Escaping

Imagine me with a small houseboat. I know we are in danger and need to leave the place we are at, so I gather my siblings and a few supplies and we set off down the river through the mountains.

All is well until we pass by the village and suddenly the river ends.

I am embarrassed, surprised and also shocked to realize that I really didn't know how we were going to do this. I only thought if we got on the boat and headed out, it would work, so now we have to turn around. You cannot cross dry land with a boat that big.

Back in our old place the water is filled with predator fish like sharks so disembarking has to be done very carefully. My teacher is there to meet us. He tells me I am late, but I can still take the exam. I sit down at my desk, but I don't have a clue what the answers are.

I get up and leave, but realize I left my purse in his classroom. When I go back to get it, he rummages through a pile of things along the back of the room and I leave wearing boots. They fit. They are the same color, but they obviously do not match. One has a rounded toe and the other a pointier one. I go back and try to show him that one of these boots is not like the other and they are not a real pair.

He doesn't see it and I have to reconcile myself to wearing mismatched boots. I think, I can do this. No big deal. We will just walk out of here. I start walking and pass a small fancy little shop where Aunt Lela is tatting lace and selling dresses decorated with it. I know you can't wear lace with mismatched boots, so I pass on by.

I make it through the town and am walking up a mountain path when I see a bunch of alpacas. I imagine them harnessed to the boat, pulling it through the narrow straits so we can escape, but then I remember I no longer have the boat.

There isn't any water here anyway. Let alone a strait that might lead us out.

And then I woke up worrying about those mismatched boots.

The elixir of life

I recently read about a study of 14,000 people that indicated people in their seventies who were overweight and drank both coffee and alcohol were the most likely to live into their nineties.

Old age can be a mindset.

After living a life of deprivation in order to be politically correct, religiously ethical, and puritanically like our forebears, many of our elderly are then shipped off to the abattoirs we euphemistically call nursing homes and hospitals.

People who have little or no say in any of life's little pleasures are unlikely to thrive.

I imagine most people who are still alive and a little overweight in their seventies are basically healthier than those who are already ill, so it makes sense they would live longer. Having the freedom to choose what they eat and drink is one of the pleasures that persists long after their ability to play football, or paint houses.

Being able to enjoy life, having the freedom to make your own choices, actually exercising free will, is the elixir of life.

Ancient artifacts

My life is like a museum now. Everywhere I look, everywhere I go, seems familiar.

There are the faces of my life, the songs of my life, the books, and letters and stories, all laid out on pedestals and upon walls, under glass and occasionally packed away deep down in the bottom of a trunk pushed up against a wall someplace.

I wander through admiring, breathing, trying to keep it all in perspective.

Occasionally though, one of the pedestals tips over and someone falls off. That's the danger with pedestals, they are more like leaning towers of Pisa than sturdy little three legged stools.

A stool may not be as elegant as a pedestal, but no matter how many times it is turned around the three legs keep it balanced. Once in a while it is necessary to just turn something around so I don't have to look at it.

I am slowly transferring everything off the pedestals as I grow older. It's safer and more sane that way.

It's Christmas and the world goes on

Does it matter who did it?

Does it really matter why?

Does it make a difference if it's the first time, or the millionth?

Are there enough excuses to excuse it?

If you could take the tiny body and lay it in the lap of the Christ what would he do? What would he say?

Matthew 25:40-45 King James Version
And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

If you don't believe in all that, imagine the body of your child, or your grandchild, make it personal, because whatever we do to anyone is personal.

Statistics are for excuses and politics and reasons never justify cruelty.

The hour I found Christmas

You can give someone a million Christmas presents, but to really give someone Christmas?

That is a gift beyond words.

Truly beyond words.

Bestest gives me music and once he gave me a keyboard so I could play my music.

But I could never play for him. My hands shook. My heart quaked. I was too afraid.

This year I was like Charlie Brown. I just couldn't find Christmas, but Bestest kept right on singing and playing until Christmas Eve.

When the spirit of Christmas finally rose inside of me and poured out of my fingers.

After eight years I could play for him.

All's well that looks well

The title of this blog speaks to much of our society today.

We are a people of social media concepts. If you think I'm smiling I am happy. If you think I look beautiful. I am beautiful. If you, if you, if you . .

And the truth lies in between the words.

Because magic starts inside of us.

If I think I am beautiful, then I am. To me. To the person it really matters to. And that will most likely make me smile and make me happy and then I will be all these things and more.

My happiness is up to me, not you. Although you could enhance the happiness for both of us if you do something kind for me out of the goodness of your heart.

And vice a versa.

Today

Music is my soul. Maybe it is everyone's. I don't know.

I do know that it picks me up and transports me to times long gone. Specific times.

I fills my heart with the same sorrow and joy of that time. It wrings the same tears from my eyes.

Perhaps the first year of a new decade is the hardest, or perhaps I am feeling my age, but this feels like one of the hardest and sweetest moments I have ever known.

Whatever comes later, I will never forget now.

My world

I am surrounded by fears and disappointment.

And so I surround myself with beautiful things.

Pictures of those I love.

Lovely rooms.

Even lovelier toys.

And an imagination that sometimes even stuns me.

I want good wine.

Good food.

Better desserts.

And a mind unafraid to contemplate all of creation.

These are the things that keep my feet on this earth

And the love that rains from a few.

Where are the simple joys

Be yourself they said.

But don't do this.

Or that.

Don't cry, or be nosy, or impolite, or too loud. Speak up. Sing out. Don't get in the way or bother anyone.

By the time I was finished and sent out into the world to meet my fate I had no idea who I was.

I tried polishing up the edges of that person in the mirror, but I was never really sure if I was becoming more me, or if I were just someone else's art work in progress.

I am coming up on twenty years of cohabitating with myself.

I pop up now and then on long lonely mornings, or walks around the park. I appear in the library like a ghost returning to its old haunting grounds. I even heard myself singing the other day as I played with my favorite things.

Not raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens, but dollhouses and wallpaper and typewritten stories..

I used to run to the telephone when my Daddy called and it was the highlight of my three year old day. Now I do the same thing, but it is  Bobby and Bestest.

No longer obsessed with finding the simple joys of maidenhood and all those adoring daring fables, I am beginning to look a lot like me!

Time

One of the sweetest things about knowing someone for a very long time is watching them grow.

People have to grow into their bodies and voices and find their own places in this world and as much as I might think I know where they will end up, I am often surprised.

Bestest has been a writer for as long as I've known him. He writes for a living. He has books that are sold with his name on them and they are wonderful books.

Yet, this year he has truly found his voice.

Now he writes with his soul as well as his head and the words touch other people in ways that could not happen if he hadn't finally found his place.

The night before

Twas the night before the apocalypse and all through our country
Not a creature was stirring
Not even old Grumpy
The charities were all stashed underneath his great chair
In hopes no one found them
But they were all there.

The aides they were hung by the scruff of their need
Contemplating the wisdom
Of following their greed.
With rattraps galore and Decon out too
Success had been tainted with lots of true rue.

The fireplace was roaring
The logs were in place
And the red of his hair
Hid the red of his face.

But I heard him exclaim as he leaped in the fire
I'm winning. I'm up, No need to inquire.
And the ashes that rose from the chimney with flare
Gave rise to the lies that he would not dare.

En pointe

I feel like a Christmas Tree, a Scotch pine balancing sideways on the point of a mountain.

Slightly off balance.

My roots cut off.

Every bit of wind leaves me quivering and quaking, literally shivering.

Like something bad is going to happen when I least expect it

Which is comforting, because I am expecting it any moment, so maybe it won't happen.

