Home alone

I got a lot done today.

I organized my closets, changed the bed, washed the sheets, wallpapered the doll house and put new flooring in it too.

I made a delicious salad for dinner, talked to my son and my daughter and made plans to go to a ballgame on Saturday.

But now it's bedtime. I know it's bedtime. It's the second bedtime since Bestest got on the Cruise Ship and the second night we cannot say goodnight.

I'm like a child whose parents left him home alone.  Kinda lost, but okay I guess.

Happy Birthday Bestest!

Bestest is on a birthday cruise!

Tomorrow he turns forty and he will do it in style with Pinocchio and Micky Mouse and Disney Daiquiris, I'm sure.

He packed his pirate hat and swimsuit and maybe even his tux, because who knows who you might meet on a four day cruise through the Caribbean!

For this one week he is Prince Charming and his royal court is made up of his parents, brothers, and other fond fans who trailed along to bask in his joy.

Of course it is always easy to do that. Bestest is one of the kindest, sweetest, most empathetic people I know and nobody deserves such a wonderful birthday party more!

But I am left deserted because there can be no text messages or emails coming from the ship until he disembarks next Friday.

My father's house

My father's house was never really a place. It was because of my father's loves that we lived in many different places.

The first was practically a mansion with grand rooms, tall ceilings and elegant windows filled with heirloom furniture - because he loved my mother and that's what she wanted.

Then it was a tiny cramped home near the university where he worked, because he loved us and teaching. Our bedroom was so cramped they had to remove the closet doors to get a crib and bunk beds in it and even then the ladder to the bunk bed ended underneath the edge of the crib. But he built us a lovely playhouse in the basement with window seats and priscilla curtains and brought home a pound kitty named Pretty Soon.

We even lived in the Big House with our grandmother while my father traveled through Europe with his father who had planned the trip for his wife who then decided not to go. My father loved his father and I'm sure loved that trip too. I was three, but he called home to talk to me. He was twenty four.

In order to try and pay off overwhelming medical bills for four children, all of whom had serious conditions at one time or another, my father moved us to a rickety rental in a small town near where he taught, but when I began having horrific nightmares where I woke the family up with my screams, he moved us all back to the city. We knew his love for us surpassed his need to pay bills.

My father's house was really a home built around his family and his books. No matter where we lived, we were together and we knew love and security was in his office reading, or grading papers.

Too beautiful

Sometimes I feel like I am just visiting my own apartment and sometimes I am even surprised when I look in the mirror and see me.

Of course I recognize myself and I know this is my place, but there is often a surreal feeling about it all.

Driving down the street today I looked at the trees and the greens were astounding, backed up by a sky so blue and so full of huge fluffy clouds that it could have been a picture drawn by some artistic tween age girl.

I felt like I had stepped onto a movie set for Home Town, USA.

It should be heaven, but underneath it all is a nagging feeling that I am forgetting something, that there is a dark undercurrent here that could drag me back down with no warning at all, or that I have done something wrong that will come back to haunt me as soon as I remember it.

I suspect that is the past and I should bury it deep so I can fully enjoy the present, but there really are things in the past that "haunt" me. Not since I was a child have I felt the security of being in a beautiful place with everyone I love close by. Growing up means losing so many people in so many different ways it almost makes me afraid to love.

Yet . . . how can I not?

Just wondering

Sometimes I wonder at the audacity of man.

If a power so great it can create life from nothing exists, why do we think it is within our realm to understand it?

What if God created a substance guaranteed to grow and evolve and travel through time and space via the big bang, that eventually became us (along with everything else?)? Then we created a little story about gardens and God making little people he magicked into life -- because we are not gods and don't understand a power that great?

Everything we do on this earth is done with things that already exist. We cannot create life without a living donor of some sort.  Everything we make is out of something already here somewhere.

And yet we like to think we've got it all down pat.

Each of us believes our God speaks our language and has our customs and looks like us and does things we consider ethically and morally right, but why should an all powerful entity be enslaved by our ideas, or limited by our understanding?

We want to know things and control things so badly we are willing to make things up, but that doesn't make them true.

Feelings

There are sensory things in my life that really effect the way I feel. I don't understand why, but they just seem to evoke something like a primordial memory, or subconscious comfort that comes out of nowhere.

