cynce&noncynce

SS topic for Easter weekend '11----"Shine"

2011-04-24T14:56:00.000-07:00

Absolutely appropriate for Easter weekend: SHINE. Dazzling sunshine and spring flowers, bright colored Easter eggs & baskets & children's clothing and ladies' shoes. Easter's image and stereotype are wonderfully and remarkably bright with new spring shininess. And today is indeed a beautiful shiny Easter!!

But now I make my home in Wilkes County, NC, home of Junior Johnson. Now when one says "shine" to me, I must consider the other meaning, the one implicit in the history of my new home county, where "shine" is just as likely to refer to the liquid product, white in color, and also called "white lightning" or "moonSHINE." Wilkes county, where our step up in culture is defined by our annual "Shine to Wine" festival, announcing and exposing our new productivity in wineries. You ought to come visit in May.

Delicious for Sunday Scribblings

2009-12-31T07:04:00.000-08:00

Holiday celebrations and meals: Delicious--yes, indeed!! I would really say "yummy" and "fattening". From sweet potatoes with marshmallows or just 3 kinds of meat and dressing with gravy to multiple desserts, it all adds those pounds I have fought (pretty successfully with the fifteen+ year help of Weight Watchers)to keep off. Delicious--that is what I would like to call the quality time with family and friends--yes, usually over food--that also, if you are fortunate, comes with the holidays.

Hope you all had a peaceful, joyful, meaningful Christmas. Now please have a safe and happy New Years celebration. And may we all be blessed with a new year that is healthy and happy and prosperous.

Where in the World SS #173

2009-07-26T20:52:00.000-07:00

Somewhere beautiful;
Somewhere serene;
Somewhere to age gracefully,
but energetically,
having adventures
with my love.

Somewhere with 4 equal seasons
with spectacular colors in spring and fall;
A place with a little bit of HOT
and a little more COLD;
but mostly just perfectly comfortable.
A place with fabulous mountains on the horizon,
where a vast variety of trees are found,
where deer and birds
and other wild life abound;
where hiking and biking are inviting.

A small town where everyone speaks
and waves to everyone else;
where people work together
on projects and on fun;
where anyone you ask for help is
willing and eager to do so;
and where all work together
to meet community needs;
where treasures are discovered in
everyday people and buildings;
and where history is alive and new.

A place with rivers and greenways,
with live entertainment free
in downtown streets and little restaurants.
A place with music and theater
but also churches and picnics and camping
and boating and swimming;
Where even new neighbors are invited to the
Memorial Day cookout...

Where in the world???
Our little town!!

And we love it!!!!!

The Plan--what plan? me--plan? SS #172

2009-07-18T06:21:00.000-07:00

I do make plans, often plans in great detail, but they are usually short range plans--decorating the bedroom, remodeling the kitchen, taking a trip to Pennsylvania or California, or even making sure that JR and I actually make the return trip to Europe that he promised to join me in taking. However, I don't think I actually make major long-range, capital "P" plans. I have general goals-sure; but basically, on the grand scale, I think I sort of just let my life evolve. I think I just figure that God has the grand Plan for me and He will show it to me in His good time.

I always knew I would go to college, get married, have a family,... I knew that at some point in my life I definitely wanted to travel in Europe, because Mom did with one of her sisters and she had such great fun stories of her trip. I really didn't have an occupational plan, because Mom was always a stay-at-home mother. I know she worked before we kids were born, but I never saw her go off to work. So, until JR & I met and fell in love at the university and he said, in my junior year, "Do you realize if you get out of here with a degree in literature, you will be an 'educated unemployable'?" I had never really thought about having an on-going occupation to help support a family. Silly me! Silly, short-sighted me!!

It was actually JR's suggestion that I get certified to teach. I had certainly played around mentally with the idea of teaching, was even in FTA (Future Teachers)club in high school. I loved school and most of my teachers and leadership and entertaining from a "stage", but I always talked myself out of any such serious plan because I knew I would hate the perpetual paper work. But by the end of college it sounded like a good plan and I embraced it.

Wow, was it a smart plan. When I did my intern teaching, I realized I really loved it! So that became my plan for the next 37 years. I did take half year segments off here and there--when they sent JR to war and later, after he returned safely, to have our daughter. Even eventually getting my Master's degree, which really did help shape my continuing career in education, was not a pre-made plan. One of the local private universities offered teachers a really good deal, to boost their own enrollment, and help us get advanced degrees without taking time off from actually working our day jobs. Several of my friends were doing it and, at that time, it was the only way to get a significant increase in salary in a short time; and we surely needed to get a significant pay increase. So I did it, and it opened new career doors for me that I hadn't even imagined much less planned. When I took the first administrative position that the new degree qualified me for, it was just a deal I made with a new principal so I could move to a school closer to home and still be teaching some of the "gifted" classes that I so enjoyed. If he would let me teach a couple of those classes, I would be his department head for language and arts to replace the lady who went to the "new" school.

I do believe in commitment! I stick with things. Is that plan or personality/ character? JR & I will have 40 years married at the end of this summer and I gave teaching 35 full years before I retired. Commitment is an important part of any Plan to me.

My "Plan"---if indeed I have one, I must believe is summed up in part of one of my daily prayers---originally created but from unoriginal, borrowed snippets from several sources: "Lord, make me an instrument of Thy will and Thy ways. Let my thoughts, words, and actions be governed according to Thy teachings. May Thy Love and Faith show forth in my life. And, please help me each day to become more and more nearly the kind of person You would like me to be."

It has been a good plan for me. I guess it is not a true Plan as many people would conceptualize one. Yet, it has stood me in good stead for many years. At this point in my life, I think I shall just stick with it.

Musings on Indulgence SS# 171

2009-07-12T15:29:00.000-07:00

Indulgence---good? or bad? It is sometimes one, sometimes the other.

I would think its common connotation is negative. I was musing about it as I drove to church this morning trying to really decide which I felt it usually was. My best quick definition was that indulgence is allowing ourselves or someone else to {revel in, over partake of, spoil themselves with} something that probably isn't really good or healthy for them. As in: "indulge my craving for chocolate, ice cream, cookies, cheese, wine..." what have you. Or "one who is an indulgent parent frequently has spoiled or undisciplined children."

About that time, I realized there was another driver driving right up behind my rear bumper, but I was going the limit and as fast as I was comfortable going. Just then the pavement widened to 2 lanes going my way and I pulled my car clearly into the right lane and muttered "Indulge yourself, better you get the ticket than me." That also seems to endorse negativity.

There has been much speculation about whether or not the "Boomers" were over indulged by our parents who lived through the Great Depression and wanted their children to have better, with the result that things came too easily and abundance came to be expected and this being the example which was set for us, we followed and amplified it for our own children, to the end that the marvelous WWII work ethic has been replaced by the "it's not my fault," "that is not my responsibility" mentality.
Now indulgence seems to have become the "norm" and it has led to all too many obese children and bored, apathetic teens and young adults who believe that the world owes them a living with all the nice acuetrements.

I am not saying I am right. These are just the musings of an old mind playing with the word indulge/indulgent.....

But on the other side I would make a distinction between indulgence and "lovely indulgence" which is a phrase that reminds me of my precious mother. Lovely indulgences would be such as wandering in a lush colorful garden in early morning in the springtime with multi-colored flowers as far as the eye can see, walking into the refrigerator in the back of a flower store to revel in the aroma of all the wonderful fresh cut flowers, or lying on one's back in the grass looking at a blue sky full of billowy white clouds and trying to decide what the shapes make you think of...

Small town Reverie

2009-07-06T19:56:00.000-07:00

Ah, the happiness of simplicity, the simplicity of a small town! We've been watching old episodes of "Twilight Zone" this evening and perhaps they have influenced my perception a bit, tho I think not, just my musing philosophical attitude toward the delightful aspects of this evening's activities. But JR and I just felt such simple, childlike delight in tonight's unplanned, serendipitous activities.

This July 3rd Friday evening, we set out to try a small family restaurant in our new small town. We had a tasty Italian meal that completely filled us, then instead of climbing back into the car, we gave in to an urge to take a short walk across a nearby pasture, following a dirt road toward an old wooden gate. We crossed a small creek into another empty pasture before turning back. The 88 degree day had cooled to 68, and our long sleeved shirts felt good as we walked along the creek. As we started back toward the parking lot, we were amused to watch some members of a large family group who had also been eating in the restaurant, playing chase or tag, simply frolicking with one another in the half empty parking lot, burning off excess energy in the last of the daylight, while others of the adults finished some friendly conversation. How charming and foreign this seemed to us metropolitan transplants.

Not wanting to go home yet on such a lovely evening, we drove into the small downtown area seeking unfamiliar landmarks which were part of the directions I had been given by someone at the chamber of commerce indicating where the fireworks would be held tomorrow night. Unable to locate them, we ended up asking a local policeman sitting in his car in a small shopping parking lot. From his directions, we identified the park where tomorrow's fireworks would take place. We just rambled around exploring until dusk passed into darkness, then headed in the direction of home via the grocery store to purchase the hamburger meat we had promised to bring to the family cookout. In the store, JR discovered some new Starbuck's ice creams "on sale" so we picked up a couple of those to take home and try.

Returning to our vehicle, still in the parking lot, we could hear and see fireworks going off, nearby, between where we were and our neighborhood, on our way home. Right along the main route through town, right near the Harley Davidson shop and a used car dealership, there was the obligatory fire truck and lots of cars!! We might not have heard anything about these fireworks but lots of people had! Some people even had lawn chairs. But most had just pulled their cars off the road, on both sides of the road, into the available parking lots---of closed-for- the-evening businesses, of abandoned businesses, even in among the used cars for sale. Some people were sitting on the ground, others on the hoods of their cars, others were standing around, but most were simply sitting in their cars, with the windows open, just enjoying the show.

We pulled our little pick-up off the road into the car lot driveway, rolled down the windows, and parked, with all the others. The show was colorful and fast paced. Because it seemed appropriate to the whole "back to childhood" experience, I suggested we try the new ice cream. So after some digging around, I located the plastic spoon JR keeps in the pocket of the car door and wiped it clean with a napkin also kept there. Then, we two 60 year olds climbed up on top of the truck bed cover and watched the fireworks while eating yummy ice cream from the carton with a shared plastic spoon, while we giggled delightedly. "Sippin' cider through a straw.." updated to 2009.

We love our retired life in our small mountain town.

2009-06-23T07:46:00.000-07:00

This is sort of a test blog. I haven't written in so long (more than a year, maybe 2) because I could not get onto my own blog and after moving and changing internet providers it became really impossible. Now, thanks to one of my precious "spare" daughters, I am hopefully back in. Hello again, cyber world. Thank you, thank you TRC.

I Carry #85 Sunday Scribblings

2007-11-19T19:25:00.001-08:00

What do I carry??? Too much, always too much. Whether we are talking about the contents of my purse or what I pack for a 5 day short trip. I seem to try to carry the necessaries for any eventuality. Invariably, when I "pack light," I get there and find myself needing something I thought about bringing and decided against. I pack my purse to the point that sometimes even when I know, "I know I have one of those somewhere in here, I remember seeing it the other day," I cannot find that thing that I need "right this minute."

Purse stuff: regular, necessary things--- keys, money, check book (including address labels and church pledge envelopes), credit cards, gift cards, driver's license, auto insurance cards (one for each car) plus health insurance card, membership cards (Love Your Body, Sam's Club, library card, consignment shop member number cards), lipstick and chapstick, and daily appointment calendar; then there are eye things---contact lens case and fluids, reading glasses, sunglasses and occasionally lense cleaning spray or tissues; hygiene things---dental floss, travel toothbrush, mouth freshener mints, strips or spray; medicine things---headache meds for various types of headaches, a decongestant or two (just in case), a couple of herbal appetite suppressants, starch blockers, & grapefruit extract tabs; then there are the extraneous extras---money off coupons, shopping list, notes on what I need to do or something someone told me that I want to remember. Now I want to put this all in a purse that is not big enough to cause back pain and small enough to bit inside a filled file cabinet drawer or under the car seat.

I have a theory that we who are packrats in the stuff of our life may also be excessive carriers in other areas as well: memories, responsibility, guilt,....
That is basically another blog.

Hospital Horror

2007-10-28T10:52:00.000-07:00

Editorial note: Today is 11/19/07. I started this story weeks ago as a follow up to the Sunday Scribblings post at the end of October. I have had neither the time nor the inspiration to finish it yet. But I really did want to link to to my initial post on Hospitals.

"That was really fun!" Jill commented as the 3 of them piled into the car at the end of the evening. "I knew we'd enjoy line dancing, but for a grown-up church social, it was better than I'd expected."

"I don't share quite your enthusiasm," Jim said, as he helped Jill's friend Suzanne into the back seat. "But I did have a better time than I expected to."

"Suze, it was a great suggestion. Thanks for including us. Hey, guys," Jill pursued, " since we have been grazing on that great food spread all evening, we don' t need to feed ourselves before we head home. Does anyone mind if we run past the hospital and see Gram? I saw her this afternoon and I told her what we had planned for this evening. But since the hospital is actually between here and home, I told her we might come by and run in for a few minutes on our way home."

"Of course, Jill, no problem," Jim replied. "Suzanne, any reason you need to get right back to your place?"

"No, none at all. In fact, I would enjoy seeing Jill's grandmother; it's been several weeks since I saw her last. What did you say she is in the hospital for this time?"

"It's even hard for me to keep up," Jill responded. "She just keeps having the same problems over and over. I think it is a bladder infection that hasn't cleared up and they are worried about pneumonia too. The nursing home was concerned enough to send her over to the emergency room and she was in a room down there for a bit over 24 hours while they tried to find her a room. They are trying to put her in a private room. I keep having that problem. As soon as they find out how good her insurance coverage is they go for the private room. I told them specifically I wanted her in semi-private---she enjoys the company and I feel better when I know there is someone else who might push the call button if she were in distress. She hates to impose or to bother anyone and I don't believe she would actually push the call button for herself."

In less than 5 minutes Jim pulled the car into the parking garage, and the 3 of them got out of the car.

"Here, there's someone smoking outside this door," Jill said, "we can go in here instead of going all the way around to the night entrance. I can hardly believe how well I have learned my way around this place in the last couple of years."