I imagine myself with lights and ornaments and maybe even tinsel

But it would blow off, or fall off, or be destroyed in some way up here

That's the point I suppose.

I am balanced. I'm not actually falling off

But I am not en pointe.

Healing

Fragile.

That is not a word anyone has ever used to describe me.

Even when I was born.

Even when I was a teenager and asked my father, he told me I looked healthy.

I thought I wanted to be petite, tiny, fragile.

But now that I am older I realize it's not all it's hyped up to be.

I realize that I was emotionally fragile. Nightmares, night terrors, depression, these things have been my constant companions since I was thirteen. Reasons abound, but what good are reasons?

My skin is fragile. The slightest bump can tear it apart, but the rest of me is strong now.

I am a fast healer.

When I was younger

I have two different groups of women that I get together with socially, but this is still a difficult time of the year.

When I was younger we always had the biggest house and a dining room, but no one in our family wanted to drive two hours to celebrate with us and see our decorations, so we always packed up the children and dog and went back home for holidays. That way we could all be together.

Up until about four years ago my sister and I were still very close, but then her children and grandchildren starting moving into her house and her life; and now her great grandchildren have joined in, so there is seldom any time for just the two of us to be together.

My daughter who has had no car and no real steady boy friend for a number of years used to spend Sunday afternoons with me.  Now she has a boyfriend and a sixteen year old step son-to-be that she spends all of her time with. The only time I see her is if she needs a ride somewhere.

One of my sons has decided that I am the devil incarnate and the cause of all his problems, (along with a laudable group of other people) so we no longer spend Thanksgiving together. His ex-wife, thank goodness, still lets me see my grandchildren, but they live in Seattle.

My other son and Bestest call me quite frequently and that is the best part of most of my days.

It's not that I am not busy. I volunteer, get together with friends, and workout at the gym, but those things don't replace having someone come into my home, admire the Christmas tree, play with the dollhouse, bake cookies, whatever.

Today

Today while volunteering in the children's library.

I shelved all the books even those that were scary.

The children were working on the computers in back

Writing little stories about old Santa's sack.

When I entered the room, my arms full of books

Renewed for the ones who needed second looks

My eyes they were wary. My feet they were fast.

I was being efficient, this class was my last.

But as I was leaving my arm hit the door

Jarring my brain on pain level four

I exited the room then  looked at the floor

Where blood drops were landing from an arm that was sore..

The nurse was efficient, she bandaged me up and filled out the forms . . .

Attacked by a door!

One gray and foggy day

Today the world was wrapped in gray fog.

Seeping in through the walls.

Muffling the cars.

Drowning me in isolation.

But as soon as the sun went down the lights inside seemed brighter.

My son called and then Bestest asked a question.

My imagination kicked into gear.

My hands got busy.

That is always when I am happiest.

Playing

Everyone knows that play means doing something we enjoy, or find amusing.

What I wonder is why we find something enjoyable, or amusing?

Obviously it is not the same thing for everyone.

Many people play video games and most of the ones I have found involve shooting something. I suppose the instinct for hunting might be in our genes as a survival need from the past, but does the joy come from developing a skill that could save our lives, or is it the satisfaction of doing something well?  Would we be just as happy playing a game where a bird swoops in to eat bugs, or arrows hit targets, or does it have to be a human killing something?

How can the horrors of war be converted into the joy of war? Why does a book entertain us with stories about evil, or treachery, or things that cause pain? What is it about soap operas that amuses people.

Why do we find pleasure in breaking the rules, or watching people commit crimes via games and movies, or books?

What is it in our psyches that finds the "shalt nots" so intriguing?

What is it that finds repetitive things like playing catch so compelling?

Playing or entertaining ourselves is a pretty complicated concept.

Grown-ups

A need for security makes children believe adults know everything. I couldn't wait to grow up and be one of those people.

Years passed. I grew older, but I didn't feel as if I were really an adult and that frightened me. What would happen when my Dad died? Who would I turn to for advice, or help? Who would be the grown-up in my life then?

I thought something must be wrong with me. I didn't feel grown-up. I was afraid to trust myself. I wanted someone who really knew.

Now, when I find someone who thinks he, or she, knows everything, that is a red flag.

There are lots of ways to grow up, but becoming static is not one of them.

I am most comfortable around people who appear to have a process for assessing the facts, for trying to see the whole picture, for making decisions based on as broad a base as possible.

That's the kind of grown-up who finds commonalities and peace in places others only find discord.

In my older eyes, these are the real grown-ups no matter how old they are.

A moment

The lotus sways in the light
Ephemeral moments
Highlighting in an instant
The glancing truth
Sliding through the pond
Making sunshine
Where none exists
Creating beauty
Where the mind falls.

The modern old person

Today I tried coloring my own hair and getting a realistic salon version of my color. I think it worked, but as my hair grows out that could change, so I'm not holding my breath.

I also set up my lights on Alexa, so all I have to say is, "Alex, turn on smart socket, or smart socket 2."  Now if I can only remember that my life will be so much simpler at bedtime, or in the middle of the night.

The unfortunate news is that it took me so long to do it, that I keep remembering all sorts of complicated names for it that don't work. Like Smart Life bedroom socket one!

Ugh! Sometimes I am my own worst enemy.

But I do learn and eventually I will not have to look that up every time I want light. Right now it might be simpler to turn them on by hand, but I will not capitulate.

Every time I have learned a new trick, like using the Garmin, or my iPhone, or a new computer, or camera, or all the Alexa possibilities, it is a challenge.

So far I have been up to the challenge, but I remember adults in the past who had trouble with stoplights and cell phones and even calculators. I keep wondering if there is a saturation point and if I will reach it.

Silent night

Sometimes I think I'd be better off not going to the doctor at all.

I spend more hours than I care to think about -- thinking about going to the doctor.

My shelf life is getting shorter every year. Mightn't it be better to just really enjoy the time left and stop worrying about what could be?

Of course comfort comes in there too, but how do I weigh worrying about what MIGHT be with dealing with what is.

I have high blood pressure.

If I lost enough weight I would not have that, then maybe I'd stop going to the doctor altogether and get on with living instead of contemplating dying.

Just thinking.

Smiling

It took me a long time to really understand love.

I love my children. I don't think I ever realized how much I could love someone until I had a child. I honestly would do anything that I thought was important for my children, but that is a selfish sort of love, in a way, because whatever I give my children I am really giving myself.

Then there is romantic love, but I think the idea of romantic love mixes everything up, especially when we are young. We are so inculcated by tales of romantic love that we forget that there are other kinds. But romantic love began in order to propagate families, to make little copies of ourselves and that is wonderful, but it is selfish too.

I am trying to describe those indiscernible feelings that are stronger than the strongest super hero, gentler than the mildest spring breeze, infinitely warm and sweet . . .  All encompassing. Incomprehensible. Better than food, or drink, or even maybe life itself. Something that must be experienced, because there are no real words for it,

Perhaps it happens all the time and we just don't recognize it, but I don't know how that could be because I know it and not recognizing it would be like not seeing the sun blinding me in the east as it rises, or not noticing it filling me with an indescribable warmth right out of the blue, or hearing it whisper to me and discovering that the merest thought of it makes me smile like I have been told the greatest secret there is.

Because.

I have.

Common

Why do people pick and choose the facts they choose to remember and observe and hold true?

There are probably as many reasons as there are people, but mostly because we like what we know. It feels comfortable to believe and do the same things we were first taught by people who loved and cared for us. It also feels comfortable not to rock the boat, so we go along with those nearby.

Cherry picking. Nit picking. Picking, picking, picking and choosing which words, or lines we like and ignoring the rest is pretty common.

