationship with Bestest on a day to day, even hour to hour basis, whereas it would have been days by snail mail. I was born at the right time.

I think it is the human condition to always want to take things a step farther than what is the "norm" at any given time. It is as if we are driven to want more and be unsatisfied with ourselves and our lives if we aren't constantly inching forward. I suppose that keeps our species alive, but it doesn't need to happen all the time. It's okay to be content, or satisfied, or just pleasantly ensconced in what is -- without feeling the need to at least put on the show that I am reaching for that golden ring.

I exist even when I'm not on the merry-go-round. Life goes on even if no one sees me.

Ultimately, my life is for me. If it doesn't leave me feeling good about myself, what is the point?

It's good to serve others. It's good to be a civic minded person. It's good to do and be all kinds of things, but the scales balance out when I let myself feel good too.

The very young at heart

Only the young at heart can really enjoy anything.

The rest of us let the world dump its garbage on top of everything.

The umbrella of the young at heart shields them from all the anxieties, wants, and false gods trying to stomp out the joy of living.

If you want to have a beautiful celebration you need to be with those whose hearts are full of innocence and joy.

It's possible they themselves are the real gifts.

Merry Christmas

Christmas Eve turned out better than it started.

I spent most of the day making sausage soup and chess pie, but having tasted the soup, it was worth it!  We'll have it tomorrow which we are calling First Christmas this year. Second Christmas will be when my granddaughter comes home from Ireland and Third Christmas will be when Bestest and I get together in late January.

I got to feast on videos of my youngest grandchildren tonight. They are a cross between adorable and a stitch! I love their exuberance and innocence. Grandchildren are what Christmas means to me. Still young enough to believe -- in everything.

There is much to be said for believing. It speaks of hope and dreams, of love and all the good things in life. And even when all those things don't pan out, if you still believe in something there is still hope for -- well, hopes and dreams and love.

Maybe not the way I envision them now, but real all the same.

And on that note I wish you all a very Merry Christmas filled with the joys that speak to your heart. I am about to go to sleep to Christmas carols played, sung and recorded for me by Bestest. And who knows, maybe Santa Clause will come before morning!

The reality of Christmas

Christmas is supposed to be about giving, but it's hard not to have expectations. This time of year is great for those who have family close by. Traditional, storybook families, where everyone is happy and healthy and not going through divorces, or dealing with disabilities.

The cheeriest person trying to decorate the house on a budget, buying gifts with love and trying to make plans that leave no one out while stepping on no one's toes can find it difficult.

What I really want for Christmas is for everything to be the way it was last year.

Then there are those I bent over backwards for, worried they won't have a nice Christmas. I have been learning today that they will have to leave early, aren't bringing gifts, aren't really interested in more than coming, getting their gift and leaving. Christmas brings out the grinches.

I don't know if the joy I felt getting ready for Christmas was worth the disappointment I'm feeling right now, but I think it was.

I did everything with love and that love is still within me. I just need to let go of the rest. Things are what they are and maybe they will be better next year.

Shells

I almost always over react.

If someone doesn't call, or knock on my door, or text back, or write, I try to be rational, but soon I slip right back into my comfort zone -- which is to be innately uncomfortable.

I know as well as anyone who uses social media, or has friends, or is the least bit intelligent that looks are not a reliable gauge when it comes to judging people and I believe that -- except when it comes to me. I am sure that I am too tall, too fat, too plain, too uneducated, too almost anything depending on the moment.

It doesn't seem to matter how many positive experiences I have (and in this time of my life I have many every day) I tend to remember the few negative ones when trying to decide what is wrong.

And what is wrong is often only a misconception. Someone doesn't text back or call because they are very busy, or they don't answer their door because they simply aren't home. It really is possible to choose the wrong time to visit quite often. People have different internal clocks.

But somehow I have learned to blame all problems, imagined or real, on what I said, or did, or was.

I try so hard not to offend anyone that if I inadvertently do, I should be forgiven. The intent was never there. And if it happens often, then I am probably trying too hard. Life just gets too complicated. It is one of the reasons I need the truth. I can feel when it isn't the truth and that makes me doubt everything else.

For Christmas I would like Santa to bring me a harder shell and even if it doesn't work, I could hide inside of it when I needed to.

For Life

Children are for life.

I doesn't matter how old they get, how far away they live, or what they think, say, or do.

Once you hold them in your arms they are in your heart forever.

I want to hold your hand

Transitions are so hard.

Depending on what the transition is, it can feel unbearable.

Most of us go kicking and screaming into the dark night of moving from what we love into the unknown.

Sometimes it helps to pretend a little, but pretend what? It depends on who we are. Finding an idea, or dream bright enough to light our way is very personal. It's kind of like a child writing a letter to Santa Claus, only we are writing it to ourselves.

In the beginning the hardest part might be admitting that what was, is past. It is hard to let go.

Given half a chance and enough time, this darkness will become part of the past. Part of the foundation for who we are, but not the whole of us.

People can hold our hand, not to lead us through the darkness, not to take us to a new place; those are things we have to do ourselves, but just to reassure us that it is possible and that they have confidence in us. 

Carrots and straw and gold

The future gives us more than many philosophers would have us believe.

It may not be here yet, but without a little planning,  it is going to be a crap shoot. I know that is not the popular thing to say, but it is the truth. There was no doubt about it a hundred years ago, or so. If you didn't plant the food, weed it, water it, harvest it, preserve it in some way -- you didn't eat the next year.

Bad diets lead to bad teeth, bad bones, unhealthy immune systems, inferior growth, uncomfortable living. Food is just one example of how important it is to plan for the future. Poor education, or planning, often influences our future job satisfaction and ability to live life in a way we find more compelling than just existing.

It is possible to be content with what is, but that is more true when what is -- is nice.

In my life I have often felt content with what is, but that has also usually hinged on the fact that I believed the future would be better.  Being landlocked by snow in 2009 for five days, alone, with no heat, power, or phone, was only bearable because there was the constant possibility that these things might be fixed at any moment.

So, as much as I try to live in the now, it is the carrot, the future, that often makes a difference. My job is to find the right carrot.

I cannot spin straw in to gold, and believing some little gnome is going to appear and make everything perfect is not realistic, but there are lots of things in between straw and gold that have value and if I can find the one to focus on that will bring me the most satisfaction, or joy, then life usually has more purpose and more pleasure.

Listen children

Sometimes the youth of the earth overwhelms me. As an old preschool teacher I recognize the temper tantrums, the petty jealousies, the selfishness of a world who seems to be isolated from her parent.

Countries dash around trying to prove who has the most toys while knocking down the buildings and societies of others.

Religious fanatics think their mommies and daddies religions are the bestest and only ones that should be allowed.

No one seems to understand that allowing one child to starve, or die, or suffer,  hurts all children.

Like little magpies these toddlers hoard the gold and shiny stuff, believing it has some intrinsic value all its own.

And all the littlest people believe the bullies and rich kids really know . . .

What? No one knows, but maybe it's time for a nap.

Memories

Memories are not just nostalgic wonders, filled with good thoughts and warm fuzzies. They are not just horrific experiences that send us into years of therapy. They are ephemeral things that we now look upon in ways society has highlighted with books, and movies, and radio talk shows.

But none of those things, books, or movies or radios, existed when we were created. We evolved into bipedal creatures because it is the way that worked best for us to get around. We have a nose that is geared to work on land, but is constructed so that we can still swim. Everything about us has, or had, some kind of purpose.

Memories do too. They make the past a classroom for the future. Memories are the blueprints that tell us which things worked, which ones failed and which ones had the most promise.

The better we recall and read these memories, these blueprints, the better our chances are for creating a better now and tomorrow.

Knowing things went bad will not make tomorrow better.

It is necessary to understand the what and whys of that failure and memory can be of service here too, because it can show us what DID work. It is the analytical process along with an intentional desire to understand and do better that is our hope.

Memories are the history books of day to day living and the better students we are, the better tomorrow can be.

Competition

There is a tendency for people to think American Christmas is the personification of greed, but I don't think that is true. Of course the people who are the crassest examples always make the news, but Christmas is whatever you want to make it.

I see a lot of legitimate love and caring. People who do good things, loving things for others for no other reason than it feels good to do these things.

Take the competitions, the BEST house, the BEST present, the MOST gifts, the MOST EXPENSIVE gift, the BIGGEST diamonds, out of Christmas and you have the possibility for so much joy left.