Once they reached the floor, they lowered their voices slightly, but were still laughing and chattering about what a nice evening they'd had. "Gram's room is down on this corner. If she's already asleep I'll just give her a kiss and we can go on and get you home, Suze," Jill said as she hurried ahead to the open door.

The next thing Jim and Suzanne heard sent them forward at a dead run, followed closely by at least 2 nurses. Jill had let out a long and piercing scream. The first thing she saw as she entered the room was her little, 87 year old grandmother flat on her face on the floor, unconscious, in a pool of blood from a sizable gash on her forehead. The fact that the blood had begun to coagulate indicated she had been lying there awhile. Her feet were tangled in the tubing from her catheter which had been clipped to her bed sheets. Probably, unaware of the severity of her weakness, possibly unaware of her being in the hospital, she had attempted to go to the bathroom. The nurse who was supposed to be responsible for that room was not even on the floor, and apparently had not bothered to pull up the restraining rail on the bed.

Jim hurried over to wrap his arms around his trembling wife; and Suzanne, along with the nurses, hurried to see to the crumpled, unconscious figure on the floor. Fear and unimaginable fury were Jill's strongest emotions and she continued to shake with both. The nurse giving the best of her attention to Jill as she made excuses, instead of seeing to Gram, was the most infuriating of all.

Gram was breathing and the opening in her head had staunched itself and was no longer bleeding. Suddenly the corner "private" room was an absolute flurry of activity as they got a stretcher and attendants to pick up her frail little body and put it back on the hospital bed. Of course, they were now going to have to take her down emergency to do a CT scan to assess what damage the fall had done and to stitch up the head wound.

Thus the pleasant Saturday evening was catapulted into the horror of 5 hours sitting in the emergency room waiting to see the results of a new battery of MRI and other tests which should never have been needed. The gash on Gram's head required 14 stitches on the outside, in addition to a set of Jill-was-never-told-how-many on the inside.

As I said in the initally posted part of the blog, this is absolutely a true incident and I am not quite sure how to end it in the story form I have begun. The only fiction is that this was my mother, not my grandmother. She pretty much recovered, altho I will never know how much less she was after it happened than if it never had. I began investigating omsbudsman aid and legislation and other elder abuse/ malpractice options I might have had, but before I could get very far with that (doing it as and addendum to my already busy life and at end of the year holiday time), my dad had a masssive stroke and nine days later died. By the time I finished taking care of his funeral, insurance, etc. and being exectuor of his will, I no longer had the energy or the fight left in me to pursue righting the wrongs that had been done to Mother. By the time I might have restarted those engines, details had been forgotten, witnesses lost track of, and documentation misplaced. Ah, so it goes. But you may see why hospitals do not hold a very bright spot in my memories.

Hospital --- prewrite

2007-10-27T20:15:00.000-07:00

I have spent enough time in hospitals to tell some stories.

My most recent 2 experiences have been fairly positive. A friend, a retired nurse, went into the hospital short of breath and 4 days later, after a simple but unlikely set of test results she had open heart surgery and a double bypass. Everyone knew and loved her and she got excellent care, everything went very well, and she was out to rehab in 4 days and out of rehab to go home in 5 more. My other most recent experience in a hospital was even more positive: one of my two "extra" daughters went into the hospital a week earlier than her scheduled C-section date and had a beautiful, healthy, perfect baby boy. Because it all happened so quickly, I wasn't present when she delivered, but got to hold the baby before he was 24 hours old.

I also have numerous horror stories of experiences with my mother and dad, who were much older than my retired friend, were not known or important to the hospital staff, and who, through ill health in Mother's case and dementia in Daddy's, were not able to speak for themselves or stand up for themselves.

These stories would be easier to do as fiction probably because they are so personal to me and quite painful to remember. But now that I have said that they are really true, I am not sure what the sense would be, or even that I can do that. Perhaps I will try later.

But let me say as a caution to all: if you have a loved one hospitalized who is not able to speak up for him or her self, to ask needed questions and understand not only the answers but the ramifications of those answers, and to insist on receiving the help he/she needs, be sure someone who can and will act as that person's advocate is present with them in the hospital as much of the time as possible. Most nurses and hospital attendants are good people with caring hearts, but they are---almost to a person---desperately overworked and over extended. And altho they care generally, they do not love that possibly crabby, uncooperative, or just helpless person as you do.

My Primary Edict SS# 81

2007-10-21T14:48:00.000-07:00

If I were suddenly made the supreme ruler of this world and could really expect that all people would follow the policy or policies I set down, I cannot think of a better first edict than one saying that all people, the world over, should follow the "Golden Rule." If we all gave that idea: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" some serious and contemplative thought, then made our very very best effort to do exactly that, what a truly improved world this would be.

Each person: "This is what I want or wish. But wait, how would I feel if someone else imposed this condition on me."

Reactions or response choices:

"I can live with that. I think anyone could and we'd all be happier or at least just as happy." -OK

or

"What the.....? Whose lame-brained notion was this mess??" --No!

That is pretty much my response to this prompt; and I see my answer is not what I would consider "light." But it is really quite a thoughtful and heavy question. There are lots of changes I would like to see made----no more abuse of any kind or crime or murder or prejudice; freedom of religion for everyone, with no imposing one's views on others; no more hatred or war. Then there are lighter changes I'd also like to see---no more reality TV or stupidity and ignorance used to entertain; eliminate exploitation of sex in ways that cheapen and devalue it---oops, I am back into serious, aren't I?? Even though I have now given it quite a bit of thought and have read a lot of other people's responses, I don't think I would change my initial response. I think the Golden Rule, respected and followed by all people, would go a long way to solving most of the world's problems.

JOBS SS# 80

2007-10-12T06:37:00.000-07:00

First job, Worst job, Dream job.....now here is a prompt I think I can get into.

My very first job lasted only about 3 to 5 days, through no fault of mine. I was a junior in high school, just turned 16, and I got a job at JC Penney's in the small town I grew up in, wrapping Christmas presents. We lived far enough out in the country that I had to have a driver's license to be able to take a job, because it just was not feasible for someone to have to drive me in to work and pick me up afterwards. As it was, Mom would be without her car however long I was at work. I loved the job!! I love Christmas time anyway; and in a small town, Christmas wrapping in one of the town's 2 major department stores put me right in the middle of the music and color and bustle and smiles. I will never forget that. It was the only time I ever held a real job during high school and as I look back now as a retiree, those were my first social security hours.

My next real job was about three and a half years later. I was lucky. To my parents, who both had college degrees (Dad had a PhD), it was a given that my brother and I would both go to college. In order that we do the best we could, we would not have to work our way through, as they both had. So my next job was in the summer, between my sophomore and junior years at the university. This one was supposed to be the "dream job," I believe, but it certainly did not turn out that way.

The parents of the girl who was my best friend through all of junior and senior high school owned and ran a motel. Thus they had a number of friends with a like occupation. One of those couples, who also had a son Hank that was in Candy's and my graduating class, had moved the the east coast of Florida and was managing a motel right on the beach. They said she and I could come and live in one of their kitchenette units rent free for the summer and get jobs there to earn spending money and some for the next year in college. We made big plans during Christmas vacation. Since we were attending different colleges, it was an even more exciting prospect that we might spend the kind of "together time" that we had during high school. Well, you know what they say about "the best laid plans..." In April that year I came home one weekend to be her maid-of-honor in a very hasty wedding; and to all intents and purposes, our big plans were history.

However, come summer, everyone involved wanted me to go ahead with the plans. I had no car, nor were there any plans for me to have one until I completed my degree, had a job, and could afford to get one for myself. Also it meant that although I would be near a family who were friends of Candy's parents and also near a guy my age who was sort of a friend---we had been in several classes together, I would be essentially living alone, finding work, then getting myself back and forth to work on whatever public transportation was available--not a lot, let me tell you, at the end of the 60's in a Florida beach town. I was nervous but willing to give it a try. It would be stupid to give up the dream opportunity of living at the beach alone all summer long and working, my first real opportunity to be an adult.

I learned a lot that summer. I never really thought of applying the label "coming of age" to it, but in a literary sense, that is surely what it was. I was sooo small town and naive and so innocent. Ah, but I stray from the job.

There was NO work on the beach side. I borrowed a car (stick shift, which I couldn't drive---but God bless those old Volkswagon Beetles, I drove all day without serious problems but never found first gear til evening when I was returning the car) from a newly wed cousin who happened to be living in the general area, so that I could go make inquiries and put in applications. The only place that offered any hope at all was a huge new Montgomery Ward store that had not yet opened. They weren't quite ready to open yet, which gave me some extra beach days. They did plan to train us all and the training days would be paid. But it was nearly 9 miles to work and I could not keeping using my cousin's car, as she worked too. As it turned out, Hank found the new Wards to be his best option as well, and he had a car. But he was hired to work at their warehouse which was 2 miles away from the store and his work hours were different, much more regular than mine, usually 8:30 to 5:30. The way we finally worked it out was he would drop me at the store on his way to the warehouse and I would spend my first 2 hours in the store coffee shop reading and drinking coffee. I'd start work at 10 am and often work til 2 or 3 pm then be taken off the clock and be expected to be back at 6 pm to work the 6 to closing (9pm) hours. Having no transportation, I would eat some lunch back in their coffee shop then go to the ladies restroom, where there was a couch, and read. On the up side, I read all of Gone With the Wind that summer, with the great comprehension one can achieve by going back and rereading anything forgotten or confusing. When my work day finally ended, Hank would drive back over and pick me up. Obviously, I was no longer getting any beach time and it cut into Hank's evening on a regular basis too. Fortunately neither of us was of the "party animal" mold. But still I felt guilty for being this sister entity he had neither asked for or counted on. Eventually one of the men at work took pity on me and asked if I would like to come and live with his family. I was crazy about his wife, who was only 6 or 7 years older than I, and their 2 adorable children, so it seemed perfect. I did some free babysitting in exchange for bed and breakfast and a ride back and forth to work which didn't put anybody out.

I had a lot of weird life experiences that summer, including my first marriage proposal by a guy I really didn't even know or like that well; he was an unbelievable control freak and decided that was his best chance to tell me what I could and couldn't do. I think getting away from him altogether (by leaving the beach area) was another reason I so quickly accepted the offer to move in with the Johnson family.
Anyway, that job surely was not the dream job; but it wasn't the worst job either.

My "worst job" was not really what most people would consider a terrible job, but I hated it. It also was a "summer job" (tho it did not start out to be) and that was how I was rescued from it. As soon as the time came close for schools to open in the fall, I told my boss that I really missed teaching and needed to keep my hand in at it since it was what I expected to go back to when my husband returned from Vietnam. So what was the problem with this job??? Mostly I was just bored to tears. I got to read a lot on this job too, on the clock; but I felt tied to the 8 by 10 office and my desk. I was the only secretary in a very tiny office in either the days before standard answering machines; or maybe it was just that he wanted all his clients to receive the personal touch. But to tell the truth, there were just not that many people calling. The boss was gorgeous, well known, and wealthy but thought he was "God's gift to women." Mind you, he was married; his wife and children, and he, when he bothered, went to my parents' church, and were active and well liked. But he thought his young secretary needed some "extra nurturing" while her husband was serving so far away. Because of the church connection, as well as who his family was, I did not want to make an ugly scene out of the whole thing. But I must admit, I was NEVER so happy to leave a job and "shake the dust off my feet."

Fortunately, the teaching---yes I did go back to it--- was fulfilling and made me happy. It is hard to call most teaching positions "a dream job." But if satisfaction is what it is all about, and I believe that is the ultimate goal, then I spent 35 years lucky.

Sinking feeling SS# 74

2007-08-24T19:48:00.000-07:00

I get that sinking feeling.....

....when the phone rings as I am running out the door nearly late

... when the door swings closed behind me and I don't know where my keys are

....when I realize I am not going to cook what I had planned for tonight because one of the crucial ingredients has gone bad in the crisper drawer

....when I realize how late it has gotten and now I can't make that phone call I really needed to make tonight

The light and the heat of the day
Are finally draining from the sky.
I've slowed down enough to unwind
Whether I was ready to or not.
I find myself intermittantly
Struggling to reopen my eyes.
Next I notice
I've read the same 2 sentences
More times than I can count, and
I have NO idea what they say.

I've got that sinking feeling
I am not going to
get this set of papers graded /
finish writing this test
Before I sleep tonight.

Too many projects, too many commitments, too much to do,
Too few hours in every day, simply too little time,
Not enough energy or money or time.

At least hardly any of my sinking feelings are from getting caught doing something I shouldn't;
Because I don't have the time and energy to do all the things I should!!

Wickedly Inundated (SS #69)

2007-07-21T17:08:00.000-07:00

Wow, who knew that living without a kitchen and with only one bathroom, the small one, while the main bath and kitchen are torn out and re done, could take up so much time??????

Do I sound spoiled?? Sounds like I might. Some people only have one bathroom. Some people have none. I shouldn't be complaining. And I am not, exactly; maybe just a little whining. Forgive me. Also, I'm trying to explain my uninspired or non-existent blog contributions lately. Guess I am kind of just journalling (If you are using a noun as a verb do you still follow the double the end consonant before adding -ing rule??) too.

Our house, built in '69 --we've lived here since '80-- has gone woefully short on renovation, updating, etc. except for what was absolutely necessary to keep it going---2 new roofs, new appliances when old ones quit working, new faucets on all sinks--bathroom, kitchen, laundry room--when our hard well-water killed them, a new piece of furniture here and there, including the lavish new white living room set I STUPIDLY bought in '95 or '96, telling myself I was a working grown-up and deserved to have what I wanted, and that my cats were well behaved and could be taught they were to have nothing to do with the new living room furniture. (A close friend, also a cat owner gave me a tee shirt that first Christmas which said "Cats are nature's way of telling you 'Your furniture is too nice'." There's foreshadowing for you.) Foolish me!! Well, that's another story; and even though it was probably the most comfortable couch I have ever sat or laid upon, last September I had the Salvation Army carry it away.