It doesn't make it right. It just makes it convenient -- for the people trying to prove some incorrect point.

It is possible to prove just about anything -- to ourselves -- and to the uneducated.

Keeping people ignorant is not a trick, or a ploy. It is a legitimate way of controlling them.

Don't let that happen to you or those you love.

Interesting

Today my oldest grandson turned thirteen.

Yesterday my youngest grandson turned seven.

In June my youngest granddaughter will turn eight.

The next day my oldest granddaughter will turn twenty-five..

Then I have a little redheaded granddaughter who was born in August.

Funny how life goes.

From sea to shining sea

The Autumn ice storm that left me stranded in my apartment was no fun, but what a year this has been.

One of my friends and her pets had to stay inside because of unbreathable air due to the Camp Fire.

My cousins in Alaska just lived through an earthquake and fear of a tsunami.

My home town had a horrible tornado this week. Everyone survived, but the town is severely damaged.

The world is starting to look like the beginning of a terrible horror movie.

I wish I thought it was all coincidence.

All I want for Christmas

I have spent the past few days decorating for Christmas.

Earlier than usual, but it feels important to do what I am doing.

Today my back was killing me. I must have pulled a muscle when I tried to hold that door for all those people. Pride often goes before a sore back, but I was out looking for present shapes to wrap.

For the dollhouse of course. I needed very small things like wooden blocks and erasers, then I needed a paper with a small, or series of small, pictures, or patterns, and of course a few tiny bows.

I found four earrings that were perfect bows and a great paper and even six little prewrapped foil packages to fill in. Then I went home and wrapped my packages, put them under the tree, set out the gingerbread house, let the puppy into the living room, and allowed the baby to fall asleep on the couch.

After that I taped some moonlight outside the window so it could shine in and it was beautiful!

Collections

The first twenty years of my life I was expected to find something I loved very much and collect it.  That way I could buy things on vacation and people would know what to give me as gifts. My mother suggested salt and pepper shakers and having no real affinity for anything else (or even really them) I jumped on it and collected them for years, but I never sat around looking at them with great pleasure.

One day I realized I had collected quite a selection of turtles and that became the new collection.(Because everyone KNOWS you have to collect something if you are a middle class American woman, right?) Anyway, that lasted about thirty five years, but when I moved back to Illinois from North Carolina, I left it all behind and it was packed up by my son and put away. I don't really miss most of them.

If you had asked me last week, what I collect now, I would have said, nothing, but that's not true. I just realized that my newest hobby is my miniature dollhouse and it is truly a passion, which I think collections are supposed to be. I have always loved miniature things. The Colleen Moore's Fairy Castle at the Science and Industry Museum in Chicago was always one of my favorite places to visit.

I began modestly enough with cardboard boxes and moved on to the Playmobile Victorian Mansion. Then I bought a brownstone dollhouse with three floors and now I have the huge three and a half story bookcase dollhouse, which is my favorite because I can sit in my chair and see all the rooms.

I love redecorating it. I love shopping for exquisite pieces for it and I love just sitting here staring at it. Now that is a real collection.

Accountability

Some people try to force others to believe.

Appearing to believe can be a manifestation of fear, or a need to fit in. Fitting in is evolution in action. Herds, packs, flocks, schools, all rely on it to protect the whole, so people who acquiesce without really believing are common.

People who stand up for the truth and don't just pay lip service to the herd must be very brave.

Or very strong.

Or very stupid.

And fear of looking stupid is very strong in many people.

Everyone makes mistakes, or has accidents. The difference lies in how people respond. The honest ones admit it and learn from them.

The others will pretend you are the bad one, because God forbid they should take responsibility for their own actions. They might be held accountable.

Survival in the land of ice and snow

I live at the top of a pretty little hill that was one of the things that attracted me to this apartment, but today I have been trapped at home all day by the frozen tundra that covers it.

I made one valiant effort to escape after they cleared the front walk down to the mailboxes. Unfortunately, the parking lot where my car is has nothing to do with that walkway.

Stepping outside I found myself on slick, uneven ice with almost no snow covering at all, but I was able to make my way to the grass and walk as far as the corner of the building. There I had two choices, step onto the even slicker and more uneven river rocks, or go back up on the sidewalk.

I chose the later and it was a mistake. Although I doubt the other would have been any better. Once on the sidewalk I found myself sliding wildly downhill and grabbed the drainpipe. Thank goodness I didn't pull it off the wall.

Finally getting to the parking lot, about thirty feet from my car, I realized that stepping out onto that ice rink could be fatal for my old bones, so I decided to go back inside, which was easier to think about than do.

I could not get back up on the sidewalk the way I came and actually thought about knocking on my neighbor's window and asking if they had some way of hauling me up, but I couldn't reach their window.

Finally, creeping inch by inch down the driveway, using whatever snow cover there was for traction, I was able to get to the grass. That put me in good stead until I was back by my own patio again and had to brave the frozen tundra once more.

I called our apartment managers and they sent someone over around four to chop up some of the ice and spread ice melt between the apartment doors and the parking lot. I hope it is still working tomorrow because I have an eleven o'clock appointment.  I could take a taxi to a doctor appointment, but I can't very well take my Honda Fit to get its airbag replaced without driving the car.

We've had snow. We've had ice. Now winter is welcome to leave. I'm beginning to feel like Nanook of the North.

Over the border

They were a young couple walking miles and miles to save their son.

Walking until their feet were sore, their shoes worn through, but they would do anything to save their son and finally after what seemed like an eternity they reached the border seeking sanctuary.Thirsty and afraid, the young mother ran towards it, towing her child by the hand.

Then the tear gas hit and they tried to run away from it, but the more they ran the more it burned their lungs and the child stopped crying because he could only gasp for air. They crossed the border and were immediately swooped up.

The mother was sent to a women's detention facility. The father to a men's and the child was taken into custody because both parents were criminals trying to escape an evil man in their own country, a man who would kill their son if he could get his hands on them. Jesus was put in a state run private facility because everyone was afraid to apply as a foster parent for fear they would be deported too, even if they were legal aliens. And the state didn't waste any of their good money on him either.

But wait . . .

That's not how it happened.

He will come again, but what if he isn't a white upper class wealthy American? He wasn't the last time.

Thinking

It is officially my birthday. Of course I will not be born until nearly eleven thirty, but it is close enough.

The first birthday I remember was looking up at the coconut covered lamb cake on the table as I sat in my Dad's big chair at the end of the table. I got white fur bunny slippers and a blue negligee set.

The next big birthday that I am sure I remember was when I turned six and we had a birthday party in the Lincoln room at my grandfather's restaurant. My favorite gift was a small doll diaper bag from Johnny Ball.

Then the year I turned thirteen we had moved to a country town where my dad taught school. I walked into the kitchen that morning and he said, "Welcome to the world of the teenager where you will feel (something about odd and misunderstood) for the next five years."

By the time I was twenty one I was married and living in Kansas where fields of sunflowers turned their faces all day long to really follow the sun.

I cooked my first Thanksgiving dinner for my whole family and their families on my fortieth birthday. It was a huge crowd.

Fifty was scary because I had just gotten divorced, but my friends took me to the country club for Thanksgiving and I fell asleep afterwards.

Sixty was daunting, but I had met Bestest and life was looking up. I'd been living alone for ten years and was starting to feel comfortable in my own skin.

Now I am sixty nine and I have to say that it seems there have been some pretty dramatic changes in my body during the last two weeks. I'm hoping they are in my mind, but I'm not sure they are. My skin seems dryer and more wrinkled. My muscle tone looks off. I haven't been sleeping as good as I was.