Those sloppy Christmas cookies decorated by chubby little hands, the crooked tree with home made ornaments, the eyes of children seeing Santa Claus, these are some of the joys that only come once a year. They don't start at Target in August. They can't be bought. They are impossible to commercialize because they require real children, real experiences, real love and patience, really being there.

This is Christmas with a capital C. It is love made real. The birth of goodness into a less than perfect world. It is a time ripe with possibilities that can carry over into the rest of the year.

Getting up

I read an article about a study of women who sat for 7.5 hours a day. All of them were diabetics and the ones who never got up had their normal glucose levels. Those who got up and walked had readings about a third better and those who simply stood up were not far below that. Evidently it pays to get up out this chair, so that is my new goal. Although I am not diabetic I am going to get up and walk five minutes every half hour.

At first I set the timer on my phone and every half hour, when it went off I got up and walked around my apartment. It is surely not the same as a brisk walk, but I'm not taking brisk walks. My feet are still recovering from the past seven months of almost no walking. This seems like it might be a good way to start again. At the very worst I am moving more than I was.

Five minutes goes quickly. I have discovered that I am surrounded by things that please me! As I walk around this apartment my senses are filled with things that I love. Often on three levels at a time. The pictures on the walls were each carefully hand picked by me. The Christmas cards hanging on the door remind me of friends, the potted plant blooming in a cheerful green bouquet was rescued out from under a table in the grocery store, my bedspread, Bearnard and his friends, my hobby all by itself takes up three separate layers on my counter top. Even the top of my kitchen cupboards sport specially chosen pieces of art work that I cherish.

This is turning out to be an appreciation walk, one that reminds me of all the blessings in my life and raises my spirits as well as my body.

And if my interest in all these things ebbs, there is still the television.  I figure if I walk every half hour for eight hours I will have logged in 85 relatively painless minutes!

Faith

The fairy tales, the legends, the lore, always point to something greater than me. Whether it be for evil or good, the idea that there is a power that can be manipulated in some way is very appealing.

Of course it always depends on the eye of the seeker. To the primitive tribes of South America everything we take for granted seems magical. In the same vein, many of the miracles of the past are now easily understood and explained by modern science.

Even the Christian belief that man is made in God's image seems to point to the idea that we are wondrous creatures capable of much more than we have yet discovered. A truly paternalistic, creative deity would want his children to be independent, creative, wondrous progeny.

Believing we need objects and places to achieve what we call miraculous seems to me like the baby holding on to it's father's fingers until it learns to walk. The ability to walk was always there, the baby just needed to have faith in its own ability and practice using that ability.

My point is that faith and science need not be at odds, nor do they need to be dependent on each other. One is the finger pointing the way. The other figures out how that way works. When all is said and done it is really not necessary to throw virgins in the volcano, or burn goats on the altar.

Truly believing we are the living image of a god should be an empowering infinite belief in ourselves. Everything else might simply manifest as gratitude. Both the credit and the blame is ours to own.

Quality and quantity

Human beings have always had the burden of wanting a certain quality of life and it comes with strings. Life is not always a fairy tale. There are bills to pay, chores to do, errands to run, and just "stuff" to deal with. With freedom comes responsibility.

But there is time in between all the rest of it when there is a choice. Pragmatists use this time one way. Romantics another. Which way is best depends on your needs.

My needs require a certain amount of creativity, joy and sunshine. I am willing to give up a little security and even a little freedom to have these things. They are that important to me.

In fact, I'm not sure I really even have a choice. My mind just normally goes in certain directions and my body follows happily along, a puppy glad to have someone throw the ball in that direction.

Knowing and accepting what makes the quality of my life good for me, makes everything easier and in this world that can be a biggie.

Christmas carols

I have had a hard time getting into the Christmas spirit, but the night before yesterday I started trying to write The Twelve Days of Christmas in little icons on my phone and yesterday morning my friend Teamaker showed up unexpectedly bearing gifts.

Probably the best one was her hug. Bearnard is good to sleep with, but he's not much for giving back bear hugs. Teamaker also made me an ornament called a German bell! It's an elegant three dimensional beauty and the thought that she made it for me, makes it truly special. I'll hear the bells on Christmas day.

I turned on Alabama's graduation and watched Bestest walk in all his finest regalia while I decorated my little tree. Then, just as I finished, I found out my grandchildren got to go see The Nutcracker.

Christmas cards here are hanging with glee and sugar plum dreams are coming to be . . . Christmas is coming and I am getting fat . . . Have yourself a merry little Christmas!

Competition

He knows when I am happy. He knows when I am sad.

He knows when I am playing games that only make me mad!

So, I better not cry. I better not pout.

Cause I'm turning into, a grinch no doubt

And the fun now seems to all be seeping out.

I know when it's time to quit. I know when it's time to play.

I know fun is never something sad that darkens my whole day.

So, I better step out. I better concede.

Cause this game is something I no longer need.

And I've got books that I would rather read.

Horror story

There are people in everyone's life who ended up there because we knew someone who knew someone. Hybrid people. People whose life and lore are the stuff of legends.

If life were a comic book these people would be the super heroes or arch villains.

They fly into our lives with tales that make our hair stand on end, our hearts bleed with the rapture of goodness run amok, and we are awed.

Our imaginations wrap themselves around the idea of such friends. Our egos are pleased to be associated with these free spirits, and for one short moment in time life is amazing.

Life in the realm of caricatures and fantasy, falling over into real life is exciting until the shadow gloms onto us and there is a tug of realization. We have attached ourselves to a virus!

It shows up at our door when least expected. It spreads into our family life and friends. Its zeal and imagination spread like an ink blot over every part of our life and what was once fresh and exciting is now the stuff of nightmares.

Still the same affable, but pernicious, thrill monger it always was, we are loathe to hurt it in any way, but now instead of trying to figure out ways to be together, we try to think of ways to avoid it.

Once revealed, the loneliness and desperation that drove the hybrid to act out, makes them so much less appealing and so much more in need of us that the need to escape them feels almost unthinkable.

And that is a true horror story.

Dancing leaves

Perspective is probably the most magical of all my senses, although it may not be the most dependable.

Yet, perhaps it is the most reliable of all, because it uses my heart more than my head and is devoid of most of my more contorted views.

My perspective has turned a white trash bag into an elegant swan. It sees leaves dancing in December and hears the Nutcracker Suite. It looks upon the faces of those I love and they are forever beautiful.

Sometimes I try to step outside this protective coating and envision the world the way others might see it. The way people not in love with my life and my views see my world.

I wonder if they see it as distorted, or shabby, ridiculous, or sad. That bothers me for less than a microsecond because I soon step back into the place where I live. The reality of my life. The thoughts and belief systems that have made it worth getting to where I am now.

I'm not sure I had anything to do with my perspective. Whether it is a cultivated way of living, or a contrived coping mechanism, I honestly don't know. It's even possible it is hard wired into my being, but whatever it is, I'm glad it's mine.

It serves me well.

Pride and competence

Some of my favorite presents are the songs Bestest records and sends to my phone. They are played on his guitar and sung by his voice, so this is legal, but try telling my computer that. I always lose these songs when I change phones, and . . . I only know how to save them as voice memos on my newest phone.

I tried the helpless act, but no one I know could, or would, burn a CD of these songs for me. I thought I was going to have to go to voice memos and play each one separately for the rest of my life, or until I got a new phone and lost them again.

Bestest mentioned that he was able to email voice memos from his phone and voila, I figured out how to do that too! I even downloaded the songs from the emails to my computer!

Then I had to find out where my computer hid these downloads. Once I found them I tried to move them to my music program, but my computer prefers professional music and I had to beat it with my cursor to get it to accept these songs!

I won.

Next, I tried to put it on a list. That sounds intuitive. It was not.

I ended up with three lists, none of them complete and none of them willing to be deleted, or altered. At one point I had five copies of every song except Silent Night on one list. Evidently my computer does not like Silent Night. 

It refused to move it. It changed its location so it played under another name as a copy. It erased all of the songs on my list (several times) and then, for some reason I may never know, I had a list with all my Christmas songs on it that I can play from my big computer's start screen!

The job is done!  I may never be able to add another song (or I might. I just never know, I think it depends on how docile the computer is on any given day,) so it isn't exactly competence, but I am proud!

