Preferences

 

I have pretty consistent choices when it comes to things I find beautiful or attractive, but it makes me wonder how these come to be.

People are influenced by everyone and everything around them, but most people appreciate things that are balanced and even. They find them more attractive than their counterparts.

As small children we usually have a favorite color that matches our mom, or dad, or grandma or some other favorite relative or person in our life.

It is when we grow older and show a preference for a particular color or style that interests me. Not teenagers who are often influenced by peer pressure, but adult minds beginning to form definite personalities.

I know some people choose colors and styles that aid in making money. Dark business suits, goth makeup, black clothing, glitzy revealing outfits, it all depends on what you are willing to wear for the dollars. Need, greed, and insecurity can be powerful influencers.

I want to know what makes me love forest green and cerulean blue and one of my sons love deep dark brown. Is it just that they are primary earth colors, or is there something more to it? 

I find it interesting that many people will claim they have a favorite color, but it does not figure prominently in their lives. It isn't in their home, or clothing or art work.

I think people tend to automatically lean towards their favorite colors when they pick something out for no other reason than they love it. That is how I discovered my favorite colors. I looked around me one day and realized that I had collected things in forest green and cerulean blue over many years. Up until then I was still saying I loved red, which was a color I picked out as a child because my grandmother liked red.

Do you know why your favorite color is what it is?

Succulents

 

It was the house of her dreams, a sweet almost storybook neighborhood with shuttered windows and white painted trim.

The yards were picture perfect and Handy Andy, the man across the street, was out daily manicuring his lawn one blade of grass at a time.

He and his wife were what everyone dreamed of. Elegantly lithe, silvered hair, bright smiling eyes and a manner that drew everyone around them closer.

Over the years she imagined what it must be like to be them. They seemed so happy, so content, so perfectly at ease in their surroundings. So when she retired and they said they needed some help, she signed on.

Just a few days a week to supplement her income and their needs. They had family the rest of the time.

Working for them was what she had always imagined. They became a part of her family. She even called them Grandma and Grandpa. 

Following Grandma into the kitchen and down to do the laundry was rewarding in so many ways. She was always sweet and kind no matter what was going on.

Helping Grandpa in his greenhouse and garden was an exercise in bliss. He taught her the names of each plant and how to care for it.

Everyone and everything seemed to be thriving. Especially Grandma and Grandpa.

She, on the other hand, found herself feeling more and more tired, but still she was drawn to them like months to a flame. She never missed her days with them no matter what. They were her drug of choice. 

Peace, contentment, satisfaction and so much more made her small salary more than worthwhile.

But as the year progressed, she became grayer and tireder. Her energy slipped slowly away until one day Grandma and Grandpa, who looked ten years younger, patted her on the face and said, "Darling, you need to go home and rest. We have a new younger caretaker coming in."

Forlornly peering out her window, she watched the younger woman enter their house, then she turned with her walker and tottered back to her chair.

Occasionally she would glance out the window to see Grandma and Grandpa sailing through their lives, the procession of aging caretakers always starting out right at their elbows and gradually moving farther and farther away until it was time for them, too, to leave, so a new one could take their place.

Disturbing

 

Imagine a child who eats a penny to get even with her mother.

Or thinks it is hilarious to stick gum under a family table,

Or scratches her initials into the finish of a Steinway piano with a safety pin.

Now imagine an adult who is still proud of these things and laughs about them while sharing them.

I find this particularly disturbing.

Priorities of the heart

 

I often get credit for being very well organized, but to me it is just a matter of priorities.

I don't want to miss, or mess up things that are important to me.

I believe that caring and love are best shown in the tiny details of living.

If I am going to do something for someone, I want to do it well.

And there are things that happen every over and over. How can I be surprised that it is time for a birthday, or time to write Christmas cards, or renew the license plate sticker on my car? These things occur like clockwork, every single year.

I don't want more things than I am able to take care of, or want to keep in clean and in working order. Accumulating "Stuff" means nothing to me. My apartment is filled with things I absolutely love and many of them are things I have loved for a very long time. My style, my colors, my choices are not spur of the moment fads.