Now that we're retired and playing with the idea of moving, closer to family or just farther from the traffic and the Madding Crowds, it has become pretty much a necessity to modernize the kitchen and bath if we want the house to be at all saleable in the present market. To this end, our contractor and his team have GUTTED---yes, tub, tile, sinks, wall, paper, and in the bathroom the floor surface as well---both the kitchen and the primary bathroom. I have a refrigerator in the old dining area; but the microwave and coffee maker are on the porch. We have even had to remove almost everything but the washer and dryer themselves from the laundry room, so they can remove an old free standing shower stall which has never really worked, and replace the laundry room sink and counter top, which were apparently cheap, and a bit abused even before we moved in.

I have been quite excited about it. It is even motivating me to do more throwing away and general cleaning. But poor JR has been more than a little overwhelmed by it all, starting with the cost and including but not limited to the confusion and clutter and loss of privacy of it all. But it is TIME CONSUMING!!!!! even tho' the work is being done by others. But wow, the total loss of sinks (water sources, a place to clean up dishes and hands and everything), the loss of lighting and even places to set things down in all those rooms is to a certain extent mind boggling; and altho' I haven't made it to the gym all week, I am spending twice as much time running around in the house, to the back bathroom not only for the toilet but to wash everything.

On the humorous but "poor baby" side of it, the workmen have covered the carpet from the front door to the kitchen flooring and down the hall to the front bathroom with heavy butcher paper taped to the carpet, so no one sneaks up on anyone!!!! and the cats are terrified. Not only are there strange men and voices in the house all day, every day, but when "Mommy" and "Daddy" come down the hall, the noise causes them to flee as from a herd of elephants. And the noise that they themselves make when traversing the hall, even when they tip-toe and move verrry slowly, is horrifying and unacceptable. The little man pretty much just doesn't change ends of the house, and chubby girl, 'tho she seems to be adapting more quickly than he, just doesn't have her normal enthusiasm for helping (encouraging loudly) me as I prepare their breakfast and dinner, in the laundry room instead of the kitchen. She'll just wait in her room for me to bring it, thank you. They are, however, doing better getting along and sharing Mommy and Daddy's room and bed, now that they are forced by their own response to the unpleasant new situation, to share much more limited quarters.

Anyway, I just wanted to log for myself some of our reactions to this new experience, and to explain to any of the kind people who regularly read and comment on my Sunday Scribblings and those whose work I try to follow and respond to why I have been more absent/delinquent than usual.

If I say I have been wickedly busy I might even be able to squeeze this in under this week's topic.

Hair (SS #68)

2007-07-15T15:54:00.000-07:00

Hair. What can I say about hair? I see that lots of people have really gotten into this one, but beyond appreciating my hair, I haven't a lot to say on this subject.

What first comes to mind is the tune and just snatches of the refrain to the title song "Hair" from the the rock opera of the same name. I can remember very little of those lyrics. I never actually saw any version of the play/opera itself, and really don't think I missed much. It wasn't to my taste then or now, but the music stuck around. I actually think the song "Age of Aquarius" was from that same show.

Hair is fun. Mine is thick, straight but with natural body, and easy to work with. I have really been very lucky with it because it is quite managable and I have been able to please myself with it, beyond the necessity of finding someone to give me a good cut, which I can usually make last from 8 to 12 weeks. It is good to feel satisfied with the hair and color I was received by nature and genes. I am glad I have hair. (That sounds a little simple minded, but I mean it---and the contrast is with the brave ladies I refer to later in this post.)

I really have not had very many different hair styles but I have liked and felt comfortable with those I have worn for significant periods of times. One of my good styles is quite short and straight; the other is just a bit longer than shoulder length and quite curly. Both are pretty low maintenance, which is important to me. When I was thinking this all over this weekend I realized---- I had never thought about it before---- ironically, I have only ever owned 2 wigs for a significant length of time and they are in almost the same styles as the 2 actual hair styles I have rotated back and forth between for most of my adult life. Obviously, I wore the wigs during the period I was wearing the opposite hair style.

My color has always pleased me also, altho I must admit I have played with color a bit. My natural hair is a rich dark brown with both golden and red highlights. I probably had more natural gold and wanted more natural red, so when I colored it I went toward auburns; still do, a little, chestnuts and auburns. My most drastic have been deep mahogany and once a near purple; when I was out in the sunlight and wearing purple, JR said my hair matched. That was a bit drastic and I didn't go with that shade again.

I admire greatly the bravery of certain ladies I have known who, when they were losing their hair anyway to breast cancer's poison drugs, have fearlessly, or maybe very fearfully, shaved their heads and gone about their lives beautifully, or at least proudly, bald---proudly because it represented a fight they were giving their all to, against an evil and insidious monster of an opponent. Power to all the ladies, and men, who bravely fight the cancer monster, in spite of its physical ravages!!!!

DON'T FORGET ABOUT "FIRE THE GRID" ON JULY 17th !!!!!!

See my "Secret Hope" post (SS# 65) if you don't know what this means. It was written 6/21.

I also have written a short reminder blog today on my regular blog site.

DON'T FORGET !!!!!!

2007-07-15T15:37:00.000-07:00

THIS IS THE WEEK!! IN FACT, IT IS ONLY 2 DAYS TIL JULY 17, 2007, (that is Tuesday in North and South America and Europe) WHEN AT 11:11 GMT (Greenwich Meridian Time), IT WILL BE TIME FOR AS MANY OF US AS ARE ABLE TO JOIN IN, WHERE EVER WE ARE AT THAT TIME in our own time zone, CREATING POSITIVE ENERGY TO HELP FIRE THE GRID AND HELP RE-SET OUR WORLD ON A POSITIVE TRACK AND PLANE.

If you don't know what I am talking about go to my "Secret Hope (#65)" post for Sunday Scribblings; or you can go directly to the Fire the Grid webpage and understand it all. That is http://www.firethegrid.org/index.htm

What's Your Sign (SS--#66)

2007-07-01T15:20:00.000-07:00

Astrology, horoscopes, zodiac signs. JR thinks all of this is silly. "Of course," he says, "every sign has a broad enough range of characteristics that everyone can find ways he or she is 'just like it says I should be.'" And of course, that is certainly a valid point. However, I have always felt good about being a Sagittarius, the archer, the centaur; a born teacher and traveler, so they say.

I have never been so into astrology that I have had a chart done, nor do I have any idea where my moon or sun is/was, within the sign, or what's "rising." But basically, I have always felt it was pretty plain that I abounded in Sagittarian characteristics. Just to brush up, I have indulged in a good bit of research on the subject (seeking knowledge is also a Sag. characteristic) in the last few days since the prompt was posted.

"Incurable optimist, always looking for the sunny side." Positive, kind hearted, energetic, encouraging, loyal friend.
"Excellent conversationalist, good sense of humor."
"Honest to a fault." Trustworthy and can be counted on to "tell it like it is," sometimes so impulsively that feelings are hurt because the energetic Sagittarius doesn't stop to think before speaking. Speak their minds, sometimes even "painful truths."
An idealist, refusing to be deterred, who "keeps on keeping on."
These phrases from that research describe me well. However, so do the ones that say:
"Sagittarians don't like mundane day to day details"---I read that "housekeeping," I am really not so good at that!!
"The archer may be so forward thinking--read "busy, over scheduled"---they forget the present, and thus may be late or even miss appointments."
"...tend to be impatient." Maybe that is from being over scheduled.
".. tend to procrastinate [maybe that was the line I was standing in twice-- my next paragraph will clarify that] but crisis brings out the best in Sagittarians, who perform best under pressure."

It says we Archers are independent, and I have always felt I am; but it says that independence is such a dominant characteristic that Sagittarians frequently are so driven by the necessity of having freedom that it tends to make them commitment-phobic and may cause them to turn down jobs that would tie them down. This is so opposite of me--38 years with the same man (the love of my life!), more than 30 years teaching English in the same county (tho' I have changed schools, and grade levels), and 27 years in the same house--- I have to wonder what other line I was standing in twice when they were giving out that trait.

Another trait I missed the line for was unemotional. I cry at sad movies and TV shows on a regular basis, also when I hear that an animal or someone (even ones I will never meet) has been mistreated. When I have to put a pet to sleep, even when I know they are ready and their life has lost its quality, I am a basket case. When I am happy, it is a secret from no one, and I truly take delight in simple joys. I am not too good about not showing anger either, but as soon as I spew out that anger, it is OVER, forgiven and on the way to being forgotten. Sagittarius is also supposed to have a tendency to gamble and take risks. JR would love to elaborate on stories about how far in the other direction I go on those.

Now I do have a theory about why I have several very strong tendencies that are so NOT Sagittarian that they are sometimes listed on the NEVER Sag. lists. I feel sure you have heard of "Nature vs Nurture." Both Mother and Dad were Cancer signs. I researched the Crab too. This theory would explain quite a few of my non-Sag traits. "Conservative, highly emotional, nurturing...need roots, resist change to an extent, concern themselves about being secure and safe, protective of those they care about." Apparently growing through all my formative years with the two of them had undue influence on my Sagittarian nature. "Intrigued by objects with history attached---antiques, photos, souvenirs. Love to collect and keep mementos"----ah ha, an explanation for my pack-rat-itus. "Can always talk about any subject with anyone." Looks like I got that one from both nature and nurture, which could be why I have a tee shirt that says, "I'm talking and I can't shut up" and why I chose the phrase that begins my description of myself in the header of my blog.

Secret Hope (#65)

2007-06-21T20:51:00.000-07:00

I have a secret hope, a secret faith that people are basically more good than bad, more humane and loving and generous and cooperative, than self-serving. I believe that in every person there is something good and at least worthy of praise, if not actually loveable---that got me through 35 years of teaching secondary level (7th through 12th grade) public school; and that there are always, in every group, more good people than bad ones. I believe most people want good things to happen for everyone, not just for themselves and others like them. I believe in the power of faith and of people of faith working together.

About 2 weeks ago now, I received an email from a friend that struck me as extremely significant. It was inspiring and beautifully, wonderfully hopeful for our world. It has been quite a while since I received any idea I thought was truly hopeful, long range, for our world. I had just been pondering how to spread the message and blogging had occurred to me as a better way to reach a larger audience than merely forwarding it as an email. This week's Sunday Scribblings topic seemed to nudge me in the direction that this is the perfect format to share this beautiful hope. My secret dream is that we people, from all over this globe, by working together, can be a force for great good. It is really about restoring the equilibrium of the world.

There is a date on which we must act together. That date is July 17, 2007. There is also a time: 4:11 Greenwich Meridian Time, whatever time that is in your own time zone. At that time, for an hour we are simply to meditate and/or pray and think positive, hopeful, energetic or energizing thoughts, or simply reflect on our own beautiful positive memories. As I understand it, it is our united positivity that will help to Fire the Grid. The individual committment is to offer one hour of our time and positive energy toward the healing of this world and its people. I am asking each of you, please, to go to the site I am going to give you and read at least a part of what is there. I have never been taught to really create a link, so you may need to copy and paste this address. The address is http://www.firethegrid.org/index.htm The message is offered in 8 or 12 different languages. In English it is perfectly clear and eloquently grammatically correct. The message tells me what time 11:11 GMT is in my own time zone, I assume it is set up to tell you each what time it will be in your time period also.

It will cost many of us an hour of sleep. It will cost us each an hour of our time. But if it works, BUT IF IT WORKS ..... it will give our children and grandchildren and great grandchildren a lifetime to still enjoy all the good our world has to offer. Reading the information at the site will take some time, but it is divided up into managable chunks. Select and read it a chunk at a time. Read the background story first or the problem or the plan. Even the background music that will play while you are purusing the site is inspirational. I have not verified the site, I would not know how to start! But I find it inspirational. I simply believe!! I have faith in the good of people and this world. There is nothing negative, nothing dangerous about it. No committment is asked for, not even any information. No harm I know can possibly come to anyone, anywhere, as a result of an hour of prayer and meditation.

I have always loved the song "I Believe" (I would give credit to an author, but the site where I found all the words, listed 4 different authors) which begins with the words "I believe for every drop of rain that falls, a flower grows." It continues including the line "I believe above the storm the smallest prayer will still be heard"; and ends "Everytime I hear a newborn baby cry, or touch a leaf, or see the sky, then I know why I believe." It has always been a song I have sung to myself when I was sad or afraid. You too, if you'd like, can search the song by that first line and find all the words. It is a short song and very uplifting, very reassuring.

Perhaps you remember a movie called "The Abyss"; it was a favorite of mine. Made in 1989, it starred Ed Harris as the oil-rig chief and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as a scientist and his estranged wife. It was the story of an oil-rig crew on a mission to rescue a sunken nuclear sub. It was a perilous mission at best, exascerbated by a fierce storm. I don't really remember all the twists and sub-plots of the story, but certain elements of the story remind me a little and fondly of the initial background story for Firing the Grid, because when the Ed Harris character made the ultimate sacrifice, which was to dive to the bottom of the ocean to try, I think, to keep the nuclear charge from detonating-----he took a special small submersable down, knowing he would not possibly have the air to return, but didn't let his wife know there was no way he would make it back until after he reached the bottom----at that time, spiritual "creatures" (who appeared as beautiful pink lights, and whom we had seen moving around earlier in the show) came to him and saved him. It is a beautiful concept that if our motives are pure and totally altruistic, our goals for the good of ALL and the world, all spiritual beings in the universe can work together and have a positive impact.

The site I am trying to link you to and the plan are both called Fire the Grid.

We can do it! We can help to reconnect the world! My secret hope in this case is the belief that we as a people care enough about our world and its people to want to really do something to save it---something in which we work together, in a stong, united act of faith and good will.

Peace to you all and love, my blogging friends.

Eccentricities #64

2007-06-17T09:47:00.000-07:00

What are my eccentricities?