I keep going back to look and see if they are still there!

So far so good.

Normal

I remember longing to be normal in seventh grade.

What is normal?

Back then it meant someone who wasn't always the new kid in school. It meant not having to miss choir because I was in band and not being singled out for advanced classes in English, history, and math.  It also meant wearing Capezio pumps and matching sweaters and skirts instead of holey-soled bargain store shoes and cut down hand me downs.

It's not that I was bullied or mistreated. I always had a best friend, but when we walked home, she wore her matching sweaters and skirts with those damnable matching Capezios and I carried a ton of books and a violin.

My teacher wanted to nominate me for student of the month one time, but she asked if I had ever gone to a school dance. I hadn't and evidently it didn't count that I was in the chess and astronomy clubs. She told me she felt bad about that. So did I. But I didn't go to the next dance either.

With typical twelve year old fervor, I dreamed of growing up to be a concert pianist. I could see myself dressed in rhinestone gowns sitting at a Steinway in Carnegie Hall, my blonde hair cascading down my back. The only hurdle was my horrific stage fright that preceded every single concert on every single instrument I ever played. (And my dark brown hair.)

I was a persistent child. I played paino, saxophone, violin, and oboe. Both of my parent's dreams of playing an instrument professionally were shuffled through me and quietly failed for the second time.

Mostly I was a terribly shy child who was so terrified during performances that I barely had any memory of them afterwards. I sensed this was a great disappointment to parents who saw me as a "healthy looking girl" with brown hair who might be on their hands for the rest of their lives.

I did eventually outgrow some of these things, but it wasn't until I read Leo The Late Bloomer to three hundred preschool parents, that I realized I might be the consummate late bloomer!

Now I live in Normal and that's probably as close as I'm ever going to get.

Growing up

I did something remarkable yesterday.

I put another small rug in my bathroom.

Now that may not sound special to you, but let me explain where I come from.

My mother took all our really beautiful stuffed animals and hung them around the perimeter of our childhood bedroom so they could be seen, but not touched, or dirtied, or worn out. Years later we threw them all out when bugs got into the sacks in the attic where they had been stored.

One of my children gave me coupons for Christmas and I was so in love with them that I saved them and never used them. What a disappointment to that child!

We had a formal living room we seldom used except for pictures and very special occasions so it would always look nice to other people.

I grew up with a "company" complex. Much of what we did, or had, that was special, or nice, was saved for other people to enjoy -- not us. It was the way of many people back then.

Times change. People change. I have changed.

I have changed in many ways, but yesterday I put down a beautiful little rug for my feet to enjoy after a shower and while brushing my teeth. Others may enjoy it too, but it is no longer carefully rolled up and put away until company comes.

That is a sign that I am still growing up!

Little boxes

We really are little boxes.  All stacked up waiting for people to place templates over us and make sure we fill up on the right stuff from the day we are born. Mostly very good people with very good intentions doing the best they know how.

But underneath all those templates are slots. Lots of slots in all different sizes, depths, colors and places and no matter how hard we try to use the templates, our slots sort out what we can use and what we can't and try to fill themselves up.

Growing up and growing older makes the templates either become part of our skeletal structure or it begins to thin allowing the slots a better chance of finding what they need.

It's probably never going to be neat and tidy. All those ducks in a row will surely have a few swans and geese and maybe even a skunk or fox or llama. Whatever the reasons are probably don't really matter because the slots are there and the better they are filled the more fulfilled we are.

As I've grown older I have been surprised at the way things happen. Seldom the way it looks, I have found peace in unlikely places and been miserable in the places that should have been perfect for me.  No one has ever been allowed to make me happy unless I let them. I think because happiness is only a state of mind. It blooms when more of my slots are filled than when they are empty and I don't even have, or need to know the why or how of it. Although when I do realize something, it makes things easier.

Sometimes I wish I could have known this at three, or twenty, or even fifty, but I still had great moments and hours and days and even months of joyfulness. The darkness is a like a Jackson Pollock painting, splattered here and there, sometimes heavy and sometimes almost gone.

My teachers, what some people call guardian angels, or guides, or just best friends, have been here at the most crucial times. In this way I have been blessed.

I wish I could share the process with others, but I don't think it's really possible. We are, each of us, so unique and our environments, even among siblings, even more unique, so that there is no one else in the whole world exactly the same.

The best we can hope for is to follow our way and try to learn from it as we go. The desire to learn is our most valuable asset.

T'is the season

Twas the month before Christmas and all through the house
Not a creature stopped shopping, especially myself.
The credit cards were laid by the computer with care
In hopes that the stuff would be cheaper on there.
The children were nestled all deep in their lists
Thinking of Yoda and Jedis and gifts
And Bearnard in his bear suit and I in my cap
Had just settled our brains for a Thanksgiving nap
When out in the road there arose such a clatter
I sprang from my chair to see what was the matter.
I imagined a turkey so lively and quick
Trying to avoid being served with some dip.

Away to the window I flew like a flash,

Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

The moon on the crest of the highway below,

Gave a lustre of midday to cars on the go,

When what to my wondering eyes did appear,

But UPS and Fed Ex and mail trucks quite near,

With so many people and some of them sick,

I knew in a moment I should help old St. Nick..

More rapid than eagles the presents they came,

And I labeled and wrapped them and tagged them by name:

"Now, Grandpa! now, Grandma! now Auntie and Uncle!

Here, teacher! and, doctor who healed my carbuncle!

Hide them in closets! In boxes so tall!

Stash them away! stash them away! stash them away all!"

As gifts that before the Christmas lists fly,

When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;

So up in the attic I hide quite a few

With some in the trunk and the neighbor's house too—

And then, in a twinkling, I hear on TV

The laughing and giggling of commercial glee.. 

Changing the channel, I turned down the sound,

My heart begins thumping with terror unbound. 

I learn of a Christmas toy I had not put

Or even considered that I had to look

Till I turned on the tube this fateful night

And my failure stands staring me right in plain sight!

But the beauty of Christmas that is started so early

Is that there's still time, so I cannot be surly.

I'll jump in the car and head for the mall

For last minute gifts to send to y'all. 

Cause I gotta broad face and a little round belly

That expanded from watching, way too much telly.

I'll fill all the stockings and not be a jerk

I'll wrap up more presents with bows that are pert.

And laugh when you read this, in spite of myself:

Cause Christmas allows me to feel like an elf!

Birds of a feather

Feathered friends might flock together for good reason. They need each other for support and survival, but unfeathered friends flock together for many of the same reasons and other less savory ones.

Mob mentality is a phenomena that can be terrifying. It nullifies intelligent thinking and rational actions. Simply bonding out of mindless frustration, or rage, can create appalling situations, because there is the strength of many without the logic, analysis, or reasoning of intelligence.

Mobs of any sort are dangerous, no matter why they are gathered together. People who find themselves suddenly believing the un-provable, the unpracticed, the formerly unsavory, are generally desperate and desperation is the road to ruin. It clouds the thinking. It allows people to give themselves permission to do erratic things they wouldn't normally even consider.

These are truly the times that "try men's souls."

Dimmer

Sometimes I wonder if it is silly to deal with "stuff" at my age. At least two thirds of my life is over, so why go through the work, pain, time, whatever it takes to keep trying to improve my inner side. I guess the answer to that is: quality over quantity.

Those mean little voices whispering in my mind, telling me things that were born of someone else's pain, have to be exorcised. Otherwise they are like fog on my windows, they make the sunshine dimmer.

And those voices are cumulative!

My mother's bad day is still traveling around the world with me. The narcissism, insecurity, and sadness of everyone I've ever known is stuffed down in dark little spots all over my thoughts. I need to recognize them so that I can remember they aren't my reality. Otherwise I become them. They will never become me.

I have a lot of health problems. Those voices from the past keep telling me they are my own fault but, my bones do not ache because I am a bad person; I am not allergic to almost everything because I did something wrong; I am not unlovable because I am not perfect.

It's time to get rid of the voices and simply deal with my health.

It's just so easy to forget about them when things in my life are going smoothly. It's like I don't want to think about painful things during the good times. After all, if I do that, I might dim those times too. So instead I let them go and then when other things become a problem, those old ones jump in and join them, almost drowning me.

Today is a good day. Today is a great day! Today I chose not to block any voices and  . . .  voila! One of those voices spoke up and I saw right through it!