And so I love my children, my family, my home, and my life. The priorities of my heart compel me to make sure I am worthy of having them. If you don't like raisins, I will never make you cookies with raisins in them. If your favorite color is purple, I won't buy you red clothing. And if you change your mind about something I will respect that and honor it too.

You are important to me.The real me loves the real you.

A brain for granny

 

I think the secret to living is always learning.

As long as you can learn -- you have hope.

So don't base your life on only doing what you know how to do, what you've always done, what comes naturally and easy to you.

Push back at life.

Make some mistakes.

Learn how to cope with things that are difficult for you.

A brain is like a sponge. Don't let it dry out for lack of experience

Learning how to learn is an art and a gift. Babies brains begin downsizing at birth which is why they need the right kind of stimulation from the beginning. 

That doesn't end because you are fifty, or seventy or even a hundred!

Friends vs enablers

 

Friends are a beautiful part of life.

They are there to support us when we are in trouble and join us when we are joyous.

But there is a fine line between friends and enablers and you may not identify it until later in life.

If your friends always pop up to take care of you, paint your house, put together your furniture, fix your plumbing, hem your clothes and loan you money, they may really be enablers.

That's okay until they are not there. If you move, or they die, or they simply go away you are stuck not knowing how to deal with your own life.

A friend would show you how to fix something, or how to hire someone who is reliable to fix it. A friend wants you to be able to survive on your own. A friend teaches you how to use your computer, how to use your phone. They don't just do it for you.

Some women are particularly subject to enablers and then when they are older and slower and on their own, they become lost and depressed. They want someone else to come in and do for them what those friends once did. And they don't understand why that isn't happening.

Stupid

People find humor in the oddest things. Like being clumsy, or being unable to figure something out.

I guess I can see why that might be endearing in a child or animal, but not in a fully functioning adult.

I find it annoying in adults unless they actually need help.

And that is the gist of it. People often pretend to be clumsy or ignorant or even stupid because they get something out of it.

It is the pretension I detest, not the person who is honestly in need of help.

If they simply want attention, there must be a better way. 

We have generations of people who have learned these self effacing habits that do no one any good and actually do a great deal of harm.

They allow people to generalize in ways that keep people from realizing their full potential. The idea that the "little woman can't put things together,'" or that some brains are defective simply because of gender, or any of a million little ways society has of demeaning people.

I do not believe people are incapable. If you approach me, I won't laugh at you, I will work and work with you to find a way you can do almost anything any other human being can do. 

It may be frustrating. It may take a while. It may take a long while, but patience and belief and the fact that I've seen it work makes me persevere.

Odd man in

 

All my life I have been slightly out of step with the rest of the world.

Everyone talks about the early bird getting the worm. The gist of it is that people who get up early are better people. Smarter, harder working, people who deserve the best.

The truth is I can get up as early as I need to. I got up at 4 A.M. when I worked for the Learning Center. I got up early to work several 8 to 5 jobs in my life. Getting up early only requires an alarm clock. And honestly not even that.

But now that I am older and living in a fifty five and over building I am finding that my personal schedule has perks. 

Other people get up early and fight for the washers, race for the dryers, huddle in the elevators and leave the building in tiny mass mobs. 

I, on the other hand, saunter through life here with no barriers at all. 

For once in my life being out of step pays off.

Older woman

 

I remember the way I looked at older people, especially women, when I was a child.

I grew up surrounded by women of all ages, mother, grandmother, aunts, great aunts, and all the ladies in the nursing home my grandmother ran.

I thought they were fascinating, but mostly not well educated. It was the men in my life who were that. I think we are escaping from that one.

I believed older women were quiet, kind, a bit childish, preoccupied with how they and everyone around them looked and mostly resigned.

Resigned to a life I knew I did not want.