Usually it is the comfort of moving my fingers or thumbs a certain way. I suppose it is like sucking your thumb, or smoking, or something like that. It comforts and calms me and I can do it whenever I need that.

But another thing showed up yesterday for the first time in ages. I was doing a crossword puzzle and, because they are easy ones, I will make myself do them in different ways. Like from the bottom up, or only one side before the other, but this time I started in the middle. I suddenly looked at the pattern I had finished and felt a great sense of well-being.

I have no idea why such a pattern would make me feel so good. I also have no idea what that pattern was now, but if I did, I would do all my puzzles that way.

The journey

I look around and see that I am standing in a corridor surrounded by all the accoutrements of living. There are wardrobes and chairs and tables of all sorts, some made of white wicker, others of dark walnut. Some stand alone and others are piled in heaps here and there, along with other things like lacy umbrellas and toys for all ages.

I don't have any idea where I came from, nor do I know where I am going, but I know I have no choice.  To stay here is too dangerous and besides, there is really nothing here anymore except the long way ahead.

I push a wheelbarrow filled with things that are important to me, maybe with people that are important to me too. I am walking beside my sister and holding the hand of a small boy, encouraging them to keep moving along with me.

I see so many enticing things along this way that are mine for the taking, but I realize they have no real value anymore. Where would I put them now that we are all moving along this vast corridor that seems to end behind me, but have no end ahead?

A man appears with a weapon before us. He is standing in a place that looks like the windshield and door to a bus and I am afraid he will hurt us with his spear, or electricity, or whatever it is he holds in his hands. I had thought a bus would be an easier way to travel, but now I am sorry. I try to hide us behind a pyramid of junk as a wagon load of people rumbles by. He is distracted by the wagon and we slip around him through the light and continue on.

The space is larger now and I want to stop, to be safe and stay here. There are endearing people here and there and I want to hold them, hug them, let them know how much I love them, but I realize we have to keep moving. No matter how lovely this seems, it is not the place we are headed for and so we continue on. Accompanied by some of those adorable, sweet, innocents who make my heart so full I fear it might burst.

We trudge slowly on, a sort of mass evacuation. Long columns reminiscent of refugees I've seen in movies. I can see a large portal ahead of us. Is there safety there? Can we stop there?

This journey feels unending.

The story of Dodds

Everyone has a story, but not all of them are as compact as Dodds'.

Dodds was born in a very small neat package and promptly put up for adoption by Catholic Social Services, where he was adopted by his somewhat unusual, but always adoring family.

A bright boy who seldom missed anything, he had a reputation for being standoffish, geeky, and very much a loner.

When his parents were divorced, Dodds became even more unique, throwing himself into books and games and tales of The Highlander. He liked to think of himself as a rebel and thus pierced his tongue at the tender age of 18.

His father put his foot down. No son of his was going to live in his house with a pierced tongue, so Dodds decided to get even. He joined the Navy!

And, of course, the first thing the Navy said was, "remove the piercing in your tongue."

Soon Dodds was tired of the Navy. In the past, whenever he tired of anything (and it was quite often) his mother would allow him to quit it. The Navy did not. It seemed it was much easier to get into the Navy than get out of it. So Dodds spent the next 20 years working and learning and prospering under Navy tutelage.

Then one day he retired to work in a place where the following event occurred:

M-This TD/CD thing on the radio is confusing we have to figure something out.
M- You guys even sound the same on the radio.
Dodds- (aloud) Call me Ishmael! (thought runs through his head) oops I probably shouldn't have said that.

A few minutes later on the radio
M-Ishmael do you copy
Dodds- (Eyes rolling,) Thanks Herman Melville and the 6th grade summer reading list.

 And that is the story of Dodds.

To the moon

Yesterday was 49 years to the day that man walked on the moon.

A friend posted that on Facebook and asked where we were when that happened. I remember it so clearly.

I was hanging out with a young farmer who had to wear braces on both legs and use crutches to get around. They were big, heavy metal braces that weighed a ton, but he was burly and strong and not one to let that get in the way.