That -- is a step forward.

I remember playing that song on the piano way back in 1966.

Little Things Mean a Lot by Kitty Kallen:

Blow me a kiss from across the room
Say I look nice when I'm not
Touch my hair as you pass my chair
Little things mean a lot
Give me your arm as we cross the street
Call me at six on the dot
A line a day when you're far away
Little things mean a lot . . .

Of course the song was written for lovers, but I've always thought the world should be full of lovers. People who love people and all those other sayings that may sound trite, but are also full of truth. Real love is so much more than the sex we see on television. 

It is the love of a parent for a child, a friend for a friend, a sister for a sister, or brother, or any of those people who figure so importantly in our lives.

A phone call where you really listen to what the other person says is a gift. A text out of the blue that says I'm thinking of you is a gift. A drawing made from love is a gift. A picture . . .

In today's world where the wish lists are full of things that can be bought, the most fervent wishes are seldom listed and most often granted by sweet surprises that just pop up seemingly out of nowhere.

Comfort zone

I used to think that if I just tried hard enough I could do anything, but that isn't true.

I loved big family dinners and we had the room to do sit down dinners for everyone, but in all the years I was married I only got the family to make the 78 mile drive to our house once for a holiday. It was Thanksgiving and my fortieth birthday.

It is a matter of mind set. In their minds it was a different world. They could go 40 miles but not 78. It was okay. We usually made the trip to them, or we invited friends over, but it would have been nice if they could have shared.

It's the same way with most things. As Bestest says, my power ends at the tip of my nose. No matter how hard I try to do the right thing, or a funny thing, or just a different thing, it can only cross borders that are open.

Each of us set up our own boundaries and we have to live within them. They are our comfort zone.

Crossing into someone else's comfort zone uninvited might destroy all the bridges in between. It's a risk and the consequences need to be considered, but sometimes the best of intentions are misunderstood.

The secret

The secret to learning is so simple. It's the same secret that makes everything else more digestible. It is what makes mornings easier and nights more pleasant. It is love. Wait, don't stop reading yet. Give me a chance!

If you love something enough it becomes a part of life. We are born to love.

We love our parents because they feed us and care for us from day one. We love food because it tastes good and keeps us alive. We love doing other things for the same reasons. We are biologically designed to love. It keeps our species viable. It tingles our senses. It draws us like genies to magical lamps.

A teacher can demand respect and get some sort of facsimile, but he can cultivate love and get a genuine response. I have read books I never had any desire to even touch simply because someone I loved presented them to me as something they loved, or showed me they were the way to something I loved.

Love's like that, it sprays out over everyone around it, makes things stand out like fluorescent signs under a black light, has a scent that smells like chocolate to some and peppermint to others. Love is magical.

Love comes from the center and the first center of a classroom is the teacher. Students who fall "in love" with their teacher quickly expand that to his subject, his lessons, his viewpoint, or way of introducing that viewpoint, and if the teacher is a great one, pretty soon those students are thinking on their own and developing their own (actually educated) viewpoints.

A magical teacher loves his subject, and his students, and should you be lucky enough to meet a teacher like this, he can open the doors to the universe and everyone will fall through them into their own special niche.

Many Dick and Janes were the first keys and propagators of philosophers, neurosurgeons, architects, poets, painters and contractors. Their echoes just kept expanding until the impossible became the norm.

The luckiest people alive are those whose parents love learning. The next are those who have a teacher who genuinely loves learning. But even if someone only loves us, we are likely to feel safe enough to explore the unknown and that is what learning is all about.

Holy days, holey days, wholly days

Holidays are the measuring sticks of relationships.

Do we understand each other?

Are we capable of navigating each others eccentricities?

How long can we coexist with how many people in a confined space?

Do we even like each other?

And the answer when all is said and done is that with love, all of the above are possible, even when we are being real and honest with each other, because that is almost as important as the icing on the day if we want to carry this through until the next holiday.

Strangers can survive anything for a short period of time, but families have it much harder. We are in it for the long haul, linked by this strange thing called love that carries us over the unpredictable oceans of living for years and years and years.

Happy Thanksgiving

My heart is overflowing with thankfulness today.

Yesterday, on my birthday, all the texts, pictures, calls and visits actually used up all the battery life on my phone for the first time ever!

I don't know if I should even try to list all the things I am thankful for but just a few are:

My children and their children.

My brothers and sister and their families.

My friends and their families.

The fact that I can live in my apartment and pay my bills.

My car which runs and does so pretty economically.

The opportunity to work with Bestest on his books and simply to call him my bestest.

My health which is doing okay.

My life -- which feels so blessed.

All of the above and so much more. Imagine a great sphere of thankfulness, a warm, glowing illumination surrounding me and everyone and everything else.

That is how I feel today.

What a day for a birthday

I was going to try to write this thot so you could tell I was singing, but that really didn't work, so I'll just say that this day started out great -- and early!

My brother, who likes to be the first to wish everyone a Happy Birthday, called at 6:44!

Bestest called an hour later from an island where he's vacationing and making wedding plans!

Texts came in from nephews and family, Facebook brought more good wishes and I'm about to have brunch with my grandchildren!

Then tomorrow, I get to do it all over again at my sister's with Thanksgiving dinner, pumpkin pie AND cake!

Life is good!

Pied pipers

Looking at the buffoons trying to act their way to the White House and the people lining up behind them like children following the Pied Piper to some imagined better place I wonder what the world is coming to.

I have listened to people moaning about airport security for years now. They don't want it. Yet these same people are terrified that a random immigrant might hurt them in their own neighborhoods.

They don't like it when cigarette smoking is restricted, but they want Syrians restricted. It appears that sure fire lung disease is more desirable than the slim possibility that a radical may make it through the intense security all immigrants must go through to get in here.

They want to carry their guns around openly everywhere and here I just shudder. I imagine myself at a public event where some yayhoo thinks there is a threat and suddenly I find myself in the middle of a gun fight where friendly fire is just as life threatening as the other kinds.

It is a fine line to protect people without restricting freedom, but life is not as simple as some people seem to want to believe.

The end

No matter what I may think I know, the universe can always surprise me.

The world is a work in progress and there are a million factors in any given moment.

Today I had good news from so many different fronts that I still can't quite believe it.

If it is really true (and I believe it is) that everything will be okay in the end, and if it's not it is not the end -- then this must be the end of something, because a lot of things are more than okay.

Endings are not all bad. In fact, some are very good, the end of World War II, the end of having the measles . . . whatever ended today,  must be a very good thing.

Stories

As an avid reader, you might think it would be nice to be in a story, but that is one of the secrets of living people don't often think about.

Few stories are written about simply eating the ripest, sweetest, most precious fruit. Written so that I can feel the flesh of the fruit in my hand and upon my tongue, while the scent of it fills my nose, the luscious sound of its juice fills my ears, and my mind is carried away by the experience, is mostly just a word picture.

For it to be a story I would need to know how much the fruit was wanted, what perils were faced in finding it, what travails occurred while procuring it, where I disposed of the seeds or pits and what became of me afterwards.

Being in the story, I don't know if I would rather be in the soft beginning or triumphant ending. Both sound safe enough and pleasant to me.

It is what falls in between; where the beasts are faced face to face, or the battles are fought with blood curdling tales of horror, where the lovers betray each other and hearts are broken, or children freeze to death for lack of a match on cold snowy nights, that make me want to steer clear of being in one.

The price for being in a story can be terrible.

But if you live to tell that story, you will have learned much and that might be another story.

Vampires

Creatures who feed off the essence of people.

Not dressed in Gothic black and sipping blood while speaking in a Romanian accent.

But sipping life vicariously through the eyes and actions of others.

Eternal youth in mind and soul -- until death they do depart.

Hungry for diversity, the vivaciousness of youth, the joie de vivre of fresh outlooks, and the wisdom of old romantics.

Disguised as the young at heart, as grandmas and uncles, even sometimes writers and actors and teachers, they walk the world in a cloak of normality.

Taking a bite out of perception -- they leave behind a sense of the mysterious, of possibilities, and the longevity of an open mind.