I had to ask my husband. His answer wasn't very flattering, he said it is the things I do that drive him absolutely crazy, like the plastic cup I put under the dripping faucet in the bathroom sink, so I can use the water that drips instead of wasting it all. It's the fact that I can't throw anything away that still has usefulness in it, so even when I agree to give things up, they are still in a pile in the house til I can get them taken to somewhere they can continue to be of use---the church food pantry, the emergency shelter supply house, the battered women/families thrift store, or even sometimes just to a particular dumpster, not one close to home but nearer to where the homeless hang out in our town. JR tends to want to blame this eccentricity on my mother who was raised as one of 11 during the Depression. He does this so he doesn't stay furious with me; I understand and appreciate his motivation; and Mother, God love her, was gracious and loving enough not to mind, but I am willing to own my own eccentricity. "Waste not, want not." I am not sure from whom I first learned that. Mother is a good guess, but surely not the only possibility. But now it is my own and I believe it. Unfortunately, I live it too. I am the inveterate saver married to the frustrated tosser.

This tendency makes housecleaning, which is way way down my list of fun things to do, a much dreaded activity; and it makes the idea of moving, ever, a nightmare to be forestalled.

The other real eccentricity I can claim is lots more fun; and it is one my whole family shares. We anthropomorphize our vehicles. We think that is the right and proper way to handle one's wheeled family members. Each has a unique name and a story about how that name was selected. I trust them and talk to them and depend on them and thank them for loyal service and dependability. My first car ever, when I was 21 and just out of college, was Prince. He was my white knight, my stallion, my freedom, my wings--to my first real job, and back to Tallahassee to the man I loved on the weekends. After JR and I married, my car became "Prince Practical" because he was our everything mobile, and he wasn't anybody's idea of "hot" or "sporty" but he was up to every challenge. I cried when we sold him even though it was to get me a new car; Prince had over 100,000 miles and we were now young marrieds with a baby, JR was working 2 jobs and we needed 100% dependability in the car I would be driving. JR had his own new baby, a second hand Triumph Spitfire, "Joycey," one of the prettiest, but hands down, the most unreliable car we ever owned. My new car was the same make and color as Prince, so I called him "Cousin," Prince Practical's City Cousin. He was good and reliable also, but like his name, he lacked the charm and dash of my Prince. After Cousin, we had Mosby, the Gray Ghost, and Jake/Jakey, the VW bus, on whom I finally learned to drive stick shift.

Then we began my series of Honda's. My first was Shingo. We got him in December, in fact, on our daughter's 9th birthday. The first "Oh, God" movie with George Burns had just come out that year. One of the primary characters was the 9 year old daughter of the John Denver character. His daughter had the same name as our daughter and her little Japanese friend was also an important character. His name was Shingo; so it seemed appropriate that our first little Japanese friend become "Shingo." Our Shingo was a member of our family for 13 years, nearly 150,000 miles, and he was our personal hero in bad situations more than one time per family member. JR had now become interested in having a pickup truck and he kept saying, "Our next car is going to be a truck!" However, when a friend at school needed to get rid of a nearly new Honda sedan because he and his wife had just found out they were pregnant and needed to get out from under new car payments, they made us a deal that was toooooo good to pass up, so our next car was N.A.T. "Natty," Not a Truck. When we had to get another vehicle, so the kid could drive herself to her magnet school, she got JR's truck. We called him "Bear." Sorry to say I don't remember the derivation of his name. Anyway, we love our cars and respect them, and when they get old and we have to begin talking about getting a newer vehicle, we are careful not to do it when riding in the old guy or even where he might be able to hear and get his feelings hurt, you never know when it might just break the old guy's heart and his spirit, and he might actually just quit trying to go on because he feels unneeded and unloved.

You may have noticed that I always refer to these beloved cars as "him"s. I am a woman. I am proud of my sex and I love being a woman. But I am also of the age when we liked being taken care of and protected, having doors opened and heavy things lifted for us as if we might not be able to do these things for ourselves. We could, of course, take care of these things for ourselves if there was no man around, but preferred to be considered diminutive and delicate. This and my need for my "Prince"when he came into my life, undoubtedly influenced my creating male personas for my autos. But I must admit, it is true that women tend to be more temperamental, moody, and infuriating. Our one female car, Joycey, was the worst of all things feminine; she let us down in a pinch more often than we could count, and when we got rid of her, it was a relief. So it should be no surprise that we have had no more female vehicles. That undoubtedly is another of my eccentricities.

Town or Country

2007-06-02T09:16:00.000-07:00

Am I a city girl or a country girl? Gee, I really am not sure.

Having lived so many years now with almost every convenience one would probably put on a "wish list" for the ideal place to live----from an international airport to a performing arts center with several venues to multiple huge shopping malls within a 45 minute drive, excellent authentic food of almost every ethnicity, grocery stores selling almost anything I would chose to try to cook, varied and competent medical services within 15 minutes drive, a plethora of gyms, dance classes and fitness programs, in addition to superb weather and a vast arena of employment opportunity---I would certainly have to admit, I am spoiled. It would be very hard to consider giving up these things, especially now that I seem about to have the time and the money to enjoy them more.

On the other hand, I hate the traffic and it just gets worse and worse. I despise the unchecked growth and development that progressively makes our roads and our water supply more and more inadequate, which removes our huge old shade trees and tree-lined 2-lane roads, which excises more of our flowers and shrubs, our groves and pastures, to fill up all those pieces of land with buildings and pavement. We have watched our general area go from one house per 1 to 1.5 acres to 2 or 3 houses per acre to new developments which plan 5 to 8 houses per acre. Water pollution is rampant---in our rivers and lakes, even in the bay. Air pollution is hardly worth mentioning because it is in all cities and ours is not as bad as some. Noise pollution and light pollution (I heard just a week ago that lightning bugs/fire flies may be dying out because they may need a certain amount of darkness to activate and regenerate the chemical in their bodies that causes their tails to light up) are ones I am becoming more aware of and appalled by recently. How I miss the dark nights of my youth in the country where the night sky sparkled with stars and we could lay on a blanket in the grass and find almost all of the major constellations, and where a full moon was almost like a lantern to find the way from the back door down to the dock on the our lake.

Where we live now has been a bit of having my cake and eating it too. Tho' we are bare minutes from grocery stores, gas stations and general shopping, our once bedroom community for the big city, still has some rivers and pastures and groves and woodland areas within a 5 mile drive from most of our homes. I cannot tell you how I love it that at the end of the street where I live there is a cow pasture. Not many cows live there (fewer than 15) so there is never an odor problem. But at least twice a year there are 2 to 4 calves playing, nursing, and generally frolicking there that brighten and lighten my spirits as I drive home at the end of a work day or if I want to walk back down there after I change out of my work clothes and shoes and just stand and watch them play. But at the far end of the pasture there is now a strip shopping center and some newer signs indicating a huge condo or apartment complex planned for those acres. My pleasure pasture may not be long for this neighborhood. So, selling the house and moving to somewhere less busy and burgeoning is probably in the cards for us within the next year or two.

When we choose again, we will probably look for somewhere "2 turns off the main road" as JR is fond of saying. I'd like to live again, like when I was growing up, on several acres, with neighbors, yes, but none who will see if I walk out to the garbage can in my underwear or nightgown. I'd like a bit of woods to go walking in in the autumn, maybe even enough to be able to cut down our own small pine for a Christmas tree. I'd love to see stars and fireflys in the sky at night instead of the reflection of city lights. I'd like to hear frogs and crickets and owls and whippoorwills through open windows as I lay in bed at night.

So am I a country girl or a city girl? I still don't think I am sure. But I think I want to live a country live style within 40 miles or so of a big university town---for the arts and the medical availability and the education-important atmosphere. If we select well, maybe we can live out our lives there before the city expands to usurp our little bit of country.

Simple

2007-05-25T21:10:00.000-07:00

Very little is truly simple. Some things seem so by comparison, because many things are truly complex. Making things simple, cutting back to the core, to the essence,this is often seen as a desirable objective. But to my way of thinking, there is nothing simple about doing so.

My apologies in advance, dear readers:

Remember the concept popularized by the movie "When Harry Met Sally" of being high maintenence? I was probably somewhat high maintenence even before Weight Watchers, but Weight Watchers taught me it was okay to be that way, not just okay but, in fact, wise. If I want to add my own salad dressing in a restaurant or I do not want my fish cooked in an ocean of drawn butter, I am paying for the restaurant to prepare that food and I deserve to have it prepared in the way that I can most enjoy it. Are you beginning to sense how difficult "simple" may be for me?

Okay, it is now 2 days later than when I originally started this topic/post and I have mulled it over for that entire period and I am more convinced than when I wrote the 2 paragraphs above that this topic is near the top of the uninspired topics for me in the 11 months I have been trying to do SS every week.

I even attempted one of those poems where you take each letter of the word and write a line that starts with that letter:

Savvy and probably safe

Inventive

More difficult than it seems

Probably wise and healthy

Lots of work!

Essential

Is that pathetic or what?? That's a rhetorical question.

I shall not bore any of us further. Have a simply wonderful week!

Masks

2007-05-20T18:35:00.000-07:00

Rambling thoughts on Masks in our lives

"Which mask shall I wear today?" I mused. Of course, I will use my teacher face: caring, helpful, tolerant but firm; and, as needed, my mother mask---today will it need to be comforting or cautioning, soothing or scolding, proud or disappointed? Then, surely, today I will need my loving wife face and my friend face. Are these masks?

Which of our life roles could be considered masks? I daresay that at times our most constant and comfortable roles---no matter how much we pride ourselves on being honest, sincere, straightforward and up-front---involve wearing masks. How many of us have not pacified and been solicitious of aging parents, in-laws, even children and spouses, when we really wanted to bite their heads off or at least show them how frustrated and exhausted we are, sometimes deliberately in response to something that very person had said or done or caused? Many also are the masks that conceal from specific people or from the whole world the pain or the failures we do not wish to talk about or share at all. Pain of loss or fear or hurt or whatever is private---all of us have occasional masks for these.

Are masks actually quite a bit like "little white lies"? Not something we are very proud of, and certainly not something we want to be known for---because doesn't that make us dishonest? fake? insincere? But at the same time, a necessary survival skill. One just cannot go around constantly being blunt and hurting people's feelings. Like the adage "You can catch more flies with honey (than with vinegar)", frequently positive change can be accomplished more successfully and sometimes more rapidly with positive, friendly encouragement than with direct, sometimes hurtful, honesty. The visage that you wear to facilitate these changes or compromises or simply avoidance of conflict, surely it is a mask. N'est pas??

Aren't some of these masks totally positive?? For years I have heard the positive thinking concept of "Fake it 'til you make it." I believe in it. I have seen it work. "Act successful and you'll be successful!" Believe in yourself to become who/what you want to become, and you shall become as you have believed.

What about theater?? I have always loved dramatics and theater. I am now almost at the end of two months of emersion in a community theater show---my first in many years, but far from my first. This topic has sent my mind musing about this aspect too. Sometimes it is said that actors love acting because they can escape whatever upsets them about their own lives, they must become someone else. It is a safe, legal, even praiseworthy way to lose ones self and ones problems, to wear not only the mask but the whole persona of another. And the better job they do of removing all trace of themselves and becoming this other individual, the more praise/credit they get for it.

Masks-----a very deep and provocative topic.

*Please excuse my occasional sentence fragments. As a former English teacher for years and years, I feel I simply cannot publish this without acknowledging that I know they are there and have used them deliberately.

Second Chance

2007-05-13T11:22:00.000-07:00

"Do-overs" as Billy Crystal repeatedly referred to them in the City Slickers movies, should we get to have them?
One or several? One per year or per decade or one for every 25 years successfully lived?
Surely we have all occasionally wished for one or several. Yet one must also consider the potentially colossal ramifications it could have. Remember The Butterfly Effect? or Frequency with Dennis Quaid, where even when the change was to save a heroic fireman's live and keep his young son from growing up fatherless, the very small change needed to achieve that specific objective caused more far-reaching collateral changes than could have ever been imagined. The closest we can really come in this life, I believe, is an apology and a chance to try again to do it better, to do less damage, to avoid some hurt. Sometimes even that is not a possibility.

This seems to be a bigger topic (way bigger and with awesome and frightening reverberations/ramifications) than I think I am up to tackling today. So I believe, I'll choose the easier option of taking a second chance at one of the Sunday Scribblings topics I did not complete.

Later:
You will find that the one I have now posted to the SS page for #59 Second Chances is a completion of one prompted and begun several weeks ago on Secret Identities. I had fun with it.

Oceans

2007-05-05T22:00:00.000-07:00

I love oceans. Oceans are somewhere near the heart of life and romance and beauty and peace.

Going to sleep and awakening are both more peaceful and more exciting when they happen to the soothing music of waves breaking at the surf's edge and onto the beach. Sunlight and moon light reflected off the dark and white of the ocean sparkle like diamonds and hold some special magic. Moonlight dances on the waves with a romantic, dream-like quality. Sunrise and sunset are more spectacular when duplicated in the water at the horizon. Experiencing either makes me feel more alive, and closer to God.

I have spent most of my life in Florida, so "my ocean" is the Atlantic. But the properties that make oceans special in my mind are pretty common to all seas and oceans. The roar or the hum of waves washing up and/or breaking in the surf or on the shore: the sound is soft, peaceful, soothing, reassuring. The smooth, solid warmth of the sand beneath my feet. The warmth of the sun beating down on the top of my head and on my shoulders. Where else can you be alone with your thoughts whether or not others are around? You can think and walk or meditate. You can pray.

Being at the seashore is to me like being in the world's most spectacular open-air cathedral. The waves and the birds make the music. The sun on the water creates the sparkling stained glass. The sky and the clouds are a ceiling with most spectacular art work. The angels---sometimes they seem to be visible, sometimes not, but I can almost always feel their presence. And God is always near.

The ocean is special in millions of ways beyond this. There are memories of parties of many people and parties of 2 or 4. Memories of bonfires on the beach, back when that was allowed. Music and dancing. Sometimes music from a DJ, sometimes from a live band, and sometimes from just one or 2 friends with guitars, as we sat around and sang. Jogging on the beach in a stiff wind or in stifling heat, the good clean feel of burning out frustrations, or anger, or just calories. Snuggling on a blanket on the beach waiting for the sunrise. Easter sunrise service. Wading into the surf with my dad who taught me to watch and jump the waves. Salt water in your eyes, but loving it. Body surfing. Mindlessly riding the waves on a raft. Walking along the edge of the surf, chasing the sandpipers, getting your feet wet, talking about deep and significant things or just daily ordinary things with a friend; or walking alone in deep thought.