But I still volunteer, go to the gym for an hour every day, take care of my apartment, shop, and play with the dollhouse. I read every night, write every day, even draw every day. I'm refinishing a doll house staircase and do my laundry. So, I'm really not slowing down.

I just keep trying to remember my grandmother at this age. She's my only real role model. I know what she did and how she did it. I only wish I knew what she was thinking and feeling.

Now there are three

Thirty three years ago I found myself sick with the flu whenever I went home for  a holiday, or my birthday. I kept getting sick every time I went home for over a year before I realized I didn't want to be there because my mother wasn't. She died that year when she was only 58 and I was 36. I got over it once I realized what was going on.

I suppose I should have recognized the signs, but my body is very good at deceiving me.  I have been sick for over a week. Flu like symptoms that won't go away and tomorrow is Thanksgiving.

This is the first Thanksgiving I will not spend with my brother in the sixty three years since he was born. He died last May and this was the one holiday we had managed to carry on throughout the years. It was much smaller as our children grew up and had children and moved away, but the core people were still there.

I am realizing how important that was to me, how quickly life flies by.

Once there were six of us.

Now there are three.

Reliable

Children are taught to respond to and respect authorities right from the day they are born. It keeps them alive in the best circumstances.

But along the way it can become a liability.

No one source is altogether supremely reliable.

Anything to do with people can be skewed.

People delight in quoting sources that suit their own agendas. Harm is often done backed up by zealots twisting the truth to fit their actions..

It is not enough to trust anyone or anything completely. Nothing exists that cannot be filtered through a haze of misrepresentation for whatever reason.

Hard critical thinking is the first and most reliable skill an intelligent person can have. Using this, they can evaluate all the rest.

Not quite

I have felt strangely detached from everything lately.

I hear myself talking.

I do what I am supposed to do.

But I don't feel like it is really me. It feels more like I am one of those pictures on the old antenna television sets that kept fading in and out.

Perhaps I am coming down with something.

Everything else in my life is almost perfect. Not quite, but almost.

Rehabbing

I didn't feel well today, so I stayed in bed late and pretty much did nothing until after noon. Then I felt better and I decided to start on my staircases.

My old dollhouse had two staircases that fit into my new one, but are totally unfinished.

I have grand ideas about how I'd like them to look when I finish. White with a dark cherry, or mahoghany railing, newel post, and treads.

I worked on the first coat of white for nearly three and a half hours today and quit when I began to feel nauseous. I stopped and it was some time before I felt better. I still don't know if it was because I wasn't feeling great anyway, or if it was the paint (acrylic titanium white, which should be perfectly safe) or just peering at such tiny spaces for so long, or maybe even holding my breath without meaning to.

But I am halfway towards putting the staining on one of them now and I think I am going to like it.

Although I can already see one thing I wish I had done differently. LOL

The real optimist

I have been called an optimist, which I know will sound odd to some people in my family, but that may be because I come from people so optimistic that they are still hoping for the best after 38 years of failure.

It's hard to compete with people like that.

I am more the sort of person who is willing to try one thing after another always hoping to land on the right answer.

But it would be hard to beat my daughter who came out of the restaurant at noon today, stepped into a dreary, drab, rainy, snowy, cold, windy day and said:

Wow, it's turned into a good day!

A long lost dream

I bought a dollhouse from a woman for almost nothing.. She considered it a toddler dollhouse, or maybe a toy shelf, or perhaps even a book case. To me it is the perfect dollhouse.

I thought I wanted one of those scale homes that cost anywhere from five hundred to a hundred thousand dollars, but when I got my first dollhouse that was similar to those for about a hundred dollars I was really happy. The only problem was the limited space inside, or so I thought.

I fixed it up and then it lost it's luster for me. I realize now, there were two reasons for that. One, it was finished, so what more was there to do with it? Two, I couldn't really see what I'd done unless I peeked in the windows, or opened up the side.

This new dollhouse is huge! It has at least seven rooms and some of them are big enough to be two rooms. It is sturdy and open and I can sit here in my chair and enjoy it all the time. I can rearrange the furniture, redo the walls, even redo the rooms.  I can't think of any toys that have given me this much pleasure in years.

I look at the bathroom, shown in the picture, and it just makes me feel good. I don't know why, but I do know that when I look at it, it feels as if I am fulfilling some long lost dream.

Descriptions

I was at the library today looking for a good book to read and as I ran through the list of authors in my head it occurred to me that my favorite authors leave vivid pictures in my mind. Often times I don't know if I have read the book, or seen the movie when it comes out.

Then I began thinking that this is because these writers are able to describe things that I see from my own point of view, which is why movies can be such a disappointment.

That led to the different ways people view things and what tags images in their mind. I would just like to throw out this description:

Lies rolled off his tongue like breath mints in a jackals mouth. A true power monger, he never let the truth come between him and a good lay, or anything else.

Don't tell me who you see. I don't want to know. It's enough to see the image in my head.

The strong man

I wonder how many people really have a good idea of their strengths and limitations?

Growing up I saw so many people, especially women, playing down their strengths, as if it was better to be weak and needy and clumsy. They seemed to think it was cute, or funny, or even sexy.

Now some of those same women are caught up in a web of their own making, because ineptness is neither cute, nor desirable.

On the other hand, I know some people who seem to believe they are so gifted and strong they can do anything! This isn't as great as it sounds either. Over confidence can lead to failure and even though that is not bad, it can be annoying or even dangerous.

The trick is to actually know who you are and what you can do, or not do, then make adjustments to counter balance your weaknesses.

I wonder how many people know their real selves?

Those are the strongest people of all.

Foresight

One might think that things would be less clear beyond the veil and I really don't know for sure, but it seems that as the veil thins, things become more doable.

"What is the worst that can happen?" One of my teachers asks me that all the time.

If I am honest, the worst is seldom much at all. Thinking I am the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega, the one and only is rather extreme. Most of the consequences in life are so much less than that.

I do not have to explain myself to anyone now. I do not have to ask permission. If I choose to do, or try, something, it is totally up to me.

When I decided to play the flute I took lessons and even played in a recital. I am so glad I did that. I only wish I'd had the courage to let my friends know when the recital was so they could have come.

I am not a courageous person, but I do have a zest for life, so if keeping what I do to myself satisfies me, there is no reason to share -- except that sharing often magnifies the pleasure.

Change

Perspective is so personal.

On days when I get up at the crack of dawn and Bestest calls while he walks the dog, my days begin with a ray of sunshine that light up the next twelve hours.

On days when we miss each other the hours feel longer somehow.

And on those rare weeks where we miss each other like ships passing in the night, the world becomes dimmer and dimmer.

Until finally I feel totally at sea.

Funny how a few words change a life.

Soul chart

We have so much in common, but they are often not what people look for and believe in.

Class, which people tend to associate with wealth, is more a matter of mind and manners than having money, which can only buy things, not binafide class.

Philosophy and religion are another place where people think they find brotherhood and camaraderie merely assuming that because you carry a certain book you are a certain kind of person.

The world revolves on facades, but not every mansion surrounds gentility and not every hut a beggar.

The richness of a soul is born out of humility and wisdom. Finding the commonalities of mankind takes desire and tenaciousness, which require time, honesty and an ability to take the higher ground even if it is rockier.

People who believe they can buy their way through life are often among the lowest creatures on the soul chart. Right next to those who believe they can achieve things by force.

It can be done, but it bypasses class and goodness and -- almost everything else worth having.

Book club

I went to my book club today. There were only five of us there because there were several other meetups going on at the same time, but I realized something important.