I did not want to look like a sweet white haired old lady with children's barrettes in her hair. I did not want to sit and knit or garden or watch soaps all day long. I did not want to get up and go to bed at absurdly early hours. Some of the most beautiful parts of life take place deep in the darkness.

I did not want to pretend I couldn't do things I could, or be things I wasn't.

I was appalled at the way older women were treated less like adults than older men.

I thought all older women loved to cook and bake and sew and I tried to cultivate those things, but I am tired of all of them now. I've done that, been there and now I want good conversation, interesting books, good restaurants, trips to museums and a chance to be artistically creative.

I do not feel the need to go to church, nor do I suffer fools gladly.

I have lived long enough to know most of the ways of the world and I've chosen the ones I like.

Christmas today

In the first month of Christmas my true love gave to me - a six foot fully fake tree!

In the second month of Christmas my true love gave to me - two lacy red hearts and a six foot fully fake tree!

In the third month of Christmas my true love gave to me - three little shamrocks, two lacy red hearts and a six foot fully fake tree!

In the fourth month of Christmas my true love gave to me - four raindrop ornaments, three little shamrocks, two lacy red hearts and a six foot fully fake tree!

In the fifth month of Christmas my true love gave to me - five brand new credit cards, four raindrop ornaments, three little shamrocks, two lacy red hearts and a six foot fully fake tree!

In the sixth month of Christmas my true love gave to me - six long wish lists, five brand new credit cards, four raindrop ornaments, three little shamrocks, two lacy red hearts and a six foot fully fake tree!

In the seventh month of Christmas my true love gave to me - seven friends all talking, six long wish lists, five brand new credit cards, four raindrop ornaments, three little shamrocks, two lacy red hearts and a six foot fully fake tree!

In the eight month of Christmas my true love gave to me - eight mums in waiting, seven friends all talking,  six long wish lists, five brand new credit cards, four raindrop ornaments, three little shamrocks, two lacy red hearts and a six foot fully fake tree!

In the nine month of Christmas my true love gave to me - nine lawyers lying, eight mums in waiting, seven friends all talking, six long wish lists, five brand new credit cards, four raindrop ornaments, three little shamrocks, two lacy red hearts and a six foot fully fake tree!

In the tenth month of Christmas my true love gave to me - ten babies wailing, nine lawyers lying, eight mums in waiting, seven friends all talking, six long wish lists, five brand new credit cards, four raindrop ornaments, three little shamrocks, two lacy red hearts and a six foot fully fake tree!

In the eleventh month of Christmas my true love gave to me - eleven turkeys gobbling, ten babies wailing, nine lawyers lying, eight mums in waiting, seven friends all talking, six long wish lists, five brand new credit cards, four raindrop ornaments, three little shamrocks, two lacy red hearts and a six foot fully fake tree!

In the twelfth month of Christmas my true love gave to me - twelve massive heart attacks, eleven turkeys gobbling, ten babies wailing, nine lawyers lying, eight mums in waiting, seven friends all talking, six long wish lists, five brand new credit cards, four raindrop ornaments, three little shamrocks, two lacy red hearts and a six foot fully fake tree!

Disingenuous artifice

 

Sometimes I am shocked by how someone really annoys me.

I want to be kind, understanding and loving, but there are actions that simply go against the grain of who I am.

Being obsequious is one of those things. I find people who bend over backwards are often thinking more of how they look and feel than what they are actually doing. It is pride not love that pushes them to go overboard helping people.

People who act kind and caring but are really passive-aggressive and afraid to be honest are some of the most vicious people I've ever known. They set people up for failure again and again.

And last but not least are people pleasers, because they will do absolutely anything to make the person they are with happy in a moment even if it violates all the other people they know.

I try to ignore these things, but they are like big bonging bells announcing trouble is on the way.

In the lab of the living

 

I don't know how older people who claim they can't learn new things, survive.

The older I get, the more changes I have to make in my lifestyle.

Everything is always in a state of change.

Where I live.

Who my doctors are.

What and when I eat.

How I'm going to manage grocery shopping or laundry with my feet and energy level.