There is no place else like the ocean. It restores my soul like visiting home or sitting very quietly in an almost empty church. Although there can be peril in some aspects of the sea, that is not at all what it represents to me. In their sheer massiveness, oceans are awe inspiring. To me they have to represent a slice of heaven or at least of God's presence here on earth.

Wings

2007-04-28T19:36:00.000-07:00

Wings, I believe, are an almost universal symbol of what is positive and inspirational.

"On the wings of a snow white dove.." "You are the wind beneath my wings." "...rise up on the wings of angels..." or of eagles; "You lift me up so I can walk on mountains. You lift me up to walk on stormy seas." I am actually not sure that last 2-sentence one is actually referring to wings; but in my mind it goes along with all the others well, and upholds the continuity of my feeling of the positiveness and power of wings. All of the images that come to my mind in connection with the word and concept of wings are very positive and uplifting; religious or near-religious; holy and/or inspirational. Many are the stories in which rescue comes on wings, whether on the wings of great birds, like Gandalf's rescue from imprisonment by Sauron; or whether the rescue is a med-evac helicopter. Even the wings of an airplane, and the concept of airplane wings which originally lifted the Wright brothers into international fame, are always positive images to me.

Flight almost seems holy to me. I remember the first time I flew in an airplane among the clouds and thought to myself that this must be what heaven looks like. I love flying. I always have. Maybe it makes me feel closer to God. Maybe it is just the wonder and awe I feel about what I can see, about what we are doing that 400 years ago no one thought any man would ever do, or about how those wings can take me anywhere in the world. How close wings have brought our friends and family, and all the beautiful places on the other side of the world.

Wings promise us magic or adventure or escape or pleasure. From Icarus's wax and feather creation to Tinker Bell's magic pixie dust that helped Wendy, John, and Michael join Peter Pan in Neverland to the hyperberic (I am neither sure I have used the right word nor that I have spelled it correctly) chamber in which Steven Hawkings this week escaped the bonds of his paralysis and his wheel chair, wings free us to exploration and adventure and delight.

Whether our wings and flight are literal or figurative, we should all take at least some of the opportunities that come along in our life to spread wings and fly. By doing so, our lives are enriched, often beyond conceivable measure.

Bravo and congratulations, Laini! You have set us a marvelous example!!

Antipathy

2007-04-24T21:36:00.000-07:00

I know it is possible to love someone but to occasionally, possibly frequently, not like that individual. But is is possible to love someone and hate that person at the same time???? It is not for me. I truly believe that! In fact, I cannot imagine how that could possibly be. But then, I never had someone blood related who abused me heinously. I have been lucky enough or maybe optimistic enough to feel that none I love have ever seriously abused me, at least not for any extended period and not with vicious malice or intention to do me harm, and none at all has abused me physically or sexually.

Now it's May 13th and I looked back at this assuming it was a Sunday Scribblings prompt I never finished. Being unable to tell from rereading it what in the world the topic had been, I went back to the SS prompts only to discover that this was between #57 & #56, wings and rooted, I believe. It was not fostered by one of Megg or Laini's well thought out prompts but, apparently, by something I heard of in our news---local or national---and must have had something to do, I am supposing, with some awful family killing family story. In any case my original motivation and even line of thinking has completely evaporated, and if I am going to publish this at all, it might as well be done now just as an incomplete, musing log entry.

Roots

2007-04-21T20:40:00.000-07:00

Roots can have quite a number of meanings and interpretations, but to me, they all have positive connotations. Deep roots go far into the ground, producing increased stability and reaching far for sustenance and greater support. Family roots have the same function.

Roots are your grandparents and great grandparents and all your deep and broad extended family; but your roots also include your faith and all the values you were taught growing up and still accept as valid once you have become adult. They include, as well, those tenets of personal belief that you have embraced, on your own, as being important and vital.

Sometimes your roots can include physical items also---such as a family Bible or other book, or an heirloom piece of jewelry or art. Roots could also possible encompass property/land (as Tara was for Scarlet in Gone With the Wind), perhaps a specific homestead, the place you were raised, your grandparents home, or even an entire small town where much of your family lived and proliferated, maybe even named for or by your family.

But whatever "roots" mean to a specific individual, they are vital! As with a tree or flower, through roots come your individual characteristics and your life sustaining force: essential nutrition and strength and stability. We all need to cherish our roots.

Secret Identity/ second chance

2007-04-15T18:41:00.000-07:00

"Hey, Ms. Stanley, what'd you do this weekend?" Kurt started class with this outburst while I was trying to get the whole group settled and working.

"Heard you went to a party Mr Kinsey gave for the faculty Friday night," Steve joined in before I had time for any reply.

"Heard you danced all night long and drank a bunch of the others under the table," their compatriot Matt added.

"Nothing so exciting," I commented dryly. "Now will you all please get quiet and do the bell work assignment which you know is due in 5 minutes."

"Those three will do absolutely anything to pull the class off task and waste time. What are they doing in an 11th grade honors class?" These things I mused to myself as I took attendance and entered it into the computer, then began to circulate, trying to be sure they were all attempting the grammar challenge on the overhead projector. If they paid attention as we went over it, they'd get more out of today's reading of James Thurber's "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty."

What I did this weekend..... if those guys only knew.... if any of them had any idea what their apparently average, middle-aged English teacher did on the weekends. They would NEVER believe!!!!

Kaylee Kralle --lead singer for a nightclub dance band, and sometimes actress, at those dinner theater jobs with one or two name stars that do summer stock in the Poconos or other resort areas ...... the band has our own jet and we book gigs all over the US and Canada, we do more weddings and expensive private parties than concerts of any kind ......... in the summer, we take jobs on cruise ships and abroad.... but every fall I return to my ordinary existence as high school English teacher and Beta Club sponsor. I plan lessons and grade papers as we jet to weekend gigs. Then during the week I strive to teach them to love literature and appreciate the nuances of grammar and language use. The classroom is my stage and they my usually less-than- appreciative audience.

I smile at their effort to insinuate their idea of excitement into what they presume to be my average, boring, middle aged life.

"Come-on, Guys, as soon as we finish going over this grammar worksheet, we are going to read a story of a little man with a grand imagination, one sufficient to save him from the boredom of every mundane situation. We are going to talk about "stream of consciousness" style of writing. Then I think we will each write a little Mitty-type episode of our own. Maybe I'll write one too and we can share what we've written."

In the News

2007-04-08T16:20:00.000-07:00

News---the awareness and knowledge of current world, national and local, events---is critically important to our world and its citizens!! At least it should be. We should pay attention to what is going on around us and care about it. With cable television and the Internet added to the information sources that were around when our parents were the adults whose votes chose our leaders and representatives, we should be the best informed and savvy citizenry the world has ever known; but we aren't!

We are told what to think and often how to think and many cannot tell what is actually news and what is opinion, or what is news and what gossip. I am not sure whether we are a world of ostriches or of busybodies. It seems to me that a lot of people don't want to think for themselves. They want the government to take away all the risks and responsibility of living; and if someone tells them how/what to think along the way----what's the problem? they are just taking care of us..... Why is Anna Nicole's death more important than the death of soldiers and even innocent people in Iran or Iraq or than news of starving children anywhere? Is it that the general public really cares more about our Hollywood figure heads and their dirty laundry, or that they simply don't want to hear about ugly events that really matter???? Apathy is a frightening concept, too, when used as a possible explanation of this phenomenon. I must admit, I lean toward that to explain why media stories seem so skewed away from hard news. Then there's also the horrifying possibility that people today really don't comprehend the difference between real news and the society gossip.

My default TV channel is always a news channel, but it is usually local news, unless there is something HUGE "breaking." Because I have always felt like I had so little free reading time (because there were ALWAYS writing papers that needed to be graded) I have always guarded my reading time jealously. I presume that is why I have chosen to get most of my news, all types of news, from the old "boob tube." I acknowledge, this is my own weakness and problem; guess that makes me the boob. But in the last 5 to 10 years, I feel that the quality and integrity of broadcast news have declined to near death. I am not sure where to start to overcome this deficit for my own education.

So much of what is out there just makes me angry. In fact, often, that seems to be its purpose.

Does anyone out there have some truly informative and unbiased sources to suggest. Is it too much to ask that it might be presented in a positive or hopeful light. I am afraid if I start something that basically indicates, as I am tending to dread now at times, that we are all in the proverbial handbasket on a fast downhill slope to you know where, I simply won't finish reading it. I gotta have hope.

I have blathered on too long. Have a happy Easter, or I hope you had a blessed and meaningful Passover, or just have a great day; and hug a friend. Peace to you all.

Deepest, Darkest...

2007-04-01T19:44:00.000-07:00

Deep can be either good or bad: deep feelings, deep blue eyes, deep rich baritone, or deep guilt or a deep sink hole. Dark seems to be a bit more negative generally: dark mood, a dark pit, dark as the inside of a goat's stomach, dark wilderness; but dark can also be positive: lost in the desert they longed for the approaching cool of darkness, rich and smooth as dark velvet, dark chocolate (my favorite). However when the superlative form of both words occur together, most of the familiar completion responses are negative, or at least, suggestively ominous.
Deepest, Darkest.... :(most popular responses--in alphabetical order) Africa, fears, forest, secrets.

Overwhelmed by the oppressive darkness,
She suddered with silent sobs,
Pushing away the shadows and her fears.
Isolated by guilt, she struggled with the knowledge
of her sin and of its unforseen ramifications.
Never could she have suspected the involvement
of her sister, her sweet baby sister;
Never have guessed the impact on her best friend.
Now it had all exploded.
Everyone was hurt and no one trusted anyone.
But only she knew it was all her fault.

In that guilty knowledge
Was the deepest darkness
And the sharpest pain.

Would it all finally heal over for the rest
If she kept this bitter secret to herself?
As she bore the guilt, could she also bear the pain?
Oh, what a deep dark pit or cave
She felt herself entrapped in.

In the Kitchen

2007-03-25T19:31:00.000-07:00

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SUNDAY SCRIBBLINGS!!! Thanks for all you've given to and done for us who enjoy participating. Sorry I have missed posting the last 2 weeks scribblings. Between major computer problems, followed by our annual hiking spring trip away from any computer access, I wasn't able to get the prompts and/or write them in the posting window. Hope I am back in the groove now.

I am not much of a cook--don't do it very well, don't much like to do it. Lived most of my married life without doing much of it at all. That was quite easy since JR and I worked different "shifts" almost all of our working, married life. As a teacher I always worked days with weekends off. As a dispatcher for the police, then an ambulance company, then involved in direct sales, then for the postal distribution facility, he worked first rotating shifts then consistent ones determined by who had enough more seniority to outbid him for the most desirable ones. Much of our working, married life, we were fortunate enough to have Friday night and all day Saturday together; but the rest of the entire week, I ate dinner alone then graded papers. I hardly ever cooked for just myself; he didn't get home even close to a meal time, so he ate at work. And on our 2 nights together, I was darned if I was going to slave in the kitchen an hour plus before and after dinner so we could sit together for less than 40 minutes and enjoy what I had prepared; and that was if there was nothing on TV either of us wanted to watch.

One of my great regrets is that I raised a daughter who feels about the same as I do about cooking and, I say with some considerable shame and embarrassment, who has less skill at it, I believe, than I do. At least my mother, who was a home-ec major in college, did cook at home all my life and saw to it that I learned how, at least simplistically, and that I actually did the cooking sometimes. Occasionally, I would cook for my daughter and me, when JR was at work, but very, very seldom. The world of microwaves and quality, low cal, frozen dinners gave us each the divergent meals we preferred, with much less work; and, truly, with less food wasted or thrown out.

But the topic for this week is "in the kitchen" and, although, my own kitchen is not a favorite place or room; even I must admit that I believe the kitchen to be the heart of the home. Kitchens are warm! Kitchens are warm literally when something is baking or cooking, and the smells are enticing and yummy. When you want them to be cool---air conditioning and lemonade weather--- they are still warm in their enveloping welcomingness. Many of my happiest memories throughout my life are set in a kitchen. It seems when families and friends gather, eventually the largest number crowd into the kitchen, whether it is just to talk or to drink (tea, coffee, soft drinks, or even hard drinks) and talk, or to work together preparing food or cleaning up after eating. Warm fellowship and laughter emanate from kitchens.

Inspiration

2007-03-19T19:28:00.000-07:00

Am I inspired to write?? Sometimes I do feel inspired, by a particular topic or a line of connected thought that topic leads me to, or even a particular special memory, or sometimes a particular "soapbox" issue. However, most of the time, composing to a specific prompt requires quite a bit of thought and effort and re-writing. Then, sometimes I feel really good about the product, but often I am still not fully pleased. I wish I felt insprired more often. But then everyone really needs to learn to be able to create even when not inspired and to take the steps necessary to build and refine a writing project. Sunday Scribblings motivates and disciplines me to work at simulating inspiration when it doesn't come naturally.

Dream Journey SS #50

2007-03-11T10:04:00.000-07:00

I love travel!! However I was amazed to discover about 5 years ago, how much the wonderful experience of travel pales for me when the trip is not shared. I simply do not enjoy finding and seeing new and gorgeous places alone. For me, more than half of the amazing delight of travel is in sharing the experience. So, my dream journey is to see some of the places I have discovered and loved with groups of friends, now with my best friend, the love of my life, my husband of 38 years who has not seen Europe at all.

I would really love to take him some day to revisit almost all the places I have seen there. But if I must select just a few for a dream journey, it would have to include: several days in Paris, plus brief visits to Chartre & Strausberg in France; Zermatt & Wengen , Switzerland; Saltzburg, Austria; a number of places in Italy, especially the little places: Orvieto, Assisi, and Rapallo, a tiny little town on the Italian Riviera; of course, Florence, Venice and Pompeii . I'd really like to include a Greek cruise as well, including Corfu, Rhodes, Santorini, and with a stop at Kushadisi, Turkey to visit the ruins of Ephesis . We'd come back home through England so I could take him to Stratford upon Avon and York. Finally, before coming back home, we would swing around through Hawaii, to revisit Kauai where we spent the closest thing we ever had to a honeymoon.