Out of the five of us, only two had finished the book.

That might sound like we are not the most avid readers, but actually we all are.

Discussing this book, we also happened to talk about why we had not finished it and one other reader said something that opened a door for me.

She doesn't like to rush through a book if she likes it..

That is exactly the way I feel. The more I love a book, the less I want to rush through it and finish it. Instead, I like to savor it, imagine it, see the movie in my mind.

Rushing through it for book club would be a violation of myself and ways.

Infinity divided by one

I am here. Always here, in the M.C. Escher version of living. Up, down, around, into.

I get the feeling that if I just look a little closer, or harder, or for the right amount of time, or at the right angle, I will see the truth of it.

As if everything is before me and I only have to learn to see it, to figure out how to maneuver, and the reality of it will reveal itself to me.

Right now it feels like my life is starting to come into focus. If I were Hansel and Gretel I would be able to see the bread crumbs. My homesickness would feel hopeful that we were no longer lost. It is as if my dreams have traded places with my other life.

It is like reaching down into a big soft bag and knowing that everything I ever wanted or needed is in there, but I can only pull it out if I recognize it with my fingers and mind -- not my eyes or rationality.

And then I pull back. Afraid, because when the veil is too thin and life feels too much like the fairy tale, I know there could be a big bad wolf lurking in the darkness, or a sea monster lying in the depths,or a bog ready to swallow me whole with my next step.

All around me are the souls of ancestors, recycled into me. One soul with a thousand hearts and a million thoughts, but only one essence appearing as everything.

It is a terrifying comfort when I feel like this.

Evel Knievel

Education is more than regurgitating rote material.

The surest way for a business, or country, or even household to start deteriorating is for the people to be kept uneducated and fed truisms by those with an agenda.

There is a difference between technical training and a classical education. It is one thing to learn how  follow directions and remember rules. It is something else to research, compile ideas and use them to come up with a well thought out conclusion.

People need to learn to think. Critically, carefully, thoughtfully.

It may not be the fastest way to get things done, or cause the least trouble, but it will serve the world better.

People will bend over backwards trying to do the right thing, but if Evel Knievel is just standing up there shouting directions and the people are mindlessly obeying?

That is dangerous! One day there will be a pitfall and all those direction followers will not be told it is there.

Run run run -- to freedom

This was written by an immigrant who came to this country 60 years ago, but it is pretty much the same story I heard from one of our school secretaries who came with her elementary school aged daughter a few years ago. Only she did not have the good fortune to come in safety on an airplane.

Grandmother Flordemayo

Grandmother Flordemayo

Today, November 5th, 2018 is 4 Kan. I’m sharing again my story of immigration when I came with my family from Central America to the United States.

Even now 60 years later. I have a difficult time speaking about this journey.

I was a child when my mother told us we are going to the US. I only had a few days before we left . My mind and my emotions were frozen. I remember those moments in time ...moving as if in slow motion. I looked around at the beauty of my surroundings the green plants the warm temperature the voice of my brothers and sisters. I remember my moms demeanor in her face was without expression. The night before we left no one slept. I was woken up in the cool midnight walking to the bus-stop.

We boarded in the early morning hour with a ride to Managua, Nicaragua. That was the moment my journey started. My body was use to the mountain air & surroundings. I found myself in a city that was totally different busy with cars, people all around me, noise & the temperature was so hot. All I could do is hold my moms hand very tight. We stayed that night at my moms friends house to leave the next morning. We flew from Managua to Miami to La Guardia airport in NYC. My mind went into another transition. That became imprinted in my heart. The reality of my home, my town was all gone it was like it only existed in my mind.

I often asked my mom before she passed. I was younger than 17 years old

“Mama why did we come to the US her answer was always the same
Hija (daughter)

I wanted you to have a better life

We have no rights in Central America we as women

We cannot say NO to sex

We cannot say how many children we want to have

We cannot speak & express our thoughts

We have No rights to an education

We cannot say NO to all of the domestic and field work that we do

We cannot say NO to cooking & looking for food

We have no rights on what clothing we want to wear

We are under the domination of someone else

I brought you here to have a better life than mine

I had NO rights as a women in Central America NO rights at all
So we run- run — run— to find freedom

Love and Light,
Grandmother Flordemayo
#grandmotherflordemayo #familiesbelongtogether

The death of freedom

The elections tomorrow are important. I voted by mail weeks ago.

We need to send a message that we don't want this new way of aggrandizing violence and intolerance in our country.

A country founded on the principles of tolerance has suddenly done an about face that is escalating faster than most of us dreamed possible.

Intolerance is becoming the new norm, lies from the top down make people believe it is not only okay, but American to kill those they don't agree with.

We have become a country of scapegoats. Any problems are blamed on people who are a different sex, or religion, or who love people we don't approve of. Immigrants seeking asylum are put in pens, separated from their children and accused of being criminals when all they want is to escape the gang and political violence of their own countries.

We not only want everyone to look like us, love like us, worship like us, think like us, but we are willing to assault them if they don't and somehow this is American? It is becoming more common now than it has been in years.

We are losing freedom faster than you can say white supremist.

Our watery world

I went to coffee with some friends this morning and afterwards stopped at the gym to exercise for almost an hour. The tricky part of all that was running through the rain from my car to the buildings and back again because I did not wear a jacket, or raincoat.

It made me think about what an anomaly water is.

Bathing in a hot tub of it is so relaxing. Running through a cold Autumn shower of it is freezing.

Water is so soft and  pliable. It takes on the shape of whatever contains it and yet a raging river of water can carry away buildings and trees!

Gentle enough to wash your baby, water can wear away mountains and create Grand Canyons.

A drop is here and gone in a second, but it is the persistence of millions of years that wears away those mountains and canyons.

It makes up a large part of our bodies.

It can be flavored to become coffee or tea, fizzed to make soda, boiled to make soup, frozen to make ice.

It reconstitutes many dried things and becomes a conveyance for soap to wash away bacteria.

It is necessary for life, fun for entertainment, productive enough to run machines and make electricity, and dangerous enough to take a life.

It can turn into a gas, a liquid, or a solid and the things you can do with, or in, those is almost endless.

All this from two tiny molecules of hydrogen and one of oxygen!

Facebook

I hear people talking about how bad Facebook is and I doubt it's any worse than other modern inventions have ever been.

Once upon a time the telephone, radio, and television were the target of people who felt they distracted people from their jobs and being with other people. At least the telephone and Facebook are interactive.

In fact, I think it would have lengthened my father's life to have had a computer. He was bored to death in the elderly high rise and nursing home. A computer would have put a library on his desk and a way to communicate with his friends, not bimonthly, but daily.

Now I watch my sister's granddaughter on Facebook. Her best friend moved away and she has some learning problems, but she likes to put pictures on Facebook, so she is constantly on there with her baby showing it off. I think if she didn't have this, she might not be quite as enamored with an under one year old. She also might not have such easy access to parenting tips and ideas. It's a multigenerational way to share mothering skills for someone who doesn't drive and lives in a small town.

I like Facebook because it allows me to share my own pictures with friends and relatives across the country. In a world where my children live in three different states and coast to coast, that is a blessing.

There is no danger for me on Facebook. I simply don't put anything on there if I don't want the world to know it. Common sense goes a long way.

It's a long road

Human beings are hardwired to fit in. There is a pack mentality necessary for survival in the wild that transfers right into what we now consider our modern world.

I think it is most evident in small towns where anyone who is different is often miserable. People like the idea of original thinkers on television and in movies, but unless that thinker thinks like them, many people, especially under educated people don't like them in reality. They find them threatening.