Cleaning up the ladybugs that find a way to fly in through my air conditioner!

Dealing with one bad reaction after another when I need to start a new medication.

I used to be able to just push on through anything that was difficult, but now pushing injures parts of my body in really painful ways that leave me almost completely debilitated.

Life is one big experiment and I am both scientist and guinea pig.

Contemplation

 

More of life than most of us find it possible to believe has to do with state of mind.

The past three weeks have been hellish for me after a nurse called to tell me why my doctor wanted me to see four specialists. My blood pressure zoomed up twenty or more points and I worried about every little thing I felt. 

After seeing the doctor, who didn't even mention one of the dreaded signs the nurse told me about I discovered they simply want the specialists to have a bottom line to look back on as time goes on.

I do not need surgery and nothing else has really changed.

The past two days has seen my blood pressure droop back down to near perfect readings.  I am still tired all the time and my bones still ache, and the valve in my heart murmurs away, but I am not getting ready for surgery or getting all my affairs in order in contemplation of death.

I am torn between just being kind, or letting the nurse know all the agony she caused me with her random sharing of bad news. She is truly a hazard. Her threats of dire consequences put three weeks of extraordinary stress on my heart. She gave me just enough information to worry me and yet I still had to wait for my appointment to find out all the facts. 

I will let it go. 

That is the secret to aging peacefully I think, letting things go. 

Glimpses of love

 

I live far away from everyone in my immediate family. My children and grandchildren are scattered coast to coast.

We manage to keep in touch, each in our own way.

I talk daily with my youngest son.

I text frequently with my oldest daughter and her two grown daughters.

I am given glimpses of life with my two youngest grandchildren by their father who is definitely a hands on dad.

I love all of these beautiful connections. We stay in each other's lives without infringing. We support each other without any qualms at all. And our love will endure like the wind and water, flowing in and out, around and through eternity.

Cash cow

 

Keeping older people alive is a good business.

It is possible that we need all the tests and medicines and procedures they can dream up and it is possible that they will extend our lives, but to what extent?

When life is a series of medical appointments it becomes quantity versus quality.

Are we the cash cows that keep the doctors, nurses, pharmacists, hospitals and nursing homes in business?

My only power

 

I have so little power in this world.

I cannot change the minds of people who think money is the bottom line because they do not realize how many other precious freedoms and expectations they take for granted.

But I can be a beacon of ethical behavior.

And every tiny light that continues to burn brightly for our country in these dark times is one less bit of darkness fouling the universe.

We cannot allow ourselves to sink into the morass of the millions who are willing to sacrifice so much for so little. 

My only power is my unshakable respectability, my eternal optimism that something better lies beneath all the horror, that the world will find a way back into the light given enough time.

And I will still be there. In the light. Waiting to embrace it.

And so it begins

 

I finally made my first appointment with a doctor in my new town and suddenly I have undergone all kinds of tests and am now making appointments with doctors of nephrology, cardiology, and vascular specialties.

As well as another consultation with my original doctor.

Other than being a little bit tireder than I used to be, I feel fine, but I suppose this comes with old age in our generation.

If they don't kill me, maybe they will make me feel better.

Two whales looking at man

 

Imagine two huge whales floating quietly side by side. Their conversation reverberating through the water around them.

They are discussing humans, those bipedal animals that live on land, but are appearing more and more often in the oceans of the world.

To them we are probably the equivalent of the Tasmanian devil.

We are top carnivores with a huge home range. We are loud and noisy in groups and seem to be fixated on finding and eating the creatures in the water. 

The whales understand many, if not all of our words. We do not speak whale at all. How primitive that must seem to them.

All the different groups of whales have managed to coexist in the oceans for many many years. They appear to have languages, songs, hunting techniques, but do not seem to need to erect shelters, or create weapons. They are not greedy. They do not have banks where they store precious things.

I suspect that life is most precious to them and they have cultivated a form of civilization we cannot comprehend.

Thinking

There are thoughts too awful to think.

I  know that thinking won't make them happen.