Superstition

2007-03-02T15:45:00.000-08:00

Just about the time we are feeling proud of our independent stature and self reliance, many of us find ourselves, really without thinking about its silliness, knocking on wood after making an affirmative statement that we don't want fate to suddenly reverse, or muttering "Bread and butter" under our breath as we drop the hand of a loved one so we may pass one on either side of some obstruction in the street. But asked if we are superstitious, most of my friends and I would, I believe, say "Of course not!"

I really cannot think of any superstition that I truly believe. My beautiful, wonderful, intelligent daughter was born on the 13th and so was my wise, witty and remarkably brilliant dad. How then could I ever be superstitious about Friday the 13th? Every day of the month, of every month, must sometimes fall on Friday. How frustrating and silly to think because of that happenstance, those would be bad birthdays. And black cats--posh!! Three of my four grandcats are black. Should I love them less, or fear them?? I don't think so. And in spite of my decades long love of drama and theater, I really don't see that wishing actors "Good luck" really brings them bad luck. But lest there be some among the cast and crew who do believe, I shall continue to wish them, truly always with the tiniest bit of trepidation, to "break a leg." Also, I have been a part of good dress rehersals and bad dress rehersals and terrible dress rehersals. I think for the most part the dress rehersal does indicate preparedness and actually suggests what one may expect of opening night. I must believe that the only reason for the silly superstitious saying that a bad dress rehersal means a great opening night is so that the actors will not be frightened into a worse disaster, sort of a self fulfilling prophesy or a bumbling snowball effect.

Superstitions keep us mindful that we are not entirely in control of our own fate; keep us aware that almost all of us keep trying to have that control.

Angry---frustrated---annoyed

2007-02-27T18:57:00.000-08:00

I am furious with my "NewBlogger" account and I have only had it about 48 hours. I want a phone number to call where I can address my problem with a real person who might help me, but apparently, no such help is available. For weeks, I resisted changing until this Sunday when the sign-on dialogue indicated that if I wanted to continue using blogspot, I must switch over to the "new blogger."

The only real purpose of my blogspot has been to discipline myself to write out and contribute my thoughts on assigned topics for Sunday Scribblings. Since I started last summer, not just the writing, but giving and receiving comments has also become a very vital part of this blogging experience. I really love and appreciate the community of sensitive and caring people I have become connected to this way. I care about both commenting and receiving comments. I have also loved my specific blogger identity, similar to but NOT the same as my email address. But this Google account has somehow screwed this all up. Tonight I have read about 5 new Sunday Scribblings--on Puzzled---and attempted to comment on several of them. On one I made 6 attempts to share a comment about how delightful the person's post was. None of them would "take." It said I had the wrong password. BUT I DID NOT. I knew I was using my correct password. However, just in case I had made a mistake when transferring ovet my account, I went to my new blogspot and had no trouble opening my own blog with that same password. It turns out that the problem is that I was using my blogger name and Google wants me to use my email address. If I sign that, the people I am commenting to won't even know it is me, Sundaycynce.

Anyway, I am currently furious about being forced to make first the one change, which, of course, the rhetoric promised me would not be any different except in the improved capabilities of the new system; and now being forced into another change, I resent and dislike and which, as far as I am concerned, impedes communication!!!!!!!!!! And because technology basically propitiates its superiority over humans, I cannot get hold of human to talk this problem over with.

HHEELLPP!!! ANYONE......

Puzzled--story seed

2007-02-25T15:47:00.000-08:00

He looked up, puzzled. Would he ever understand this woman that he loved so totally?

She was just returning to the table, and she seemed to have been crying. Why?? Weren't they creating what would be remembered as one of the best nights of their lives? He had asked her to marry him. She had said yes, then had hurried off to the restroom. It didn't ever happen like that in the movies.

"Is everything okay?" he asked nonsensicallly.

"I'll be fine," she reasurred him. "I'm just being silly. I always wanted to celebrate this moment with my parents. Coming so soon after their deaths just made me a little sad. I'm sorry."

He had hardly known her parents, had met them several times, but they lived so far away, they really hadn't been a factor in his life with her. He figured they must have been good people, because she was the most caring and thoughtful person he had ever really known, but that they might be a significant influence in his future life, really hadn't crossed his mind. They had lived somewhere in Canada, had died together recently, some sort of accident, automobile--he assumed. She had seemed okay with his not flying to Canada with her for the funeral. He really had NOT wanted to go, he hated funerals. She seem to accept his work excuse. She indicated there would be so much to do, both her siblings would come back for it also. None of them lived there anymore, so all would be staying in the family home. Besides the funeral and burials---she didn't know if they had pre-arranged anything---there was much to do with the house, the estate, and all kinds of mess that she'd never really given any thought to.

It was while she was in Canada that he had realized how much he had come to want her in his day to day life, full time, permanently. He convinced himself that this was a good time to go ahead with marriage plans, that it would help her get past the loss, by creating a new "family" to fill her life. She was gone a couple of weeks longer than he expected. They talked often. He even finally volunteered to fly up and join her, but she said it wasn't necessary. Her attitude confused him a bit, she seemed distracted more than distraught, definitely upset, but she didn't seem to want to talk about it. He had asked numerous times about the accident that had caused her parents' deaths. That was something else she didn't want to talk about, he assumed because it was gruesome.

Since she had returned, she was definitely more puzzling to him, than she had been before: moody, it almost seemed secretive, about phone contacts she periodically received and mail. All of it really just served to convince him it was a good time for him to turn her thoughts and interests elsewhere with wedding planning.

It never occurred to him that perhaps he ought to know more about this dear fiancee, her former family, how they made their living, and the accident of their deaths.

Puzzled----a state he didn't find too terribly uncomfortable. Didn't all women puzzle all men??

What he did not realize was the complexity of the puzzle of the life he was about to merge with his own.

Crushes are Yummy

2007-02-18T12:13:00.000-08:00

I had a problem last week coming up with anything original for yummy.. I read quite a few of those by other contributors and thought that they were certainly "right on." I too could have listed numerous things I find yummy: most were sweet, like cinnamon buns & tira misu & sweet potato,pecan casserole & s'mores by a campfire; or sweet and precious, like babies and puppies and kittens. I also liked great buns in tight fitting jeans, especially male divers butts and legs, in tight jeans or in skimpy diving swim suits. There is also cuddling and kissing by a crackling fire listening to wonderful music. But.....

Then, this week, when I started thinking about crushes, I realized what a great example they really were of yummy also. Yummy is a sensory word and crushes are all about sensory overload, sensory head over heels, heart and senses over mind and intellect.

We have all had crushes. Suddenly, frequently without reason, one individual is more gorgeous than any of the other people in his same group (class, team, work location, whatever), his smile lights the room, increases our heart rate, blood pressure, and frequently body temperature. Everything he says is more dazzlingly intelligent or funny than anyone we have ever known before. We think about him all the time, often to the detriment of what we should be thinking about. We make up conversations and know just what we want to say. Except when we have that opportunity to actually speak to "him," our tongue becomes tangled and our mind turns to mush. Crushes are one of the most delicious sensory experiences of our human life.

Sometimes, I think I'd even say usually, crushes just fade away over time. Reality sets in, either gradually over time, or perhaps suddenly as an overwhelming truth reveals itself. Sometimes the dissolution of this sparkly romantic dream is painful and crushing. Philosophically though, I really think having and surviving crushes is an important part of the growing up and maturing process. On the flip side, crushes can also help us keep feeling young. We should hope we never get too old to feel the "crush rush," but that we can remain mature enough to keep it in perspective--feel and bask in the glow, but know it probably isn't "real." We also need to remember that something that is real should never be jeopardized for the thrill of the crush. Occasionally, really lucky people have a crush that turns to real, lasting love; and for an even smaller, luckier few, the "crush rush" hangs on through the years with that love.

I think I am one of the lucky ones.

Goodbyes

2007-02-03T12:50:00.000-08:00

Thoughts on Goodbye(s) are many and varied. Goodbyes are almost invariably sad, sometimes heart wrenching, but at the same time, I believe, desperately important. Important to closure, vital to moving on with one's life.

The following is a poem I wrote some 40 years ago when I was a junior in high school after the end of an only-just-budding romance which I still perceive as the most potentially serious I had in my first 18 years. Writing the poem gave me the closure I needed; as much as I ever got.

"Farewell"
"Fare well," I said,
for that did seem to say
the things I felt.
For it was not "Good Night,
I'll see you soon again,"
Nor yet a cold "Goodbye."
I could not say, "Good luck,"
and not be trite.
"God bless you," he would
Neither understand nor like.
And so I said, "Fare well"
And longed to add,
"My darling," and a kiss.

There are so many ways to say good bye; so many shades of meaning. There are the words, sometimes very hard to say; but beyond that is the emotion and the process of separation which still must be traversed. This is true whether the good bye is an unwanted / regretted separation, or one which should improve the lives of one or both parties involved. I believe the hardest goodbyes of all must be those when the loser(s) is denied, by whatever circumstance, the opportunity for the face-to-face good bye.

I must admit that my take on this post has been reshaped somewhat by the events and news of the last 55 hours or so. The tornadoes that devastated Lake county Florida--I grew up there, from age 5 to 17; it was my home of record for longer than that--- although, blessedly, not harming my family there, have certainly tortured my heart.

In the middle of an ordinary Thursday night, rain and thunder came--these are not unfamiliar to any Floridians-- but this time families lost parts of themselves with no chance to say good bye. A mother and her 8 year old son escaped but her husband and 7 year old son were found dead in the wreckage of their home. Two teen-aged girls lost the brother who was their triplet and both of their parents. A 29 year old man awoke on Saturday and asked his wife to tell him that all of Friday had been a horrible dream, but the agonizing truth must be acknowledged, the bodies of his mother, his sister and his 8 year old niece were found in the decimation of his boyhood home.

Goodbyes. These ordinary people didn't get to say any goodbyes. But the real agony of the separation, of this unexpected and unasked for end to loved ones and to life as it had been, must be dealt with and survived.
Feeling blessed by my own good fortune, I would like to do something to help these hurting strangers suffering from their losses and stolen goodbyes. However, I simply feel helpless.

Chronicle

2007-01-28T10:16:00.000-08:00

Chronicle--the apparently factual reporting of events--historical or legendary--which have taken place, delivered objectively and in chronological order.

This one probably holds the unique place of being the MOST challenging of these prompts that I have forced myself to keep trying to tackle.

Chronicles of Lost Sleep
She craned her neck toward the head of the bed. The digital clock read 3:28. She rolled back over and willed herself to go back to sleep. "Our Father..." she murmured inaudibly. Often prayers---calming, familiar, routine---would lull her back to sleep. She lost the thread. Bemused, her mind wandered; non-specific thoughts meandered past, til suddenly, for no reason she could identify, she was alert again: 3:54. Damn! She needed to sleep! 5:20 came all too early; and tomorrow was certainly NOT going to be an easy day. Stupid! Stupid! Why didn't she get into bed before midnight?!!
Once more, she rolled over, trying to find the right position or mind frame that would let her slip back into the oblivion that rests the body and the mind----awhile on her back, stretching in classic yoga relaxation; no; how about with a leg tucked up under the other knee? No good! She turned on her right and snuggled up to his sleeping shoulder. He stirred briefly, then settled again, breathing directly into her face. That's not gonna work. She rolled onto her stomach, knowing that wouldn't last long before her back began to hurt. 4:10. Damn it!! Damn it!! Damn it!!
Finally back to the left side, her best sleeping position, and she actively fought against the wakefulness, commanding herself to go back to sleep. After a few minutes, she threw back the top comforter, thinking if she were cooler, she would sleep better, but it wasn't long til she felt too cool, lots too cool. "That was dumb," she thought, "you always do better too warm than too cool." So she pulled the comforter back up, all the way up to her neck and concentrated on warming up. She almost, almost made it, almost slipped away. Almost, but not close enough. What in the hell did I eat that I shouldn't have?? Did I drink something with caffine too late in the day? Why is my body doing this too me?!!!! 4:45!!
Oh, this is hopeless!!!! Just get up, get out the damn health / headache journal and see if you can remember enough of what you ate or drank or did that may have created or exascerbated the anxiety or stress or whatever that caused this wakefulness. If you chronicle it all, in explicit detail, maybe, just maybe, you can figure out what NOT to do again.
Then you can write lesson plans or grade papers and put the time to some use. And tomorrow---I don't care what favorite show is coming on----tomorrow you WILL put yourself in bed by 10---well, absolutely 10:30, at the latest!!!!!

fantasy

2007-01-21T05:51:00.000-08:00

Fiction is my genre of choice. I love historical fiction and science fiction and, yes, I must admit, romance novels. But I delight in Fantasy!

Fantasy allows us more freedom than life. Fantasy allows us to be children again, to think like children and believe like children. Fantasy expands our freedom and our minds; it allows us to think unbounded by the limitations of reality. It also permits us to whisk away evil and ugliness, except as we wish to acknowledge it and deal with it. It allows us almost unlimited possibilities.

Even the favorite books from my childhood are fantasies that I never forgot; and in adulthood I was able to find my favorite two in used bookstores and own my own copies. Many of the ones that I love are somewhat obscure. One of these is Half Magic by Edward Eager, in which a coin that looks enough like a dime to be regularly confused with one, granted half of any wish made by the one holding it; in the other, Dangerous Island by Helen Mather, an island which periodically arose from the ocean then shortly sank back into it, was the island upon which two pre-teens, adrift in a row boat, found themselves stranded as it began to sink back into the sea. These two novels fascinate me still today. My favorite fairy tale book, a bed time treat read often to us by our dad, until we were able to read it to ourselves, was entitled Tales from the Enchanted Isles, copyright by Yale University Press in 1926 (much much closer to my parents' childhood than mine, so where they got the book for us is lost information to me); it contained 7 magnificent, magical short tales of fantasy by one Ethel May Gate. Those stories contain such wisdom that I occasionally still quote from them to this day, and use one in particular as a standard of what is the right thing to do. Fantasy can teach and it certainly challenges the mind and the imagination and, I believe, helps to develop both, along with sharpening problem-solving skills.