Wrinkles

Sunlight slides in  through the foggy windows of  November's dreary days and I am at elementary school. It is cold and gray. The clouds hovering over this long day press against me and as much as I love what I do here, I want to go home. Running down sidewalks wide enough for us to hold hands, we are kites flying under trees so tall we can barely see their tops. Their leaves puddling around their feet, and ours, like crisp dresses dropped where they land with no thought of right or wrong. I am part of all this. We are kindred spirits. Twirling and swirling until the sun reaches down to peck us on the cheek before it runs away to hide again. I know my mother is waiting for me, baloney sandwich on the table. I am almost home and something special is about to happen, something magical. I can feel it.

Clouds swallow up the sunlight and in one glancing instant shimmering waves of sadness wash over me and I feel my body creaking. Morphing back to now where I am no longer six, but nearly sixty six and -- for one moment I wonder how I got here.

Understanding

How many people go to church on Sunday and talk piously about peace, faith and love then go about the rest of their lives being armchair hypocrites who justify everything with a "but. . . "

Christianity is supposedly those people who accept Christ as their savior, but I have yet to read the words that justify the ifs, ands, or buts "Christian people" use to validate their mistreatment, hatred and "not loving" of so many of "God's children",  in the gospels.

Love is love. Peace is peace. Faith is faith. Given their actual meaning, they are probably the least practiced things in the world. They require incredibly wise, strong, courageous people who are willing to stand quietly and irrevocably for things that are not popular. Most of us fall way short of even the rudimentary parts of these things.

Fear, greed, misunderstanding, these are the things I hear more often than not.

I understand why, but that does not mean I know how to deal with it.

I only know that peace and love cannot be broken down into equal parts violence and hatred.

In the best of all worlds

You would think that something that has been going on as long as people have existed would be perfected by now, but it isn't.

In the beginning there was Adam and Eve, or Pa and Ma Neanderthal. Then they got bored, or raised a little cain, and parenting was born. 

In the beginning, they fed it and tried to keep it alive. For eons keeping it alive was all they had. Then life got easier and someone realized there was potential here.

The potential to allow them to live out their dreams through their child. The potential to create a piece of art rivaling God. The potential to drive them all to the brink.

In spite of the fact that there were books and seminars, television shows and movies, even coffee cloches and barroom brawls about the best way to parent; the first job was still to keep that child alive.

After that, reining in our own desires and needs comes into play so the child can find his own.

Parenting is trying to teach another human being how to survive in the world and fulfill its own unique potential.

Trying too hard to make their lives perfect is like painting another man's picture. There is just no way to do that without losing something. Chances are pretty good that if you have four children who all turn out the same, at least three of them are not as happy as you might think, because pushing everyone into the same play-dough extruder and pumping out perfect children just doesn't work. Children are different.

Parenting is an art.

There are basic tenants in life that human beings need to know: first do no harm, respect others, be yourself, and never stop learning. The rest takes care of itself. Given half a chance we are who we are.

The most content people I know have internalized these things so deeply that they are like breathing in and breathing out.

Waxing poetic

There seems to be a story for everything and I wonder if it was always this way or if that is a condition that comes with growing older?

The faces in the pictures on my wall?  Each one has a story to tell. In fact, there are probably books there!

The plants on my stand? How they came to be is actually quite interesting.

The spread upon my bed, the pencil sharpener on the table, the kitty in the dollhouse, if you want a story I am able, to tell you how they came to be and why they're there where you can see.

Focal point

Entertainment tends to go to extremes, because -- who wants to watch someone meditate, or vacuum, or pay bills?

We are emotional creatures. Emotions keep us alive, so we like that vicarious "safe" fear or "painless" agony on the big screen. And . . . we like that happily ever after solution that is often implied or out right promised.

And we are versatile creatures who learn by watching. Nature planned on us watching our mother, or father, or neighbor, but technology has added a lot of less savory people. Watching leaves us with lots of unreal expectations, because we don't see the turmoil beyond the beautiful face.

Almost everyone has a "cross to bear." The world is filled with things that hurt us, emotionally, physically, mentally, but the art of living well requires us to do what we can with those hurts and then set them aside if at all possible.

Letting the painful parts become the focal point is a mistake.

It's like worrying. Our body thinks that worrying is actually DOING something, but it's not. It's a fine line between letting our emotions out and allowing them to run their course and letting them carry us in a downhill rush to the bottom of the heap.

If I can trick my body into thinking that worrying is work, is it possible that  I can trick it into thinking I am happy?

And if I think I am happy, isn't that pretty much being happy?

The scary, sad, and wonderful truth

I don't have much money. I don't have an important job. I don't see my grandchildren very often. I don't even see my sister very often anymore. My joints have been very iffy for the past two years. By all the standards of the past sixty years I should be sad and feeling less than.

Once in a while I do feel that way, but very very seldom.

Mostly I am cherishing the ability to just be who I am -- maybe for the first time in my whole life.

The scary, sad and wonderful truth is that I live in a world where if I don't make myself feel content, or happy, or find things that stir my imagination, none of these things will happen.

My life seems to have been clarified down pretty close to the basics.

I still care too much about what other people think, but I care less than I once did. I realize that I still walk closer to the fringe than many people, but I am more content with that -- because it is who I am. Without that I would just be a chameleon running around trying to blend in like I have most of my life.

There were times when I felt I had to stand up and they have been terrifying, but those were things that I felt I had no choice about. Life seems to be like that. It takes care of some of the important things and makes them impossible to pass by. The rest is up to us.

Snories

Some people take off for Nod using bed sheets for sails. I prefer to stay at home and mix my fairy tales.

A little bit of this. A little bit of that. A prince. Some boots. A sweet talking cat.

The witch from Hansel and Gretal. A king with too much mettle.

Magic beans and singing harps. Green knights and golden carps.

Stashed away in the Snow Queen's castle. Kindly defrosted by a dragon rascal.

Served up warm from Grammy's head. Just before sending you off to bed.

Once upon a time.

Today I am reminded of all the beginnings I've had in my life and how they became meandering trails into adventures I could not have fathomed when they started. A few not so good ones, but most of them filled with twists and turns that I never dreamed possible.

Perhaps we are hard wired  to imagine the perils and pitfalls in order to protect ourselves from dangers, but most of the time these things never come to pass. Instead something more mundane and neutral, or something totally unexpected that could be wonderful occur.

Life can be a fairy tale and all good fairy tales have ups and downs, ogres and trolls, lessons and morals and eventually a happily ever after -- until the next story begins.

The Great Deception

When things don't make sense, something is wrong.  It might seem like it would be easy to figure out what that is, but it really isn't.

People go to great lengths to hide their shortcomings, or at least what they perceive as their shortcomings. Many of us are reluctant to admit who we are.

Instead we put on facades . . . airs . . . or make up excuses that make no sense when viewed from afar.

And in the end, we fool no one but ourselves and those who choose to be fooled.

Feelings are hurt.

People feel betrayed.

And the real problem turns out not to be who we are, but who we thought we should be.

Gratitude

I read that my brain gets a sort of perverse high from being miserable, but that gratitude is a way of countering that.

I have reached that stage in my life where I am grateful for so many things it might be hard to list them all and maybe I wouldn't even want to do that. Maybe it is better to save some of them for those days when I really need an attitude adjustment, or pick me up.

But there are some things that I am more grateful for than others and today was one of those days when I learned something that just made my day! I could not be more grateful!

It is amazing how a little bit of information can change so much. Tonight I feel happier than I have felt in a long time. And I am grateful for that too!

Connections

All things have a voice if I only listen.

This world is like living at the United Nations. Without interpreters there is likely to be a lot of misunderstanding, but nature has always thought that left on our own we will slowly pick up the cues around us. Like toddlers immersed in a foreign language.

That was probably more true before the days of television and cell phones and Internets.  Now people are distracted by a million different things and taken care of by "experts" who know better than we do.

Thinking this is enough is a sad misconception.

There is a beauty to knowing that when the leaves turn a certain way, it is going to rain and noticing the smell of rain in the air, the cooing of the rain doves, the flight patterns of geese, or migration patterns of Monarch butterflies. The patterns of a life lived around nature makes sense. It brings peace of mind and comfort to me knowing that I have a place in all this.

The right thing

Once your basic needs are met I don't think there is anything more satisfying than finding something you love to do.

I think it should be creative in some way, but after that I think the possibilities are limitless.

Playing music, writing music, growing something, writing stories, sewing, drawing, painting, making cards, making anything!

If it grabs your attention so completely that you fall into it and lose track of time, it is the right thing!