But it might encourage them 

And I would never want to do that.

Who I am

 

I live in a ten story building with 13 apartments per floor. I've been here nearly three months now and yesterday, for the first time, I went out and walked around the building. 

There is a lovely little hidden nook with a bench back in the corner and a large patio with a gazebo in the front. Yesterday was the first time I was in either place.

I see people down on the patio, or in the gazebo from my windows. I see them in the elevator and occasionally in the halls. I've been to two community dinners in our big room upstairs by the library and games area. I nod and say hi. We are all cordial, but I really don't know who anyone is yet, except for the maintenance people and a couple people at the other end of my hallway.

Of course I recognize faces I've seen and one woman has always intrigued me. She is tall with long gray hair that ends just at her chin. She is a large square woman who wears no make up and reminds me a lot of Stephanie Cole, a British actress on Waiting for God and Doc Martin.

Today I ran into her for the first time. We were in the laundry room and she recognized me! "You live on two, right?" She asked. "I love your curtains."

Now I have a place. There is the woman with the long haired dachshund, the man who takes care of the library, etc. I am the woman with the curtains!

They really are lovely curtains, a sheer pale green with long green vines that allow the light and the beautiful scenery outside to be seen inside while still giving me privacy.

Breath

I was there when my son took his first breath.

I held my granddaughter in my hands as she took her first breath.

Those are precious, memorable moments I will never forget.

I was there when my friend took her last breath.

In fact, I was the one who gave her the final drops of morphine that helped along the way.

I did not realize it at the time. I was only following Hospice directions by counting her breaths to know when to administer the drops.

Someone's last breath isn't quite as easy to pinpoint as a first one.

My friend took a few shallower breaths and then I waited, but when there were no more I knew I had seen the last.

It is a powerful thing to know the person in front of you has just left this life, At first it feels unreal. I waited for that next breath then I studied her. She really didn't look different at all, but I knew she was gone.

I will never forget those moments sitting next to my friend as she passed through the veil. It was much less chaotic than those babies' first breaths and yet the mystery and the wonder of it will never leave me.

 

The brain

 

When I was a child I wanted to be pretty like my sister. That was her nickname, Pretty. 

She was always the pretty one. I was "the brain."

She was popular and adored by my mother and grandmother who valued pretty above all else. Grandma still simpered and wore matching stiletto heels and purses well into old age. If you were pretty people liked you and it was important to be liked. It was equated with being listened to and valued.

Except the pretty people I know often do not really listen to other people. They just make assumptions based on their own experiences.

Once they dressed their beautiful daughters like dolls, did not really push education, had a hundred excuses for that, and tended to pay less attention to their non-pretty children. Even years later, the grandchildren of the "pretty" child take precedence over their other grandchildren.

Imagine what it must be like to be one of these "pretty" people today when people don't have quite the same values?

Suddenly you find yourself older and in a world where your actions are coming home to haunt you. You become even more desperate to "be liked."  You try harder and harder, but with all the wrong ideas and your world begins to crumple around you.

It's hard to feel compassion for these people, especially if you were not one of the pretty ones, but they need it more than anyone. Imagine living just to be liked.

Fly away home

 

October is now in full swing around Illinois.

There are brown cornfields, orange pumpkins and little red and black ladybugs everywhere.

I walked into my living room yesterday and the walls were alive . . .

With the fluttering of hundreds, maybe thousands of little fluttering ladybugs and big brown stink bugs.

The windows were closed. They seemed to be coming in through my second floor air conditioner and distributing themselves throughout the apartment.

I tried spraying surfaces with bug killer, but it didn't seem to bother them at all. They just spread out, crawling into lampshades and over pillows, clinging to the ceiling and cracks like little red and black bubbles coming out of an ever running bubble machine.

Finally, in spite of the cool air, I turned on the air conditioner and set it low enough so that it would run. That slowed them down enough that I could begin swiftering and vacuuming up bugs, but it didn't end them.