Even though movies have made the most popular fantasies (Tolkein's Lord of the Ring trilogy, Lewis's Adventures of Narnia series, and Rowling's Harry Potter series)of our time more accessible, I still think one can get more from them and love them more deeply if s/he actually reads them. However, the movies have led many new viewers, readers and thinkers back to the threshold of fantasy, and through the back of the wardrobe,as it were. I think that is a very good thing.

Hope your presentation went well, Laini.

Ideas---I have an idea!

2007-01-13T04:39:00.000-08:00

Ideas make the world go around.
Ideas are responsible for every one of our daily activities,
even if they aren't our own ideas.
Great ideas are responsible for all
the scientific and technological improvements
we have made in this world.
Ideas are the seed pods that become the magnificent art
and music of our lives.
Ideas blossom and grow into the many conveniences of our life
from light bulbs and flush toilets and automobiles
to the keyboards, monitors and personal computers
upon which we share these thoughts and make new friends,
upon which we share pleasant email messages and urgent news
with multiple friends, at the same time, in seconds!!
I have an idea:
We are really quite fortunate people
Living in a truly magnificient world
At a spectacularly awesome epoch in the history of this world.

Kisses

2007-01-13T04:02:00.000-08:00

Kisses are among the most special, most magical entities of our human world!

A kiss is a magic snowflake.
It touches you and melts.
Sometimes, except for a special, gentle tingle or spark,
you can wonder if it actually happened.
Sometimes it is simply a friendly greeting;
Sometimes it melts in and sustains you,
Gives you support and strength.
Frequently it melts your heart;
Sometimes it makes your knees weak, and
Makes you feel all liquid inside, and dreamy.

A kiss can also be a down mattress or a down comforter
in a silky douvet;
Something that entirely envelopes you
in welcome and welcoming softness.
It swallows you, cuddles you, makes you feel drowned--in a good way;
draws you in, almost rocks you,
in supportive, surrounding softness, like a warm bath.

Of course, there are some kisses you really don't want to remember.
Some of these are the ones that are really wet.
When the kisser draws back, your face feels cold and yucky,
like you need a hand towel to dry your face,
and perhaps the opportunity to try again
(with water and a washcloth)
to get it washed properly.
Unless that kisser was a beloved dog,
and sometimes even if it was,
You pretty much want to put an end
to this particular intimate session
and find something friendly
but less damp to do next.
At least I do.

Destiny or Destination

2006-12-31T13:25:00.000-08:00

This topic provides an unusual challenge for those of us who are recently retired from a lifelong career. I from a career I loved and took pride in, even identified with; JR from one which he despised and where no matter how hard he worked or tried to do something meaningful, he was totally unappreciated. It provided insurance, other benefits, and a substantial enough salary to trade the daily hours for, nothing more. Where are we going now??

We have always talked of travel. Though our travel tastes aren't exactly the same, we are both willing to take turns being the chooser/leader and the follower. Travelling together is definitely an integral part of this goal. I want to show him Paris, Zermatt, Saltsburg, Florence and Corfu. I will willingly follow him hiking or rafting in Canyonlands, Yellowstone, Arches, Zion, or along the Colorado River or the Appalachian trail (at least parts of it---he may thru-hike it, I'll meet him and do short stretches).

We have talked of moving from our 35 years of residence in Florida; we'd like to be closer to family both near and extended, but it's hard to leave 35 years of friends and church and even favorite restaurants. Our only daughter lives in California and I want desperately to see her more than we have in the last several years. However, not to offend anyone, but I have been a Floridian far too long to overcome the inbred rivalries and ever become a Californian myself. (I mean we learned that "our oranges are better than theirs" stuff in grade school. Obviously I personally have been a Floridian lots longer than 35 years.) And who is to say she(our daughter)is there to stay. Places that are climatically similar to what we old "wimps" are accustomed to are experiencing the same political and environmental problems (too many people, not enough water, etc.)we are trying to evade. We are seriously apprehensive about how we will deal with significant cold---I have only once in my entire life driven in snow. So, although we have played in our minds with five or six states that hold some interest for us, we have only barely looked at real estate options.

I want to read more! This is a pure pleasure that I denied myself 9 months a year because I always had student essays--lots less interesting---that I knew I needed to be grading, and if I started a good book, it would get the best of my time and attention. I have shelves of books I am longing to read. But because I am presently trying to dig out, clean up, and remodel my terminally 80s house (more on this is in my "Nemesis" blog of Nov. 26, which I would link you back to but I don't know how to create an intext link), those books are still taunting me from dusty shelves.

There are other pleasures too that have always been a part of my general retirement dreams. But right now I am hip-deep in "gotta do" drudgery, at present in a stage that I cannot pay someone else to do it for me 'til I get it partially under control myself. This aspect of retirement is not fun and feels more exhausting and futile at times than going to work every day and planning lessons and grading papers every evening. I am such a creature of "schedule," and I don't have a new one yet.

So, destination / destiny---right now those words are represented by a great big question mark which emanates some of the terrors of a black hole, as it were; and I must say, frankly, it's a pretty insecure and uncomfortable place to be. But this is where I am writing from today, December 31, 2006, on the precipice of 2007: the first year of true retirement for us and the first days of the rest of our (joint)life.

HAPPY NEW YEAR to you all.

Anticipation

2006-12-15T12:31:00.000-08:00

Anticipation is one of the most promising, most exciting words in our language. It is often associated with Christmas, almost always with weddings, and for children: with birthdays. If one could paint anticipation---I wish I could---I know it would sparkle and glow: like stars in the night sky, like lights reflected in a distance against snow, like a colorful, brightly lighted tree, like eyes of one in love. To my way of understanding, anticipation is always positive; the opposite experience of dreading and/or fearing a probable or expected event or result is anxiety.

In the vein of a number of books that came out in the '70s made up of metaphors for love; i.e. "Love is walking hand in hand" or "Love is a warm puppy." I decided to characterize anticipation that way.

Anticipation is a child who can't sit still or stop talking in class because his/her birthday party is this evening at Busch Gardens or Chuckie Cheese (or where ever).

Anticipation is what wakes even children who usually sleep til someone shakes them awake at noon at 4:45 AM on Christmas morning.

Anticipation is a young girl all dressed up waiting expectantly for her date to come pick her up for her first solo car date or for her first formal dance.

Anticipation is huddling together on the beach in the early morning dampness waiting for the sun to rise over the ocean.

Anticipation is expecting and imagining that first kiss of a new love.

Anticipation is salivating over your lottery ticket as the girl on TV draws out the winning numbers and you already have the first 3 correct.

Anticipation is waiting in line for a concert or movie you have been absolutely dying to see and now you are within an hour of actually being in attendance at.

Anticipation is waiting at the airport for a loved one or ones who have been far away or away for a long time or away and in danger, or maybe it's waiting for the one you love so you can tell him/her for the very first time that you want to share the rest of your life with him/her.

Anticipation is waiting for the first notes of "Here Comes the Bride" as you or your bride or your daughter starts down the aisle.

Anticipation is the look of overwhelming love in the eyes of both bride and groom as they meet together to finally become one.

Anticipation is waiting together in the labor room and talking excitedly and nervously about the baby, your baby, about to come into this world.

Anticipation is reaching out your arms to hold your new baby for the very first time.

Please feel free in the comment section to add your own favorite metaphor(s) for anticipation which I may have forgotten.

Reward or punishment

2006-12-08T07:22:00.000-08:00

Today is December 15th; I started this last Friday or Saturday Dec. 8 or 9. This one just didn't happen. It is the first Sunday Scribblings I have failed to complete and submit since I started in early June this year. Below are the ramblings I did manage.

My first thoughts:

"you can catch more flies with honey..."

There is a place for both punishment and reward.

Then I wrote this:
There is a problem with reading some other people's "scribblings" before writing one's own, especially if it is a topic one isn't particularly motivated to write about. After reading many of the first 15 posted this week, I found myself so much in agreement with Shelley and with a lot of the excellent points Sarah made, I found myself completely uninspired with new things to say or better ways to say them.

There is a purpose and function for punishment which restricts behaviors that endanger the doer or others, or which serve as a reminder and caution that one has abused freedoms previously given or even earned.

Rewards should be freely given but not for simply standard, expected behavior. Also, as much as possible, rewards should not be material (not food or things) but verbal or a positive natural result of the positive behavior.

The weekend was very busy and Sunday evening in the middle of a huge load, the washing machine broke and that was the end of last weekends scribblings. With apologies, that's it.

In the Last Hour...

2006-12-03T10:00:00.000-08:00

In the last hour our voices rose up like incense, in hushed prayer and song. We shared the Biblical words and scriptural stories of God's promise to send one who would be our teacher and our inspiration and our savior, one who would come as a child and live as a common carpenter and rabbi. The one who would save us would be misunderstood and maligned, rejected, accused, and executed. But although he would physically leave our presence, he would always be with us in spirit; and finally after the time of war and pestilence, of suffering and grief, of anguish and weeping, he would come again and take his faithful believers to be with him.

We are too many to be comfortable for long in this hidden meeting place we have chosen. We are many for this small below ground room; but we are so few compared to the huge number we have worked with, played with, and called friends. Even those we have loved as family are not all here. Where are they gone, what can they be thinking--those who have chosen "the mark" rather than give up creature comforts and the open, material lives we had all come to believe we valued. When it was time to make the absolute decision about what was really important, what was really cherished, what was the true "bottom line," there were great conflicts, great divisions. Many who surprised us, so many it astounded us, brushed away the faith for the "things." It is almost inconceivable that we have come full circle to the Roman days we read about in Sunday school, where we must identify others who are true believers with recognition symbols and must speak of our faith and hope and belief only to those we fully trust.

In the last hour, as we huddled together in awful apprehension, but in comfortable fellowship with beloved friends, family and like-minded believers, we felt the spirit wash over us, and we were at peace, at least for the moment, in this place. And we continued to wait.

Nemesis

2006-11-26T20:09:00.000-08:00

Nemesis seems to have more meanings than I realized. Because I truly haven't many and prefer to forget hostilities with people, I have chosen to deal with the meaning: a source of downfall or ruin. Three nemeses(pl) come immediately to mind: grading research papers, keeping "stuff," and procrastinating.

Undoubtedly one of the happiest part of my recent retirement is that I will never again have to grade another research paper!!!!!!!!! Once or twice a year for the last 30 years I have lost the better part of eight weeks of my life reading and correcting 105, give or take 15, research papers or required parts(outline, intro, bib cards, works cited lists) of them. I dreaded them more and more as the years went along and the quality diminished and the plagiarism increased. Now, NEVER AGAIN!

My other two nemeses are still challenges I am far from mastering. Ha! I am still FAR from even getting a grip on either of them. And the procrastination exacerbates the "stuff" keeping to the extreme. Possibly some of my problem with saving everything comes naturally from being raised by my mother, God love her, who was one of a family of ll children raised during the Great Depression. But I am one of those people who firmly believes that within 2 months of getting rid of something that is still useful, I WILL need that very item and will waste time and money going out to buy another, less-well-made version of that same tool, utensil, whatever. But I am now in the late middle stages of losing my house in my junk. It is becoming a case of "I don't even know how to start," so the procrastination takes over and I think of all the easier things I need to do more or could complete in a nice short time. Then I convince myself that those completable tasks are a much better use of my time. Procrastination also takes on the persona of Guilt and won't let me do things I'd love to do, like read the stacks of wonderful, highly-recommended books I have all over the house----more of the stuff adding to the clutter---or spend more time writing, UNTIL I have really made a dent in recovering the house. It is a vicious circle, an endless frustration, a "Catch 22."

I think this particular writing is probably the poorest piece of writing I have posted because it goes nowhere and has no resolution or even conclusion. But perhaps its one successful aspect is that it certainly illustrates the definition I chose of nemesis: a source of downfall or ruin. Haven't yet figured out how to deal with these arch-enemies; can't even write about them effectively.

Heros

2006-11-19T12:39:00.000-08:00

A hero can be anyone---male or female, old or young, of any social status or nationality---who in a bad situation selflessly does the "right" thing, regardless of personal risk or sacrifice. The most important aspects of this, my personal definition, are selflessly and the "right," as in moral, good, proper, as well as appropriate.

As a teacher, I can remember when all of us who taught junior high English began to realize together and with great dismay that approached horror, that young people had no real comprehension of human heros. Asking students to write either journal entries or character sketches of a personal hero had been standard fare for years, when gradually we all began to realize that students had no concept of "heros" except "super heros" as in comic books and movies. When asked to write about a hero, a very few would write about Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther King, Jr. or one of our other historical giants. But most would go off into wild fantasy about Superman or Spiderman, Batman or WonderWoman, or--Heaven forbid--some video game champion, none of whom I can even name except what's-her-name the boob chick (oh, I remember, Laura Croft).

If it is not sacrilege to find some good out of the horror of September 11, 2001, then that good must surely include the enrichment of America's concept of the personal or everyday hero; which is, as far as I am concerned, the truest form of hero. First to come to mind, of course, are New York City's police and firemen, and next, the courageous passengers of United flight 93, who, fully understanding they could not save themselves, nonetheless, gave their last full measure of effort to keep their plane from becoming yet another deadly missle destroying more lives and property on the ground. However, even the ordinary working people who led or carried fellow workers and/or strangers from the twin towers or from the Pentagon, completely fit into my definition of hero. Many, many others do as well, in ordinary situations too numerous and varied to even try to list. On that day and in the months that followed, all the world could again see and point to examples of personal heroism.

Finally America's young people again understood what heros were. Now, again, as when I was young, students actually see the heroism in ordinary people. We now realize that the neighbor who goes into the house of an elderly or handicapped neighbor when a fire is discovered is a hero; that the first driver on-scene at the collision of one or several other cars, who not only phones 911, but goes to check on the people, pull them out if possible, and begin artificial respiration if needed, is just as much a real hero.

There are even everyday people who can be seen as heros because they represent a valued ideal or simply treat others in such a kind and honorable way that they present a standard others strive to emulate. In this vein, many of us may consider our parents or siblings to be heros, especially after they are gone.

Heros--male or female--enrich our lives and enrich the meaning of life itself. They show us the very best of humanity. They give us hope that this world is actually a little better place that the newspaper and television tend to make us believe. If you believe, as I do, in a heavenly afterlife, it might be said that heros give us a little vision of heaven here on earth.