High noon

She woke up and got out of bed. It was not early, there would be no stunning sunrise to watch at this time of the day. The one advantage might be that the early birds got all the worms, or at least she hoped they had.

There was a cacophonous barrage of sounds coming from the north and looking up she saw a great flock of Canadian geese climb up into a huge V, undulating and soaring as they rode the wind.

That same wind rustled the leaves of the trees above her. Flickering gold, shimmering and whispering, reminding her that winter was coming -- but not here yet. Nature had not finished painting this block. The giant maple blazed like a crimson ball highlighting all the shades of greens and browns and yellows surrounding it.

And then suddenly she found herself surrounded by shadows. Small fluttering shadows swooping and drawing her into their acrobatics. Dizzying, kaleidoscopic feelings of freedom and surreal-ness flooding through her. An experience she had never had in all her sixty odd years, one that could only happen at high noon if a band of black birds decided to go for a swirl.

Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end. -- John Lennon

Imagine: You have a Master's degree in education. You own your own business. You have a wonderful boyfriend and two nearly perfect children, both of whom have graduated from college and are off to a great start.

Then the nightmare starts. Your son is killed, not in an accident, or even quickly. He is tortured and dies a slow agonizing death at the hands of three men who are caught and punished after hours and months in the courtroom. You sell your business lose your boyfriend, and go into a deep depression.

It takes more hours, more months, but you begin to recover. You find a way to truly forgive them and start to make a new life. In your new city, new apartment, you help a man build a new business and it thrives - mostly because of your enormous work ethic and people loving personality.

One day you leave work and receive a text. Your new boss just let you go in the most awful way possible. He no longer needs you and you are too expensive. Arriving home terrified and worried about finding a new job, you open the door and your thirteen year old dog, your deceased son's pet, lies dead on the floor. The depression creeps back.

You donate all your dog's little possessions to the animal shelter and find a new past time. You begin walking dogs for them two hours a day. You make a new friend. She has four legs and a tail that wags like the willows in the wind whenever you appear. You decide to open your own business and begin looking for both a building and equipment.

It is terrifying to think of sinking your life's savings into something so iffy, but you keep going and one day walk into a building whose sign says they are selling some of the equipment you need. No one is there and you wander into a door where you meet a man who might be able to help you. He does! Just not with the equipment you were looking for.

Now you have a new job that pays very handsomely by the day! You are a permanent substitute teacher at a private school for autistic children! Everyone benefits. Your new business starts to take shape. Grants are written. Bathrooms are built. People you've met along the way chip in. One is making you a stained glass sign for your business. Another has years of experience and walks along with you as you find the vendors and other necessary people. Others do all sorts of other helpful things. And the children at the school thrive in your presence.

And best of all, your new little four legged friend goes everywhere with you.

Life is a roller coaster of ups and downs, but the beauty of that is that if you just keep going, even if it's only for the ride, it's more than worth it.

When in the course of all that is rational . . .

People who want to live from one crisis to another, without actually touching on very much that is particularly relevant can simply listen to the news.

It can become a media event if a public figure makes a statement that is totally unfounded by science, history, math, or anything else. Every news report on the radio will cover it. Talk shows will chew it up and regurgitate it in ten different ways. The television will announce every hour that they will cover it on the six o'clock news, then use it as a header to announce the news and finally present it as news.

When did facts become irrelevant?  

How did we become a culture who fixates on the ridiculous?

There are topics that are debatable.  There are some things that might be debatable. And there are things that just do not hold water, even if you hold your hand close underneath them and try hard to pretend nothing is dripping out.

In a world as big as ours surely there is more to talk about than these irrational imaginings made by people who should know better.

The very fact that a public personality would spout this nonsense should forewarn us that their day in the sun is coming to a sad and dim ending, so why do we listen to it as if there might be something truly valid about it?

That is the question.

Capitalism and Invisible Workers

As an old preschool teacher I was thinking about the little red hen: how she grew her grain, harvested it, took it to the millers to have it ground, then baked her bread. No one had any doubt who made that bread and where it came from (although the miller's need to feed the beasts that pulled his grindstone around and his need to feed HIS family does get lost here,) but mostly there are no invisible laborers here. (Well, again there were those other ingredients she put into it, where did they come from?

Basically in the little red hen's world, if you didn't do the work, you didn't eat.

In pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake baker's man, we skip a step. We want a cake baked as fast as it can be made from the baker. Now suddenly the people who planted the grain and the sugar and collected the salt are invisible and not given any credit.

In the Baker's world you eat if you have enough money to buy his cake.

I had never thought about all the invisible people who provide products for me in my world today.

This is the bread that I eat.  This is the store that sells the bread that I eat. This is the cashier who takes my money for the store that sells the bread that I eat. This is the person who puts the bread on the shelf before the cashier takes my money for the store that sells the bread that I eat. This is the truck that brings the bread that the person puts on the shelf before the cashier takes my money for the store that sells the bread that I eat. This is the baker who bakes the bread that comes on the truck that the person puts on a shelf before the cashier takes my money for the store that sells the bread that I eat. This is the miller who grinds the flour for the baker who bakes the bread that comes on the truck that the person puts on a shelf before the cashier takes my money for the store that sells the bread that I eat. This is the farmer who grows the wheat for the miller who grinds the flour for the baker who bakes the bread that comes on the truck that the person puts on a shelf before the cashier takes my money for the store that sells the bread that I eat. This is the cook who feeds the farmer who grows the wheat for the miller who grinds the flour for the baker who bakes the bread that comes on the truck that the person puts on a shelf before the cashier takes my money for the store that sells the bread that I eat.

Economics preschool style!

Call 911

Last night, just as I was going to sleep, about midnight, I heard screaming and crying. They sounded like they were in the hallway outside my apartment.  I got up and walked over to my door to listen. I couldn't see anything out the peep hole and the crying had stopped, so I went back to bed.

I couldn't sleep. I kept thinking what if it had been a child who was being abused and I heard it but did nothing? I was mulling this over, trying to decide if I should go knock on the door and imagining what they would say and how it might just make things worse in the long run if I couldn't prove they were injuring a child, when the blood curdling screams began again and this time they were more strident and didn't stop. I ran back to my door and looked out the peephole again.

A woman came out of the apartment across the hall and began to beat on my door. I opened it and she came in saying, "Call the police! My phone is dead! Call the police!"

Stunned, I paused too long and a man came out of the same apartment and pushed his way into mine. I hurried to go get my phone while they were screaming at each other. She telling him to leave, to go home, to get out. Him saying just take me home, don't call the police. They both came towards me and I handed her my phone. I told her to call the police, but was so shaken I forgot my phone locks.

He picked up my glasses and told her he was going to break them if she didn't hand him the phone and she told him they weren't hers, they were mine. He dropped them just as she started to hand me the phone saying you need to unlock it. He intercepted the phone and started to leave, but she grabbed him saying it was my phone not hers. Suddenly they were wrestling for the phone and both fell on my bed!

Standing there without my phone and no way to call for help it suddenly dawned on me what a dangerous situation I could be in. I tried to diffuse it by asking her why she just didn't take him home and she said she was too afraid of him.  I honestly didn't know what had happened at this point. I didn't know if he'd had a gun, or a knife, or what he had done to her. I was terrified.

He threw the phone on the bed and they both left. I locked my door and went into my bathroom to put as many walls between us as I possibly could and dialed 911. I was shaking so hard I could barely do that and when the responder answered I gave her my address and couldn't understand why she was having so much trouble with it. She spelled it wrong and seemed confused. I live in a very prominent complex. Anyone in our town knows where it is. Finally she said she was transferring me to my local unit and another woman began asking me more questions. I was shocked that I couldn't remember what these two people were wearing. The second responder asked me if they were still fighting and I went to look out my peephole again. The woman was locking her door, wearing a pink jogging suit (I noted that this time) and then she knocked on my door again. I handed my phone to her and let her talk to the police herself. But this time I locked my door as soon as she came in.

She began telling the police a tale of woe that sounded like something on television, or a teenager whining to her best friend. It was all about he called me names. He said I was a whore. He said this and that and he made me mad then he started throwing my stuff around the apartment. Suddenly I didn't feel as sorry for her, or as worried as before, but I was still shaking when someone knocked on the door again.

Looking out this time it was the police. They took over from there and there I was -- in the middle of the night -- shaking like a leaf -- and alone.  It took me hours to get back to sleep and when I did I kept having dreams about someone screaming for help. This morning I was still so cold I couldn't get warm and it is warm out today.