The same is true in the gangs of cities, or gated neighborhoods, or congregations in many churches. Tolerance is often a thinly veiled façade for an excuse to either get rid of, or change anything out of the "norm." The norm being what is believed by the majority, or ones in power.

We are all looking to be comfortable. We want to follow the leader and absolve ourselves from making the hard decisions. It is one thing to pay lip service to the Bible, or Koran, or any way or creed. It is something altogether different to live that way.

Believing there is only one way, or that your way is superior to everyone else's is pretty egotistical. The world has been around for a very long time and the universe even longer. Ways come and go. The way people interpret those ways is very diverse.

We are a work in progress with a long way to go.

Next

My usual way of dealing with unease used to be withdrawal. From the world, from other people, from activity, but I realize that there has been a subtle shift over the last eight years.

Now I find myself trying to do something different when I am sad, or edgy, or just off balance in some way.

I've tried biking, walking, writing, drawing, painting, joining a meetup group, getting together with the Ironwood Ladies, volunteering, even dyeing my hair red!

Like anything, I have grown used to these things, so they don't always help. I know people who would say that they are only running away from my problems, that I should be meditating. Well, I do that too, but at my age I do whatever is necessary.

I may only have a few more years to live and even if I have another thirty, I'd like to do as much living as possible in that time.

So now I'm taking a pottery class and I joined a gym.

Who knows what I'll do tomorrow.

Mottos to live by

After reading Diana Gabaldon's books I became entranced by the idea of a motto, a phrase that described a way of living that was meaningful.

Having tried on several throughout the years I think this quote by Vivian Greene seems to fit me best.

Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass . . . it's about learning to dance in the rain.

Feels right to me.

Our brave new world

Imagine working eleven years for a company. You almost never use sick days and you arrive before five A.M. most of the days you work.

You are cross trained and able to work in most of it's outlets doing most of the available jobs.

You are cheerful, productive, eager and have letters in your file written by people impressed with your work.

Then, on October 26, 2018 you get called into your manager's office at 12:50 P.M. and told that they are eliminating the place you are currently working. You have been a good employee, done nothing wrong, but now you must hand in your badge and they will escort you to the door at 12:58.

Boom!

Eleven years of exemplary work gone in eight minutes! All they give you is a paper stating the above along with a few other details about your 401K and that you are eligible for unemployment. They will send you a check for your unused sick days and you will never step foot in the door again -- unless they find they need you some day in the future.

That is how its done now.

Fact or fate

Life often seems to come in random spurts of luck, or loss, or even strict boredom, but does it have to?

I'm pretty sure it doesn't.

Some things are unavoidable, that's true.

But how I react, or respond, or choose to deal with them should be up to me.

The idea that I have nothing to do with the way my life goes is just plain false.

I can just go with the flow, fight back, change course and do something different, or even just sit and laugh, or cry, about it.

I almost always do something. It's hard not to. After all I am a living, breathing person with a huge repertoire of learned and practiced responses.

The question is . . .

Which one will I use?

In the mean time

I think our country is in the most dangerous place it has been since the 1950's, or maybe even since it's inception.

We have a president who seems to prefer pitting everyone against everyone to uniting the country. In fact that appears to be his policy world wide.

Country against country, what he wants against the law, revenge against justice, republicans against democrats, propaganda against truth. The more stirred up we are, the happier he seems to be.

After all, if the pot is boiling and bubbling enough, no one can see what's cooking underneath.

By the end of four years we may have digressed irreparably back depleting our national resources, our air that we breathe, our safety standards, our idea that we are innocent until proven guilty, and little girls who are raped will be forced to have babies even if it kills them. The rich will get tax breaks, great health care and concessions wherever money can buy them. The rest of us will give up our social security, because there will be no security for people like us.

As the old song used to go, "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer." Why? Because everyone knows rich people deserve good things and poor people are all criminals, druggies and lazy worthless people like the immigrants whose children we stole and whose parents can no longer be found.

The Dragon

On that first morning, when my eyes closed and my heart opened, my world changed.

I didn't wish upon a star, or find a magic wand.

It was as if I had risen from the center of a crystal lake and discovered I was in a brand new world.

Everything looked the same but it felt different.

Now when the sun came out, the sky was such a brilliant blue it took my breath away.

Things began to slip into place. What could have gone all wrong, turned back on itself and was better than ever.

I discovered loving in a way so fulfilling, so rich, so overwhelmingly warm that it was almost addictive. Not being loved mind you, but loving.

Loving turns out to be the happily ever after in the fairy tale. The magic thoughts that bring about miracles. The invisible way that carries one to Neverland and back again without any sense of time.

Born deep down inside of me it grows like a dragon, spreading its wings and soaring through me on some days and sleeping in the cavern of my soul for other days on end.

When the dragon is awake, there is no feeling on earth that can match it.

Conjuring

I am editing again.

Reading out loud.

Listening to my voice.

Allowing my brain to wallow in the pictures the words conjure up.

And the hardest part is not allowing my mind to drift off on tangents sparked by the words of two great authors, because this is a book by Bestest about one of our great authors and it is rich!

I do twenty-one pages a day because my throat dries out after that, but they are some of the best minutes of my day.

Expectant

I often feel like I am on the verge of something big.

I feel as if something wonderful is either happening and I am just not seeing it, or something wonderful is about to happen.

I have no idea what it is.

It isn't like I expect to win the lottery, or inherit a fortune, or any material thing.

It is more like my eyes are going to come into focus and I will find the truth and the beauty of what actually is and my world will be transformed.

As if I will be turned inside out and within me is everything I have ever looked for.

Not that I am the answer to everything, or anything, but that it is within me to find the way and walk upon it peacefully and with joy.

Weighty work

I have been searching for a twin blanket for my daybed-only bed. My other blankets are huge. Folded in half doesn't work quite right and are mostly too hot, but twins are also really bigger than I need or want and I'm looking for a particular color and fabric to go with the couch part of the daybed.

I've read about weighted blankets for people with autism, but popular now for other people too. The idea is the weight calms you, feels like a hug, is comforting. They have an add where they keep dropping the weighted blanket on a woman in different situations and she immediately falls down in a deep sleep.

So I ordered a weighted blanket and a matching duvet cover to go with my couch daybed. They come in different sizes and weights depending on the person and the place it will be used. I ordered the one that was recommended for me.

I am such a raging optimist.

My first clue was when I could barely haul the box in the door. Still, I opened it, laid out the duvet cover and dragged the blanket over to the couch to insert it into the duvet. Second clue? It took everything I had to do this too.

When I finished, I could barely lift it to shake the blanket into place in the duvet, but I thought, I should really give this a chance. Maybe once it's all spread out it will be perfect! I spread it out and crawled underneath. It felt exactly like what it was. A twenty pound bag of heavy glass beads that settled down around me like a net, compressing all my parts and making turning over almost an impossibility. Now they tell me I will sleep so soundly I will no longer want to turn over?

I think that woman in the add fell down because someone dropped twenty pounds of blanket on top of her. I carefully folded everything back up. (Not easy because it was so heavy.) Packaged it back in the box and managed to get it into my car so I could drive to UPS. All the way there I wondered how I might get both boxes in the door and finally decided I would just leave my hatchback open and pray someone would open the store door for me.

A postman drove up as I neared the building and jumped out to open the door, but his hand slipped off and for one agonizing moment I thought they were closed and I was going to have to make my way back to the car. I panicked and cried out, "Oh noooooo!" Another customer laughed as the door opened and I must have looked elated. (I felt elated.) I stepped into the store and the tall teenager behind the counter rushed towards me to help, but I beat him to the counter where I dropped both boxes with a great sigh.