Like most young men on farms he drove a big pick up truck. I remember his. It was black and white and had his name emblazoned on the door in fancy letters. However, it had one unusual gizmo that other boys didn't have. He had engineered his truck to work by using his hands instead of his feet. I remember it still had pedals, they were just higher up, beside the steering wheel.

On July 20, 1969 I wanted him to teach me how to drive that truck, so we went out in the country and practiced. I remember it didn't take long before I, too, was sailing through those winding little roads having the time of my life.

Then it began to rain.

Then it began to storm!

And finally it was such a deluge that I gave the truck back to him and we drove to a nearby friend's place to wait out the storm. They lived in a little white farm house with a functional front porch and a huge oak tree that shaded the whole front yard. I remember we did not park under that tree and it was a good thing. Within the hour, branches were on the ground, the woman's husband came in to report the bridge across the only passable road was out because of flooding and nobody was going anywhere!

It was actually fun like most adventures are, especially when you are young. We played with their babies, who really were named Adam and Eve, ate dinner at their big kitchen table and then went into the living room to try and watch the men land on the moon!

It was a very old television that depended on an antenna on their roof. The weather was terrible, but suddenly there it was! In grainy black and white, a man wearing a space suit placed an American Flag on the moon and we were watching! I was filled with awe that such a thing was possible.

Even then, at such a young age, I realized what a beautiful contrast that moment in time was when six people brought together because they couldn't get home across the flooded Illinois prairies watched two men who got to the moon in a state of the art rocket ship on an old tube filled black and white television.

Too old

My new apartment has free Internet, but it is only available through a CATV cable in the wall over my kitchen island. I had an old router, but the instructions for it were long gone.

Today I bought a new router and brought this apartment into the 21st. century!

Now my Alexa, Roku, Laptop and TV are all up and running the way I am used to.

I may end up moving the television from the little niche provided for it to the Island in the future, but that just means I will have the fun of rearranging if I want. The Roku is supposed to be wireless, but it works better tethered to the router so I'm using an HDMI cord and wish I'd bought the longer one after spending days finding the shorter one!

I never doubted I could do this if I wanted to, but I am probably inordinately proud of myself for pulling it off. I will never forget my mother-in-law, who was an elementary teacher, not being able to learn how to use the calculator we got her.

I never want to be too old to learn new things.

Balance

One might think that balance was balance. After all it would seem to need a middle ground with everything around it evenly matched.

But like everything else balance is a matter of perspective.

To a zealot it looks right when the font is on BOLD highlighting his views in the only way possible. To him this is a balanced perspective of the very best sort.

To the timid a neatly stacked, somber colored view is the safest one of all.

To the carefree, happy go lucky one, a haphazard, catty whompus, madly disorganized place is perfection.

To the hoarder there is no need for balance, it is all stacked floor to ceiling solid!

To be balanced depends on where you stand. On the straight and narrow, downhill, uphill, or even upside down.

Nothing is ever as simple as it seems to the creative mind.

Just upon a time

It is in the world of my dreams where I am justly terrified of the dragon that swoops in to carry me away that I find the true beauty of his emerald eyes and iridescent scales.

Falcor sits on a solid mirror upon my desk, but you can't fool me. I know that should the need arise, that mirror will coalesce into mercury and out of its depths will rise unbelievable things!

If all the world were bunnies and five petaled daisies the horror would still rise from the dirt around them so their innocence and beauty could rise and shine.

It is the witch that makes Hansel and Gretel a tale to be told. Otherwise it would just be two lousy parents abandoning their children in their time of need. A witch so evil she might eat them up opens the door for the bluebird of happiness, or maybe even Merlin -- or brave little girls who step up to rescue their brothers.

I know that no matter how dark the night is, the sun will eventually come up.

The gift of giving

Anyone who has ever had a child can appreciate the energy and excitement they generate.

The simplest things, like blowing the seeds off a dandelion, can become a celebration that probably rivals ancient civilizations most intricate rituals.

Birthdays and Christmas, even Easter become almost Bacchanalian rites among the younger set as they decorate trees and cakes and cookies and eggs.

But one of the greatest gifts is being the adult who facilitates all these things, because there is nothing quite like soaking up the joy of children who are gleefully involved in something from the tips of their toes to the tops of their heads and from their noses deep into their hearts.