I am shocked by how many bad choices I made last night and even more shocked by how rattled I was and how long the residuals lasted.  In a television show my part would have been negligible and easily forgettable, but it doesn't feel that way to me.

And I just realized that the reason the responder was so confused was that I called 911 in North Carolina because my phone number is from there.

Shmoozing

Wanting to make everyone around me happy is something that is either part of who I am or was instilled in me at a very young age. Were I a shmoo this would be a very good state to live in.

Being shmoo-like is not a particularly good thing, because there is a part of me that wants to be loved and appreciated for exactly who I am and I am not a shmoo.

I realize that there are times when I have to do what is best for you even if it makes you unhappy at the time. I also realize that I have to do what is best for me even when it is not about someone else.

Sooooo . . . cultivating relationships where I need to be the darling one, the provider of all possible needs, means that I need a very strong sense of self. And, frankly to be happy living this way, I also need to be able to let go of baser emotions like jealousy. I say let go because, like mist over the ocean, it rises on its own. Letting go simply means knowing that it is a natural phenomena that requires navigating through it without sinking the boat.

I was brought up with a black and white measuring stick for right and wrong. Everything had distinct borders and people who stepped over those borders were wrong. Looking back over many years of experience, I suspect, now, that they were only human. Humans living in a black and white world have to have lots of secrets and secrets are a whole other game.

Some secrets are better staying that way and others eat away at the base of relationships like acid from the inside out. Knowing the difference is tricky because it changes person to person and situation to situation. It turns out that life is not black and white, but filled with those same misty borders that both keep the mystery and destroy the basis of relationships.

All of this knowledge just becomes the breeding ground for a barrage of self help books and the best thing that comes out of the majority of self help books it the sense of achievement and monetary gain they bring the author. If you want that, you need to write your own!

Seriously, it is my sense of self that will ultimately make me as fulfilled and happy as I'm ever going to be. I need to know what I need, what I can do, and what I am willing to deal with to get all that.

As long as I am respectful of others and realize they have the same rights that I do, we will all find our own place.

The eye of the beholder

I wonder how often a perceived misdeed is only in the eyes of the one hurt?

Someone posts a picture of themselves on social media and another person prints it and posts it at work.

There is only the picture there on the kitchen bulletin board. No one writes anything on it.

A "friend" of the person sees it and immediately tells the one whose picture is now there for all to see.  She is irate! How dare anyone post such an awful picture of her friend! Look how fat she looks in that picture -- and now the one who is in the picture becomes irate.

They talk to everyone and discuss how awful it was for someone to sneak in and post a picture that made them look fat. They consider it work place harassment. The picture once considered wonderful on the Internet is now almost a case for the court!

And the only difference was the "friend" who perceived it that way when she saw it.

I wonder if it had been a picture of an adorable baby from the same site if there could have been such a ruckus? But no matter, now the person who posted it on her site feels abused because her friends saw it as a bad thing.

Of course, in reality it was a  matter of questionable taste in the first place. If the wronged person really believed she looked so beautiful why should she be upset now -- except that she really didn't look very appropriate in the beginning and deep down inside her, she knows it -- and so did the "friend" who turned the whole thing into an enormous ordeal.

It's the "friend" who upsets me.

A brother's eye view

My brother came to visit today and, in the way of most people I know, I cleaned up a little more, straightened things a little better and looked at my apartment through eyes a bit more critical than usual.

Compared to the rest of my family, my life is much more spartan and simple. They all live in houses with yards, garages and extensive storage areas full of extraneous stuff. I live in a luxury studio with one closet, a washer/dryer closet that can hold a step stool and mop. My kitchen serves as kitchen, linen closet and library so my good books don't get dusty out on open bookshelves. The bathroom is good sized. Elegant but very plain with only the three basics.

I don't have a lot of furniture. In fact, I have gotten rid of several pieces since I moved in here nearly two years ago, so now it is down to my queen size bed, an antique drop front desk, a small antique dresser, a small end table, a set of glass shelves and a huge over-sized recliner. Yet, I can pull out a folding table for dinner parties and the kitchen is big enough to cook a Christmas dinner for five without any problems at all. Oh and there is a small deck with a rocking chair and tea table.

I recently added a pothos plant to go with my small asparagus fern, both planted in simple white pots and displayed on an ebony library step.

I do have two computers and a television with a roku and dvd player, so my life isn't exactly truly spartan.

I have lived in so many places since I moved back to Illinois in 2010. I loved the old charm and the historic neighborhood of my last apartment, but I love the pristine condition of this one. Apartments are expensive here, but I don't regret selling the condo I began with. I like the freedom of not having to worry about the work or money of maintenance. In an hour I can clean my place from top to bottom, lock it up and be gone for even a week or two at a time without any worries at all.

It's good to have company. The conversation, the exchange of ideas and the opportunity to see my life from another's point of view.

Birth of a witch (A Halloween thot)

Old women (and women use to be old by 30) who lived alone (and women still out live men); who were no longer of breeding age, or beautiful, desirable, or desired; whose hygiene was most likely less important than growing, or making everything they wore, used, or ate, or taking care of their animals; who were most likely lonely and human as the years went by, so were glad to take in a cat that appreciated the warmth of a fire, a body and food and not averse to listening when lonely people treated it like a surrogate child, were called witches!

In a predominantly male world where men made the laws, wrote the books, imagined the religion and claimed superiority in every respect, an intelligent, older, less compliant woman was only a blessing if she was doing what you wanted and life was good.

Intelligent, self sufficient women who handed down recipes for healing, were easy targets when the world needed a scapegoat, because ignorance has always bred fear and intolerance.

Witches might have been the first liberated women - for VERY SHORT PERIODS OF TIME . . .Mwha ha ha ha ha haaaaaaaa.

Fairy tales do come true . . .

Movies and books seem chocked full of adventures and tales we only dream of. Most of us consider ourselves painfully aware that they are not about people like us.

But they are.

We are the leading roles of tomorrow's movies, the heroes of tomorrow's books. Life condensed into five hundred pages, or ninety minutes is bound to look more compelling than it does stretched out over seventy years.

The Cinderella story happens all the time, but I think it's generally limited to once per lifetime and that once may not seem like a lot -- except when you are in the middle of it.

The trick is to re-member these beautiful and meaningful and life changing times in our own lives and give them the credence they deserve. It makes living more like the fairy tale we may wish it is and also makes the struggles and ogres more bearable too.

There's nothing like a happy ending to make everything good. It's just that in real life our trials and tribulations don't actually look like the Green Knight. But then we won't be rescued by a fairy godmother either.

The fairy tale of real life is actually much more poignant when viewed from outside ourselves because it really does involve our own ingenuity and fortitude. Those ogres and princes are all alive and well and living in the castle of us.

All Hallow's Eve

What makes people want to be scared?

Carnival rides

Haunted houses

Ghost stories

Scary movies

It's almost as if we have a vestigial desire, leftover from our distant ancestors, to still conquer the unknown, or prove something?

Competence

Heroism

Adrenalin junkies

Could it be that we are such Doubting Thomases, such terrified self-preservationists, that we need to find proof of life after death -- even if it is not good?

Expectations

Expectations are the bane of my life.

I try not to have any, but it is hard to be human without considering what is coming up.

I am a natural born planner. Always afraid that I won't have enough to be gracious, I tend to over plan when it comes to preparing myself for others.

Terrified of being disappointed, I try not to set myself up for things where I have no control.

That can ruin the fun of anticipation, but it's generally worth the price for me.

Expecting anything, no matter how small it may be, can cause me to be really sad when it doesn't occur. I am too old to allow that, but it's a fact of being me that I have to deal with.

Soooooo . . .  expectations are the bane of my life.

My legacy

There has been much talk lately about the one piece of wisdom an elder can give those coming up behind. I've heard many things, but none of them ring true enough for me to choose them as my gift to my children, hearts of my heart, the joys of my life.

The gift I would give my children is my strength.

Not my physical strength, that has always been a rather doubtful part of my make up. And not the strength that I claimed in my youth because that was false. It always relied upon leaning on someone else's shoulders.

It is the strength that lies deep within me, that irrepressible spark that made it possible for me to make do, to go on, and to find enough joy in the moments, no matter how scattered they might be, to make my life more than just endurable, but ultimately a good one.  It is not something I can claim any power over.  It is just there.