He gave me a receipt and then went to pick up the boxes. "Oh my God!" He said, laughing. "This is really a blanket? If I put it in the overhead, I'd never get it out."

I found a nice little twin blanket at TJMaxx on the way home and when I have the energy, I will put it on my bed.

Through the eyes of dreams

I suspect everyone has some idea of what they think they look like, or want to look like.

For one reason, or another, most of us don't actually look that way, but we probably don't look the same to everyone anyway. A film star develops a carefully drawn up persona. They have agents and companies dedicated to making sure the public sees them a certain way.

The rest of us are more at the mercy of other people and fate.

My father, looking through the eyes of love, always saw my mother as the bride he married. My husband always saw me as a threat for some reason. I have a friend I see as the earth mother and another I see as a sort of thoroughly modern Millie.

The people in our lives are as much a reflection of us as they are anything else. We see what we want to see, what we allow ourselves to see, what we expect to see . . . and then, we finally see the bit of them we allow to show through all that.

I am one of those lucky people who has a friend who sees me through my dreams somehow. She isn't even someone I share my dreams with most of the time, but she seems to know what I want to be, how I'd like to be seen, who I wish I were.

I love that! She thought I looked like a ballerina when we were young! Recently she wrote about me as "the Pixie Red Head!"

Wow.

Throwing pots

Almost everyone has seen Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze in Ghost working with clay while Unchained Melody plays in the background. If that scene doesn't make you want to become a potter, I can't imagine what might.

Perhaps the idea of creating something out of the earth and turning it into a piece of art, or a dish that you can tell people, "I made that myself" pulls you toward pottery classes.

I was drawn in by both of those and more. I've always wanted to try my hand at making something on a potter's wheel and so I signed up for six classes to do just that.

The first thing I learned is that it is really work! The next thing I realized was that there is a whole vocabulary that goes with this that I have never heard of. Wedging made me break out into a sweat! It's kind of like kneading bread, but in a very distinct way.

I learned to actually throw the clay onto the center of the bat using my arm from the elbow down. I learned that my hands are very diverse tools whose different bones and muscles shape and pull and hollow out that clay in amazingly intricate and difficult ways.

We made two pots and threw both back into the bucket at the end of class, but our teacher assured us that we will make and glaze something by the last couple of classes.

I had to wash my arms and face and clothes, but I really think I'm going to like this class.

At risk

Today Bestest was out running through his neighborhood. Not unusual. He runs nearly every day.

When I visited, we walked his dog through that same neighborhood. Three and a half miles every day with a boisterous white lab whose greatest joy is the few minutes of freedom she has to tree squirrels near the end of the walk.

Bestest never allows his dog to run when there are people, or cars nearby, but we have talked about the way cars and trucks fly through this gated community.

You can never tell whether it is the people who live there, or the people who build their houses, care for their lawns, clean their homes, or are just visiting them, but they tear through these quiet suburban streets on the same ground that six year olds play kick ball and eight year olds ride their bikes and toddlers wander out onto while the parents talk to each other.

I have seen all these things happen.

They are not unusual.

It is only if they happen to cross paths that tragedy could result and turn this little Eden into a nightmare of regret.

We've talked about this, worried for the children, but today it was Bestest who was hit by a car running a stop sign and whirling around the corner to plow into him.

It stopped in time to only leave him bruised and sore. It did not smash any of his bones, or kill him, thank God. But what if . . .

What if it had been a child, or a dog, or a group of children? What if it had run over him? How would any of us survive that? The grief of family and friends and the person driving the vehicle who wasn't trying to hurt anyone, or maliciously break any laws, but who carelessly and unthinkingly put anyone on the streets at risk, could have been horrific.

This should be a warning, a blessed chance to make people stop and think before the unthinkable happens.

The point

What if all of life is now?

Now, I am who I am aware that I am, but I am still that baby who played with her toes and that old woman who sits starring out the window remembering the day, long ago, when her two little boys walked off to school holding hands and wearing winter coats for the first time that year.

I am the woman who belonged to a dream group for years because her dreams are so clear. The woman who has 3D nightmares and leaps from her bed to escape from a nightmare fire.

I think that reality is only now no matter what is happening now, or where I am.

I measure life in hours and days and minutes and seconds when really it might be measured in memories and moments, sounds and scents.

What if ghosts are really there? Not as ephemeral beings, but blurry reality? What if tragedy and disaster could be bypassed by memories and a future when things are not yet bad, or already passed?

What if life is only a point on the graph and within that point is everything that ever was, or ever will be?

Whose perspective would be right then?

What if people, or places, or events seem familiar because we have already crossed paths somewhere in time at a point that is finite and infinite all at the same time?

On a graph of infinity all things pass through each point at least once. And it is always now on the point.

Facades

I think that persistence is probably the most important trait people need to have.

I know a lot of very intelligent people who never quite made it. A lot of very talented people who almost made it. A lot of gifted people who never quite got there.

Not to say they never will. Some of us just bloom slower than others, but it is important to hang in there until you do. Until you reach maximum satisfaction with your own life, or at least stay on the road headed in that direction.

Lots of people want to be there so badly they are willing to fake it. People who cop out and opt for weird instead of successful. Odd instead of even. Facades instead of core. It's just not the same thing.

Maximizing your own self brings a kind of satisfaction and steadiness that cannot be faked. It gives you the feeling that you can stand on your own two feet, strong, competent and able, that you can cope with life even when you don't like it.

Then you can have friends and partners to enhance and polish off what is already good inside you, because it is what you are made of that makes you who you are, not who you know, or what you have.

All the pretty clothes in the world won't make a mud pie into something edible. And all the fancy trucks, cars, houses, and vacations won't buy you real respect, or happiness. These things, as real as they seem, are all ephemeral.

So find that spark in your center and fan it until the real you is on fire. That is about as good as it gets.

A trip to the poor farm

Field trips are for the adventurous -- and sometimes the foolish.

I've been sleeping all my life, so you'd think I'd have it down by now.

I moved into my new apartment with a perfectly good bed, but I have already switched sleeping in the bedroom, now called the office, to the living room.

That meant moving my queen size bed in there and seeing a big huge bed the minute you walked in the door just wasn't right, so I bought a futon couch that turned out to have unnecessary ridges and a hardness factor of ten. I could have bought a bookcase and been almost as comfortable if I'd just laid it sideways on the floor. I got a foam topper, but it didn't help.

I decided I needed a daybed and everything I read said, get a six inch mattress to go with it. I got what I thought was a good one, but after two days I could feel the slats in the daybed.

I began to feel like this was the house that Jack bought. Who bought a bedboard to go with the mattress that sat on the slats that fit in the daybed that I bought. And for over a week I slept like a baby, but now my hip is killing me and I feel like I am sleeping on the board alone (without the mattress, although it is still there. I can see it!)

I ordered a cushy mattress pad, but it isn't even here yet and I can tell I need much more than that. So . . . for the price of two couches, one foam topper, one six inch mattress, one bedboard and one cushy mattress pad I could have purchased one whale of a bed!

The upside is that I know I love my daybed's looks. I know how much trouble I'm willing to go to to make it up every morning and get it ready at night and it will hold a very nice ten inch memory foam state of the art mattress.

Which should get here just before I leave for the poor farm.

Jittery

Too much something's making me jittery.

Lickety splickety jittery.

Like I'm dancing on a wire that vibrating sparks

Sparkely darkely markedly jittery.

Could it be the coffee so dark

Sarkily slarkily cofferly jittery?

Or the text coming in every second I walk

Hoppily moppily sloppily jittery?