Last night I left a lamp burning in the living room to draw the bugs away from my bedroom and it worked pretty well. This morning there were piles of them all around the floor by the lamp, but there were also some on the ceilings and walls.

I called maintenance and they came to commiserate with me. I really did feel a little better. Misery does love company, but that was all they had for me. It seems when the farmers plow the fields around here it stirs up the ladybugs and people begin scooping them out of their homes until either they go away or a frost comes and kills them.

He made conversation and futile little attempts to repack the insulation inside my air conditioner, then advised me to vacuum and let him know how it worked. He even stopped by later to see how things were going. They are so conscientious around here.

It seems most of the swarm has moved on. I keep my vacuum out to get the last little hangers on, but there have probably only been fifteen or twenty ladybugs today and one stinkbug.

Ladybug, ladybug fly away home . . .

Unkind

 

There are real horror stories all around us that no one wants to admit to seeing.

Imagine the so called sickly child who has emotional asthma. Everyone walks around this child on tiptoe, afraid to upset it. When it does cruel things people make excuses. When it wants attention, it gets sick.

This child is allowed to torment a sibling, chasing it with worms and laughing! Had the sibling chased this same child with a mouse no one would have thought it was funny.

When the father gave up smoking to help the mother quit, this child passed her  mother cigarettes over the back fence and laughed because they were pulling one over on the father! The mother died from heart disease.

When the brother could not trim his toenails, this sibling offered to do it for him, accidentally nipping his toes and laughing, but he ended up losing those toes to infection.

This helpful child is a hazard to everyone, Unvaccinated because the shots supposedly make it sick, it carries the flu germs to the vulnerable people nearby.

Nobody ever confronts this person. Not as a child, nor as an adult. It would be too unkind, so it goes glibly through life not paying attention, not listening, not being careful and never having a clue.

Horror

Tis the season for horror movies, but then, for me, it is always that season. I love horror movies, especially those that include haunted houses, or ghostly abodes of any sort.

I've seen so many horror movies that when I try to find a new one, it is difficult. Partly because I cannot remember the titles of those movies I have already seen and partly because the unfortunate truth is so many are really not memorable at all. 

It makes me wonder what horror is. I am not interested in blood and gore. They may be horrifying, but they are not supernatural. To me horror is something terrifying, but not explainable in any sort of understandable terms.

Time. Whatever it is it seems to be unstoppable. Time passes and things change. Are they changing due to time, or some other unseen force that forces changes? Whatever it is, family albums are shrines to horror, watching faces dehydrate and wrinkle up like apples left too long on a shelf, slowly yielding their life force to some inexorable force they have no control over.

Time and space. Look at the ocean. Given enough time and space creatures grow into immense whales or bizarrely shaped squids.Creatures  who don't evolve on dry land. Imagine the gigantic contorted creatures that may evolve here given enough time and space.

It is horror that fans science as it tries to control the uncontrollable. 

Horror that breeds religion as it tries to explain the unexplainable.

Horror that turns our faces away from the dark in a futile attempt to think light means good, just because we can see it.

Lucky

 

I know he's a good general, but is he lucky?

That quote was from Napoleon Bonaparte, but it has stuck with me ever since I first read it.

I think luck is something you are born with, nor not.

I used to think I made my own luck and to a certain extent that is true. Making good choices and taking advantage of good situations makes luck less necessary.

Still, having those good situations show up requires a certain amount of luck.

I think I was born lucky.

My parents gave me many advantages in life and life, itself, gave me many abilities,  but maybe that is not the blessing it seems like. If the gift table is very large, or the candy bag very deep, then perhaps a child never learns who, or what, they really are. Instead they become a jack of all trades and master of none.

Everything is possible to some extent, but it is in the honing of one particular thing that one gains a mastery that is both satisfying and life sustaining. 

Learning to rely on luck makes life a crap shoot.

Western North Carolina

 

The news is full of Hurricane Melton and the devastation is truly terrible, but what about the people of western North Carolina?