MacGyver

The most dangerous things in my new house are the same things they were in my old one.

Me and my bathrobe!

Not just because when I put my robe on it is so long I can trip over it, but it is so soft and so comfy that if I put it on and sit in my big comfy chair -- I almost instantly fall asleep!

I am a real life MacGyver of the funniest sort.

I use a mirror to restart the garbage disposal. I studied the shower for hours figuring out how to make the water come out of the shower head. I know where to position the floor fan to cool the bedroom and how to make the mirrors on the doors stay put. I have found a way to light up my closets without installing new wiring. My television and DVD player are connected to my computer via HDMI cords because my router doesn't work, but Internet is free. I even worked out a way to make the shower roomier without a bathroom remodel and I have bypassed garbage bags forever!

My life is one big wondrous adventure that only I could ever really appreciate, but that is okay because I live alone and no one else has to love it if they don't want to.

Cozy little storms

I woke up to the first real thunderstorm I've heard in long time.

I don't know if it was the direction I faced in my last apartment, or the fact that there were three stories above me and a balcony between me and the north yard, but I haven't really heard much thunder or rain in the last few years.

This was so cozy.

The rain poured down the windows.

The thunder had a sort of tinny sound I don't remember from before. It was as though someone re-tuned the sky while I was away and instead of bass drums, now we had handpan drums, but I'm sure it's my memory that has been altered and not the atmosphere!

I just lay in bed and enjoyed the whole thing.

It was the best of times

I am feeling uneasy about feeling so good!

Things are working the way they are supposed to.

My creativity is panning out.

The computer is running the television quite efficiently with fewer gizmos to fiddle with.

I don't miss Alexa, or my roku.

My shower curtain gives me more room simply by moving it outward. I don't need a forty dollar curved rod.

We got a great seat at the band concert last night and my Core Life salad was ready and waiting when I went to pick it up.

My garbage can is a small one that I already had and uses plastic grocery bags that I can recycle myself.

When life makes this much sense I worry that I am missing something important.

But so far so good.

Constant

I have been going to municipal band concerts since before I can remember.

They may be the one constant in my life that is still around.

I still like the Sousa marches best, but I do enjoy other things a lot too.

Tonight it was the My Fair Lady Medley.  The first dance I ever went to played those songs and I danced my very first boy girl dance to "On the street where you live." I picked out my last apartment because it had room for "One great big enormous chair!"

I used to go with my grandmother. Now I go with my granddaughter.

But the skies are still starry, the trumpets still clear and crisp, the oboes dulcet and the lightning bugs miraculous.

Breath

The moment I took my first breath I became a living breathing work of art.

The key word being breathing, because it is one thing I have control over.

As an infant I breathed because I could.

I breathe faster when I am stressed out, or in pain and I accept that as part of living.

But what if I control the breathing?

Will it help me to control the feelings?

And so I try.

Breathing in I calm myself.

Breathing out I know everything is okay in this moment.

Life is a series of moments offering me the opportunity to make what I will of them.

The mad woman of yotzonot

If someone gave me a brand new custom designed mansion, professionally decorated, I would love it mostly for the myriad ways I would find to redecorate, rearrange and redo it.

As Bestest pointed out. What I love about my dollhouse are the infinite ways I find to change it.

I have only lived here in my new apartment for three days and I have made major changes each day.

Part of that was just unpacking and making room to move.

Part of it is finding a place to put everything where it is usable.

But the most fun part is finding unique and wonderful ways to use what I have in places that appeal to me. Like where to put my pictures and paintings, or where my bathroom clock should hang, even new places for mirrors.

I love changing things around. My ideal apartment would even have the walls on wheels that could be locked in place, or moved to make different rooms.

I am wildly, madly in love with setting up my new apartment.

What do you get

A little bit of this, a little bit of that . . .

Put up some pictures.

Set out some plants.

Rearrange the furniture.

Put a few things in the refrigerator.

And presto change oh!

You have a home!

Moving day

Today is moving day. I know.

Not because of a calendar, nor because I know what day of the week it is.

I know because a puppy nearly skinned me alive with his excitement last night and my right forearm is bandaged up like a mummy.

I know because I have hives all over my chest and itch like mad.