It is the part of me that heard my mother's voice when she wasn't there. It is the part of me that heard you calling when you needed me. It is that part of me that finds the joy in amongst all the rest. 

It is your birthright given to you by every ounce of love I have ever felt for you.

The Fall

Winter is coming.

The long political process of choosing candidates for the two major U.S. parties coincides with the equally dreary slide of autumn crispness into the soggy quagmire that just precedes the colder months of winter.

It feels very appropriate that this dark, wet, blustery day carries these dark, blustery people in and out of the limelight.

The credibility of buffoons and posing egotists running for office against seasoned politicians frightens me. Are we seriously considering electing people who believe the things these people are saying?

Evidently we are.

Parties have taken Halloween customs to a new level of macabre terror as we are treated to tricksters trying to garner our votes by treating us to their views of how to handle women and those who murder school children. We are becoming truly disposable entities asked to sacrifice our lives to protect a few.

Yes, winter is coming and it is going to be much worse than the snow and icy weather of the past. This winter may last for decades as the rich sit safely behind us in their nice warm mansions while we place our children between them and their enemies.

Used to limiting the disenfranchised to minority peoples and aliens, we are marching quietly up the ramps to the slaughter houses, thinking, "Isn't this lovely? Look at the wonderful words they are saying."

Fall into the winter of no return, vote for the sweetest treats instead of the bread and butter that has sustained us for over two hundred years and life will certainly be different. The winds of heaven will literally dance between us if we forge a partnership with the dark side.

Place

I never really gave much thought to place in this world. At least not in the way it was introduced to me today. It is as if I were suddenly given a whole cornucopia of thoughts, visions, and impressions of myself to look at from a different point of view.

I am used to thinking of myself as the person I want to be, or strive to be.  I generally think of myself as someone I have carefully tended and molded and engineered. I seldom, if ever, truly think of my actual roots; of the culture that spawned me whether I like it or not.

Reading these first two paragraphs I already see a sign of that culture, that place.  Cornucopia, the horn of plenty, the rural idea of a table filled with good, solid Americana, mashed potatoes and roast beast, green beans and bacon, Thanksgiving in the Heartland, the time and place where I was born.

The huge round oak table I sought out for my own home was really only an echo from the past. Generations of farm folk. Simple people with sturdy shoes and big gardens surrounded by flowers on the perimeter, but full of sustenance within. Butterflies and florabunda roses, planted in mass profusion along green lawns, not in formal gardens along prim walkways.

Miles of flat lands, dark and rich in the winter, highlighting the firelight that becomes the hub of life when it is cold outside. Verdant mazes of corn and soybeans overhung by red tailed hawks and big black crows in the summer, a reminder of nature's bounty and mystery.

Sweltering summer evenings spent swinging on a front porch swing in the swirl of aromatic pipe smoke and wistful dreams. Dreams that sometimes grew big enough to carry one away to a distant place and strange ways, but never far enough that the roots were severed.

Panaceas for everything!

Television is chock full of diversions for the bedridden, house bound, poor, and very young who cannot get out and do other things. It is also a wonderful way to relax and do nothing while being entertained -- on some level.

Although it is a relatively new form of entertainment, the people behind the shows have already learned many very valuable tactics:

It's not the words, it's the tone that matters when you are speaking to crowds of zoned out people opening themselves up like candidates for hypnosis.

Ardent religious shows cry out in sing song tirades, like snake charmers of old, implying deeply ingrained and heartfelt empathy.

Quasi documentaries seem to prefer a male voice that always drops slightly at the end of a sentence, so it feels very matter of fact and true.

Afternoon talk shows rely on canned laughter and audiences who are unable to restrain themselves from expressing their unrelenting joy by hooting and yelping and whooping to express their irrepressible feelings.

And everyone knows that stage whispers let us in on secrets no one else knows, or information not generally released to the masses.

It really isn't necessary to turn up the volume any more. Just stare at the screen and let the modulations of sound do their work. The cadence and stage worthy actions will take care of the rest.

All the world's problems can be solved in forty eight minute segments, or less and at the same time, we can teach impressionable folks how to respond to nearly every situation with ten cent psychology and pseudo science. Panaceas for all with the flick of a remote!

And that is where the danger lies. People without the resources to understand this stuff is all for money and ratings fall prey to an indoctrination that is frightning. They believe the "doctors" selling magic cures, the wealthy families teaching twenty first century etiquette, the buffoons espousing their tactics for running the world and the distorted stories who all have a slant.  The illiterate, the lazy, and the semi literate can carry enough weight to actually bring about changes they are bamboozled into making even when these are not in their best interests.

Very little television is fit for children. It is best viewed in the way we once did side shows and carnivals. It's fine to watch. Just don't forget WHAT you are watching and if you let your children watch it, be sure to discuss it with them afterwards. It should be a diversion, not a blueprint for living.

In the beginning

Creativity is an unfathomable thing.

Who knows where it comes from?

Or how it grows?

Or even how it knows where to go!

It always has a life of its own.

And whether it is considered good, or bad, by others, for me it marks the beginning of many satisfactory, happy hours.

The streets are lovely, dark and deep

Living on the edge of a small mid-western town gives me distinctly different routes to use whenever I need to go somewhere.

I can zip out onto the interstate and fly around town at seventy miles an hour.

I can go through town to the belt-line road and travel a comfortable forty five miles an hour.

Or -- I can go right straight up my street, driving all the way through town at a leisurely thirty miles an hour.

The last is my favorite way. I love to look at the old houses and trees and flowers, the quaint little businesses tucked in here and there, and the way the light plays off of all of them.

While you might expect Spring, or Summer to be the best seasons to do this, I am surprised at how much more beautiful it is in the Fall.

The vibrant reds and yellows mixed in with the deep shadows and richer light of Fall remind me of the burnished crimson and golds in a Vermeer.  It is Brigadoon mixed in with Robert Frost and Rabbie Burns.  It's A Wonderful Life and Harvey and the Enchanted Cottage.

It is our town.

You've got to give a little

Life seems to be full of extremes.

There are dreams. There are expectations. And there is the reality of what actually is.

The closer these things are, the happier I am and the more content I am with my life.

Of course there are levels within each of these categories too. Health, love, family, career, each one has a huge effect on the others.

Picture a huge abacus balanced on a fulcrum like a teeter totter. The fickle finger of fate vies with my intentions and my actual actions, pushing those beads back and forth, trying to tip everything over and turn my life upside down.

I would like to think I am very zen about this; a Yoda character quietly proclaiming, "Balanced it is." Sometimes that is true, but other times I run around like the Mad Hatter trying to juggle days on a minute to minute basis.

The truth is I am always just a step away from everything. The only constant is the realization that there are no guarantees, no binding contracts with the future, no promises that can't be broken as long as I am human and interacting with other humans.

Unlike the abacus with its rigid frame and linear wires, I must be able to bend in every way to survive.

And I can.

If I try hard enough.

False pride

Living a healthy lifestyle is basically a choice for most of us.

The very poor, or those trying to feed a large family on a low income can find it a challenge, but that is only an excuse for many others.

What astounds me are the people who seem to be proud that they don't eat right.

Instead of trying to lean towards better choices, they brag about their poor ones.  Sometimes they try to use false logic to justify this style. They will say, "You eat healthy and you still have health problems."

This kind of thinking doesn't hurt me and it sure doesn't help them. If I die from cancer it won't make you any less likely to. If my heart gives out, that doesn't give you an edge. Even if we decide to be unhealthy together, it won't increase our odds of living longer. It just doesn't work that way.

The insidious thing about eating poorly, or being over weight for a long time, or not taking care of medical or dental issues is that the damage is like erosion along a beautiful river. Little by little things start to weaken until the problem becomes obvious and by that time it is a major issue. You might be able to fix it then and you might not.

The person who gambles on the belief that they have always eaten ice cream and sugary snacks and crackers instead of fruits and vegetables, so they can continue to do so until they die, may discover that dying is a much more unpleasant process for them than it is for those who tried to do otherwise.

They might not, but it's a hard way to learn if they are wrong.

Being trapped by a disintegrating body can make us old fast. Being stuck in a chair, or the house for months on end, or forever, is not fun at all.

The future depends on the past, there are no reset buttons, so from this day on I'm trying to do better.