Whatever it is I am feeling so jittery

Skittery flittery snittery jittery.

Falling for Fall

I went out to the car a few minutes ago and it feels like Fall might really be here!

I love that crisp, clean feeling.

I even love it when it is damp and chilly.

Fall is my time of year. Time to wear jackets and bundle up in cozy blankets. Time to eat pumpkin everything. Time to be grateful that I am alive and young enough to go walking under leaves of red and gold and even orange.

This is the time of year when eating feels right. Winter is coming after all! We need to bulk up for the long cold dreary days ahead like bears readying themselves for hibernation -- or not.

But anyway I look at it, I seem to find Fall the perfect season. School is in session, the holidays are just kicking off and my birthday is coming up!

Market day

Our society seems to place a lot of emphasis on being sophisticated and cultured, wealthy and upwardly mobile.

Sounds good, but most of that stuff is pretty superficial.

It's also relatively easy to create it as a façade.

We might be better off to look for calm intelligence and patience. Someone who knows how to really listen and hear what people are actually saying.

After that, look for people who follow through. Doing what you say you will do carries a lot of weight in my world. Grabbing hold of the streamers on hot air balloons seems exciting, but who knows where you'll float off to.

All the clever hucksters and snake oil salesmen in the world can sound good when they are in their element spewing off trite, well worn speeches, but once their products have proved to be nothing more than scented Vaseline coating their pockets to catch the gold, people are still dying from the poverty and disease they had in the beginning.

Our world is really not much better off than the villages of old. Main street is just longer and the carnivals are bigger, but the people are still struggling just to get along.

My mother's radio

I just heard a recording of a song from my childhood and I was washed back in time like a salmon swimming upstream.

Warm yellow lamplight pooling around a simpler place and time. A time when I believed the world was happy and safe and flooded with love. A feeling of certainty that someday I would have all these same feelings with a family of my own and life would go on forever, one song at a time.

Which is why music often makes me sad. It evokes feelings that rise up as real now as they were the day I first felt them. It is a time machine like no other, dropping me back into the world of a little girl whose parents loved each other and her so much that they sandwiched her in between their hugs while meatloaf and hot rolls were sitting a yard away. I've never known such complete and perfect love as the way I perceived it then.

My world was small. Our house was smaller, three children in a bedroom so tight that even with all the doors removed, we couldn't walk between the beds without stepping over the ladder of the bunkbed. But we had everything!

A playroom in the basement next to my dad's office. A glassed in porch where I sat on a daybed and watched for the milkman to come with his horse. A dining room where we ate cheese sandwiches with butter and mustard, and spooned up bowls of vegetable soup for lunch.

My own spot in the kitchen where I could actually heat water on a toy electric stove, or iron my father's handkerchiefs with a real miniature iron. Child safety was not what it is today, but I did okay and I learned to cross stitch by the end of that year too. It was probably my first year of truly sentient feelings. Before that I only have puddles of memories.

Here the river begins, accompanied by music from my mother's kitchen radio.

Pity full

I often find myself wondering why people do what they do.

Why do things that make you miserable?

It seems there should be some great answer to that. As if people taking on the sins of the world like a sin eater will make things better for the rest of us. Or by sacrificing their happiness they are helping someone else out. Or something!

What I see is not that.

Most of the time I see a miserable person whose misery hangs over them like a dark cloud causing everyone around them to be, at least, slightly uneasy. Very few people enjoy being the cause of someone's unhappiness and being around someone who is chronically depressed, or sad, or miserable is . . . depressing.

In an ideal world we would just never choose to do things that make us unhappy, but it seems to me that if you are forced to do something you don't want to do then you need to find a way to make it better.

Avoiding the feelings by sleeping, or working over time, or staring at the boob tube won't make anything better. Don't be pitiful. That just makes most people want to avoid you. Be proactive.

Find things to do that are positive. Be creative. Find a purpose aside from being pitiful.

I had a friend who wore forty pound braces on his legs and walked with crutches. He was engaged in all sorts of things and very active in spite of his handicaps. One of his phrases that has always stuck with me was, "Don't be pity full." He was joking, but he was right.

Pandora

Sexual misconduct was so common when I was growing up that I think it was kept quiet because that was the only way you could maintain the illusion that if somebody knew, they would make it right, or stop it, or care about it.

And it was turned on you more often than not with phrases like, look what you were wearing, or look how she walked, or why would she even go there?

Then there were questions. Are you sure you didn't misunderstand? You do realize he has a wife, a reputation, a business, children, right? What do you think people are going to think of you?

Or the implications. You must have wanted it. Did you actually fight? Think of your reputation!

Or worst of all. You do what you have to to succeed at this business. It's part of the game. Everybody knows this is what happens, how badly do you want it?

He's just being cute. He was just teasing. He had to try, at least.

Whatever the reasoning. Whatever the outcome. Whatever the feelings. They were all geared to protect "Him" from the evil Eve, from Pandora, from the witch who would tempt a good man into doing bad things.

The princess and the pea

The princess and the pea story was so much deeper and more complicated than it appeared to an outsider.

The poor princess was only trying to get a good night's sleep, but the whole kingdom seemed to be conspiring against her.

First of all, she was presented with a plethora of tasty treats just before bedtime and having no will power at all, consumed most of them, leaving her stuffed and hot.

Then she heard the weather was going to be nice and cool, so she flung open the castle windows, turned off the fluttering flamingos above her bed and climbed in.

Only to discover that the castle stones were keeping in the heat, the crazy flamingos were chattering away since they had nothing else to do and there was something hard underneath all her mattresses!

After searching through them all she ate the pea she discovered (she was a truly voracious princess) but it turned out that it was the slats in her bed that were keeping her awake. So she had a bed board placed over these, covered it up with ten thousand mattresses and tried again.

And again, and again, and again. . .

A fine line

There is a difference in the way things are valued.

Something that is cherished and looked forward to is a gift no one can deny.

Something presented as an imposition can be exactly the same thing, but dreaded.

I want to be wanted.

I never want to be put up with.

Nobody does.

I think it is better not to have anything to do with someone if you are simply putting up with them, because neither of you will be happy, or comfortable.

Being wanted, on the other hand, is the most glorious feeling in the world.

There is a fine line in between, but one is the road to heaven and the other, well . . . you get the idea.

Better

Famous last words: I think it's finished!

In my life almost nothing is ever truly finished. Unless I am giving it away, or throwing it away, it is always a project in transition.

Creativity, experimentation, growth, dissatisfaction, whatever you want to call the reasoning, I find there is almost always a better way to do something.

It may be better because it feels better, fits better, works better, or looks better, or I just like it better.

But you better bet your money on the fact that it will eventually change if it is around long enough.

All in a days work

You too can put your new daybed together in only seven not so easy steps!

The hardest part? Getting it out of the boxes! They are super heavy and heavily glued, but they do protect it during shipping.

The next hardest part? Trying to follow directions written for myopic chipmunks, using only human eyes.

Only after checking the boxes for parts and throwing them away to make room for spreading out all the pieces, did I discover it said to set the arms on pieces of cardboard in order not to fray them while putting the frame together. (Note: a marble pastry board and silk armchair can replace the cardboard if you are careful.)

Then there is the matter of all the little bolts that need to be put in with a tiny allen wrench. Fifty six of them, some in impossible places to tighten so that by the time you finish (which I have yet to do after eight hours) all the veins in your fingers are broken. (This turns out to be the very hardest part, especially since the hole for one of the big bolts did not line up.)

I have yet to finish screwing in the rest of the bolts or put the slats on. . .

Did I say, all in a day's work? Maybe a week's?