I know because my face has broken out in a rash that itches too.

I know because I woke up at the crack of dawn to wash the sheets and move things towards the door.

Pray for this mover, now and at the hour my moving begins!

Vampires

I am a vampire.

I feed off the love and light of youth.

Just watch a child discover something new and if you are open, you can feel the excitement and joy and curiosity pour into you.

It is a vicarious way of living that old preschool teachers discovered long ago.

Little humans are born sweet and inquisitive.

We need to find a way to retain that as long as possible.

The world would be better off if everyone fed off that, instead of greed.

Possibilities

Thirty five hours and counting until I move.

I keep finding new things to pack, or get rid of, or clean, which is pretty amazing when you consider I've been doing this for over a month now.

I have been a little apprehensive about the new apartment, but now that I am cramped between the packed and stacked boxes and bags, I am rather more anxious to just get it over with.

I looked at the picture of the new place for the first time in weeks tonight. Funny, how in the beginning I looked several times a day. Usually I would have taken my scaled rooms and placed my scaled furniture in it, but it doesn't seem to fit right, so I'm letting that go for now.

Maybe that will be the really fun part - looking for "new" furniture and not just new arrangements.

I do love reinventing my image of myself.

Embracing differences

I wonder if my wants and desires, problems and pains

are as in incomprehensible to others as some of theirs are to me?

The way people look at the same thing can be amazingly different.

What is freedom to me can be insecurity to someone else.

And what is a gift to someone else, seems like a waste of time and money to me.

I suppose variety keeps the world interesting (as does biting my tongue so I don't say anything untoward to those I find . . . er . . . different.)

Electrifying quantum dreams

I woke up and didn't want to go to school, so I pretended to be sick. As I was going back up the stairs from the bus stop to our house I saw a boy sitting on the steps with a bicycle. I wondered why he had a bicycle since he also had roller skates on his feet, but I just walked by him,

It was the house on Market Street where I lived with my parents until I got married.

My Dad said he needed to go to the drugstore, but I didn't want him to leave me. I tried to convince him I was too sick for him to go, but he got ready to go anyway. He put on roller skates and headed out the front door, past the boy on the steps, past the corner of our street where I had been waiting for the bus and down to a house with a big front porch.

There were lots of people here, most of them wearing roller skates. My Dad went in without removing his skates and I followed, but I wasn't as good at skating as he was and I kept falling behind. I thought maybe it was because I was sick, but I knew something else was wrong. I just couldn't put my finger on it.

We ended up at the back of a big room in the house where there was a table covered in medical supplies, cotton tips, bandages, cotton, tape, mostly things like that. Dad went over to speak to the judge sitting high up behind his desk and suddenly I realized he was in two places at once and he wasn't Dad! He was John, a guy I used to date and he really was in two places at once. It terrified me.

People were roller skating all over and when they went fast enough I thought maybe they could all be in two places at once. I wondered if I could do that too and if I could, which one of me would be the original and what would I be thinking and would I be thinking the same thing in both places? Would I know I was in two places at once? It was so scary.

I fell down and was surprised that it didn't hurt to land on the floor at all. I just got back up and started skating again. Now I couldn't find Dad, or John. I was really alone.

And I woke up.

All alone, but very relieved.

Lost in love

I love creative people.

The people who make things they love.

Because they love making them.

That is truly a healthy hobby.

The purest form of meditation.

Getting so caught up in what you are doing that you lose track of time . . .

You are lost in love.

Is there a better place than that?

Every step

This is my life this week, or most of the time now that I am retired.

Trying to watch what I eat makes eating both a challenge and an extraordinary pleasure. I love food and good food eaten with company or while watching a great movie is even better.

Then there is sleep, or perchance to dream, as they say and boy do I dream! My dreams are vivid and often magnificent like last night where I was a beautifully dressed child at a Victorian party in a fairy tale Victorian mansion, or terrifying like the night before when I thought a six foot snake was trying to get into my bed. I have a whole separate life in my dreams.

And finally walking. I do it because I need to for my health. I do it because it fills time in a healthy way. I do it looking for adventures and I do it for the company of those willing to walk with me. When I walk alone I am conscious of a power greater than me that surrounds me even when I am not aware of it.

Every step in life is important.