My son has not worked at a paying job since Hurrincae Helene hit. He and his friends have spent twelve and fifteen hour days helping the people in the mountains around them. Yesterday FEMA finally arrived in one of the small towns they were in. It brought water and food, which was nice, but the people of the mountain had already managed to supply some of this for their neighbors, or people would be suffering even more than they are. 

They did finally receive a supply of insulin, which was desperately needed.

The towns and homes of people in western North Carolina are buried under tons of mud. Railroad tracks are washed away. Roads are chasms of empty space. Trees are down, brick walls washed away, bridges gone, everything is contaminated by the mud and water that brought it.

Imagine seeing water twelve feet deep in your downstairs and two hundred pounds of mud in your kitchen island when the water drains away. The woman who lived there was a widow who desperately needed help.

Imagine being 98 years old and hearing the water rush up under your house, then coming up into the living room another three feet! All of her canning jars, which she relies on for food, were covered in mud or washed away.

These are just a few of the stories that are still very real up in the mountains. The people there are used to supporting each other, but watching the dogs sniff through tons of debris looking for bodies is not something you ever get used to.

People are avid watchers when hurricanes are on television, but once those hurricanes pass, it can be weeks, months, years, before life resumes with any quality.

Listening in

 

I just hosted my first party in my new apartment, a birthday party for my sister attended by her son, his wife, and a grandchild. 

I was so excited.

I planned everything out from the seating to where I placed the napkins by the plates.

But I was in agony from my back the entire time and eventually ended up in the bedroom, curled up in a fetal position trying to find some relief.

As I lay there listening to them laugh and talk in my living room I remembered all the similar occasions when I had spent a social occasion curled up on a bed in the other room and I was amazed at how often that has happened to me.

Beginning at age twelve and moving right along through Bridge parties, Christmas parties, my birthday the year my mother died and on and on. Each time some physical difficulty left me on the outside listening in.

I am never asleep, because the pain prevents that, but if I were someone else I might wonder if there wasn't some kind of emotional problem linked to it all. It happens so frequently.

I get excited. I am over the moon happy. I am prepared to the nth degree. I am there when it starts.

And then some part of my body fails me and I end up in the other room listening to everyone else enjoy themselves.

Peace keepers

 

Women in my generation were encouraged to be chameleons.

I cannot tell you how many times what I wanted to do was countered with, "but a woman needs to be able to follow her husband's career."

Some women outgrew this upbringing. Others did not.

After so many years trying to please everyone some women honestly do not know where they want to go eat, or what they want to see on their vacations. 

I know women who are so bent on pleasing everyone that they cannot even train their dog for fear of making it unhappy.

They honestly believe this is the way it should be. They think they should be the yes men and keep the peace no matter how much havoc it wreaks in the lives of their children or the world. They never see how much damage it does.

It may not matter where you go to eat, but it does matter how you think.

Home again

 

Hurricanes in landlocked Western North Carolina, who'd have thought that could be such a big deal?

My son has lived in western North Carolina for many years. He used to have a house high up on a ridge that was safe, but the rest of the town is in a valley and all the water runs off the mountain, flooding it regularly.

This time he was with friends during the worst of the storm. They had no electricity, except for generators and those didn't run the water pump, so they put out five gallon buckets to catch the rain for flushing toilets. Those buckets filled right up!

Afterwards he and friends went down into the town to help remove trees and see what else they could do. The town had water up to the drive through windows in local businesses and one place they had bailed out a few years ago completely collapsed this time.

The second night he spent helping other friends and they had a sort of hurricane cook out, but the next morning he made his way to his present home higher up in the mountains. There was still no power and no cell phone service, so no internet either, but the only real danger were the washed out bridges and roads.

Little did he realize that his biggest problem would be a lack of gas! As of this afternoon there was still no place he could buy gas, so he is stuck at home not working. He has power and cell and internet. He knows where the safe roads are.

He just doesn't have enough gas to go anywhere and get back home again. Sometimes it's easy to forget how reliant we are on all these different conveniences that seem so ordinary on a regular day.