Drive my own life

2006-11-12T13:27:00.000-08:00

In many of my blogs, I have expressed a sense of loss for certain elements and attitudes of the America I grew up in during the 50's and 60's, but today's topic---Diane Ackerman's quote about not wanting to be a passenger in my own life---provides me the opportunity to celebrate one specific fabulous aspect of this America; that is our freedom as women of the late 20th/early 21st century to choose our activities and careers for ourselves.

As an American literature teacher, I have really enjoyed teaching Kate Chopin's very short story "The Story of an Hour." Chopin, in her time, scandalized society with her ahead-of-her-time willingness to acknowledge that women had ideas, dreams, and desires of their own. Most of my students today don't even understand the story without a second reading and some background information about the role of a wife in Chopin's time period. (They simply perceive the main character to be a selfish, unkind, unfeeling woman who never really liked her husband at all-----if that is what you thought also, go read it again, and pay attention to all the small details and their implications.) Those were the days when women were not even asked to share ideas with men in conversation, much less asked for input in decision making. One did exactly what one's husband suggested, cooked the foods he wanted to eat, went to the places he wanted to go, and otherwise stayed home having babies and raising them and doing the "women's work" necessary to keep the house running smoothly and in such a manner that nothing interfered with the master-of-the-house's peace of mind or digestion. Even if one had a very thoughtful & caring husband, the best she could expect was that he would do for her or buy for her things he thought she would like.

I really think my mother provided me with a wonderful role model of both ways: the first half of her life she was the driver of her own life, although she was a child in the first quarter of the 1900s. One of 11 children, they were told if they wanted a college education they must work their way through. Almost all of them chose to do so. But along the way she lived. At about 20, Mom and her next older sister booked passage on a steamer to Paris. Many were the stories she regaled my brother and me and my best friend with about the adventures of that trip. When they returned to the states she worked for money to go to college, then attended college on work-study programs. I believe she got her degree when she was nearly 30, but she also met Dad there, tho' they were not married until after he was involved in World War II. While he was overseas, she was employed by the government, living on ration coupons and working as a home demonstration agent, showing young homemakers how to stretch their money and foodstuffs to feed families while husbands were away. When Daddy returned, they started our family. At this point Mom became a typical 1950's full time wife & mother, like Donna Reed and Harriet Nelson. One might say she then became a passenger in her own life, but I don't look at it that way. This was a choice she made. She was home, showered and dressed, with dinner on the table when he came home from work; but in the daytime she was garden club president and active in the church in addition to getting the housework done.

I cannot imagine living the life my mother lived, even though I loved her in it and cannot wish to have had my childhood life situation any different. But my independence is something I value. Some might laugh that I believe myself independent, since I have been married to the same terrific man for over 35 years. But he was one of my early great choices. Another was the career that once I was led toward, I pursued with a vengence and further education. Our separate career choices actually may have provided me more personal independence than I expected or even wanted, because we have never worked the same schedules, but I am sure that has led to some of my feeling of being my own driver and decision maker. With my husband's support and endorsement, I even found a way to incorporate the dream of travel abroad into my life's work.

We women of today take the choices we are allowed to make so much for granted. Most of us never even consider what it would be like not to be able to choose the most basic aspects of each day, much less having major life choices made for us.

I thought of several quotes I really like about life choices and being in control of one's own life. Not too surprising, since music is another of the loves of my life, all the quotes I came up with come from songs. Two of my very favorite songs about living life to the fullest come from Garth Brooks songs:
1-- "Life is not tried, it is merely survived, if you're Standing Outside the Fire." (obviously metaphorical)
2-- "I could have missed the pain, but I'd have had to Miss the Dance"

I love the song Lee Ann Womack sang for her daughters, ..."and when you get the choice to sit it out or dance, I Hope You Dance."
And then there is the great one from Bob Dylan, contributed by my husband: "He not busy being born is busy dying."

Morning

2006-11-01T19:36:00.001-08:00

She gave a moment's thought to hitting the snooze button, but knowing she had carefully pared the alloted time to the absolute minimum necessary to do all required morning chores, get ready and arrive at the office on time, she hit the "off" button and rolled over the edge of the bed. As she swung her feet to the floor, she could hear "Chubby Lady" outside the bedroom door, already starting her morning chorus of encouragement to hurry out and "FEED us, Mommy! Feed us now!!"

It was a good morning so far: no headache, minimal morning congestion, no more than the usual stiffness that is to be expected when one is "older than dirt." Strip off the nightgown and head for the bathroom, then weigh in for the weight chart. Another chorus of loud meows from the ever-impatient-at-food-time porker reminds her to begin grabbing up the various food bowls as she makes her way to the kitchen. Outside lights off; TV on; bring "Little Man" in off the porch; roll his pill toward him and hope he catches it before it goes under the stove or refrigerator---that's one of those things that takes up time not in the schedule. "Come on, Mom, let's hear some kibbles hitting the bottom of those bowls."

Breakfast bowls down for all three cats, it was now time to sort out the vitamin & suppliment in 2 separate piles for herself. "Remember to take the vitamin C with the calcium, leads to better absorption of the calcium," she reminded herself; "and don't forget the glucosimine/chondroitin; but the multi vitamin goes in the after-cereal pile with the B complex and the E, never at the same time as the calcium."

Next the coffee maker has to be set up. But never vitamins with coffee. Mix together those high fiber cereals. Add some protein powder and the frozen blueberries. Those will thaw while she puts washes her face and puts on makeup.

In the bathroom she leans into the tub and splashes her face with the coldest water she can get from the tap. "Hello! We're truly up and moving. Good morning new day."

Bedtime stories

2006-10-29T15:59:00.000-08:00

"Daddy, time for prayers and our story," two young voices shouted from the back bedroom. Two or three minutes passed and the little girl shouted again, "Dad-deee, come on!"

Soon his footsteps were heard in the hall and his loving, humorous presence entered and warmed the room. Both children had the covers pulled up, he would tuck them in before he left the room. But for now, he laid down beside one or the other of them on that child's twin bed, and they talked for a few minutes, the three of them, about special concerns or problems, then prayers were said together out loud, then anyone could add a special prayer about individual needs. When the prayers were done, if it wasn't a school night or one preceeding an early or extra busy day for anyone, it was time for the story.

Next came the discussion of what story we would have tonight. If he was really lucky, we fell asleep before a story decision could be arrived at, and he didn't end up telling one. Sometimes we settled for a song, soft and soothing in his melifluous baritone voice. He had a short repetoire of songs and a larger one of stories, but of course our list of favorites was fairly limited. And most wonderful of all, Daddy seemed to be able almost anytime to create fascinating new stories.

It is my great sorrow now that there were no audio tape recorders for the average household in those days and that neither my brother nor I realized what a treasure Daddy's stories were. If we had, one of us might have transcribed a few of them. As I remember, the characters were usually thinking, talking animals or fish, with humorous "Everyman" kinds of names, who got into difficult situations in very ordinary ways (as children interacting with/being led by their peers might do) and who, because of some trait which might ordinarily have been considered negative---like a little male fish who was made fun of because he was smaller than his peers---was able to get into a place which no one else could fit into and get the key or unclasp a latch unreachable by all who were larger and thus save the entire group. The stories always had a clear moral and fostered self-reliance and self-esteem, although we didn't really understand that at the time.
Unfortunately, the bedtime story I remember best and in the most detail was not one of his original stories, but the story he told most frequently. I can't remember whether he told it most often because we begged for that one, or because it was the one that was absolutely guaranteed to put us to sleep. It was a story of a colony of ants who for some reason had to move everything they had stored for winter from their old home to a new one. When the story teller gets to that point, the entire rest of the story is: "and another ant came carrying another grain of wheat; and another ant came carrying another grain of wheat; and another ant came carrying another grain of wheat;......" ad infinitum. Sometime during the repetition, we would slip into sleep and Daddy would get up and tuck us both in and go back to his evening with Mother.

These are very happy memories for me and I'm appalled that I cannot remember more about specific stories. I was so excited about this week's topic when I read it, and had great high hopes; but I don't feel like I brought it together well at all. I wanted it to be a tribute to my dad and the fascinating, educational but fun stories he created, and to the special time that was bedtime when I quite young.

Good

2006-10-24T15:54:00.000-07:00

Many have mentioned songs using the word good. What pops into my head as old sing-song type drivel is a little poem I have NO idea when or where I learned, or why.
"Good, Better, Best. Never let it rest; til the good is better, and the better best."
A bit trite, but not a bad montra (is that spelled correctly? I have heard it said often but am not sure I have ever seen it written)

My initial and real thinking on the topic actually went a completely different direction, based, I am sure, on the fact that in the last 13 days, my mother-in-law (of 30+ years), who has really fought the good fight against cancer for the last 24 years, finally lost her battle to keep the demon at bay. That is not all bad, not when one has fought against such an adversary for more than one fourth of one's life, gone through chemo four times, and in between has tried to lead as normal a life as possible with husband, children, family and friends.

Wonderful relatives really came together for Mom's funeral and to support Dad. We had a gathering of cousins and aunts and uncles such as I have not seen since the last year we all did Christmas together in the early '70s, in the town where all 4 grandparents lived. After we laid Mom to rest beautifully, we were able to celebrate her life with laughter and happy memories. And thus my meditation on good:

Love is good. Love and faith are truly good. Little else is so wholly good. The love and support of family and friends in times of sorrow, stress, and/or need are literally the embodiment of good.

Pick a Super Power

2006-10-15T15:39:00.000-07:00

Freezing time is actually not a power I can ever remember wishing to have, stretching it maybe to get more done in the time available. But even that doesn't appeal greatly. I have heard somewhere, and I am sure I am not quoting it correctly, that whatever you are trying to do will expand to fit the time you have to do it in. Even with more hours in each day, I think I would feel I could never get finished with all I need/want to do.

Also, there are good times and not-so-good times and some downright lousy times in all of our lives. From my age and vantage point, it seems the America I was a child in was a much kinder, gentler, lovelier, cleaner place. But would I go back and do it all again? Not if you paid me big money. And I feel I have had a very good life. But going through it all once is enough. I suppose there are specific days and specific occasions I would enjoy re-living, and a few I would like to have a chance to do better. But as was made clear in Thornton Wilder's "Our Town," that experience might prove so poignantly painful we would regret having tried. On the whole, I think the plan already in place is better than I could come up with. In addition, there seem to be some possibly very scary things on the world's horizon. I think I don't want us to slow down for those.

As to what super power I would select:
"World peace" has always seemed a pretty hackneyed response, and the movie "Miss Congeniality" has made it even more so. But, truly, if I could have any super power, my choice would be the ability to convince all the people in the entire world of the absolute need and value of living by the Golden Rule; of truly, deeply, and sincerely treating all other people as they themselves would like to be treated. I would like to see everyone love and revere whatever deity or faith they believe in with their whole heart and being ---but not try to force it on anyone else--and treat all other people and their beliefs with honesty, caring, and most of all, with respect. If people truly treated each other this way, there would be no wars. (Just call me Pollyanna.)
I guess while I am downloading my choice of super powers, I might add to the power already requested some way of reinforcing my powers of convincing people, like providing each person a little implant that would give him/her a little reminder shock or jolt anytime they treated someone else in a way they would not want to be treated themselves, and a lesser prick whenever they thought unkind, judgmental things about others. There would be NO monitoring of these devices by anyone, they would be only to help people be aware of these thoughts and behaviors until they no longer experienced them at all.
Oh, well, you wanted us to dream creatively. Yes? Super Pollyanna---not a very grand sounding super name or super being. But very me.

character sketch

2006-10-10T08:15:00.000-07:00

With her slightly wild, long black hair flowing around, almost dwarfing her face, she scurried from table to table, overseeing the students and parents who were seated, filling out paperwork. Her long black dress swished around her legs as she moved between tables, intermittantly stopping to question or assist the families still trying to get their students registered on this first day of classes in the new school year. Every time she crossed through the entrance, her high heeled sandals clicked crisply on the uncarpeted area. None-the-less, things seemed to be bogged down, dragging.

I was here to show these new, but already late, students around the large campus and to get them to their appropriate classes having missed as little instructional time as possible. But I was just waiting around. In spite of her business-like manner, there was a pervading sense of inefficiency. Was she trying to do too much? be too many places at once? Why hadn't she lined more assistance, delegated responsibility? Even addressing the group as a whole for part of the process would have made better use of the time. Could it be that this new department head with a PHD didn't know some of the answers or necessary information and was trying to conceal that from all of us---students, parents, volunteers, even the other counselors??

I went to offer my assistance or to go get someone else from the office to help her. Her eyes were brilliantly turquoise and apparently kindly, but the kindness seemed superficial because there was no interest behind it. The eyes seemed to look at me, but she spouted only proper platitudes. She didn't seem either to hear what I was saying or to care what I was offering. Her polite but cursory response was a "thanks, but no thanks; don't break my concentration" reply, which made quite clear her feeling that only she could handle the situation and suggestions were not only unwanted but mildly annoying.

skin

2006-10-02T14:15:00.000-07:00

These are my scribblings on the only one of the Sunday Scribblings topics since the first of July which I failed to get posted. I know they are now much too late to post to that website, but I shall post them to my blog any way. I did not find this topic easy, but my thoughts went in a different direction than most I read. And I did spend some considerable time and thought on the topic.

"Beauty is only skin deep"
"Pretty is as pretty does"
These time worn adages which I am sure I heard from my mother more times than I can count, are the things that come to mind when I ponder this week's topic: skin.

Although attractive by most standards, my mother was not a classic beauty. In fact, she chose to go by her middle name because she considered herself to be plain-looking with a very plain and forgetable name; and she was smart enough to know she did not want to be invisible and forgotten. How laughable that seems to me now. No one who ever really knew my mom will ever forget her. Mother was beautiful from the inside out. She was a little dynamo, a ball of energy, bright and involved--in her church, her community and in her children's life. She was president of the local garden club, vice-president of the Women's Club, and one of our Girl Scout troop leaders 'til my friends and I completed tenth grade. Although Dad was also a deeply commited Christian and an extraordinary role model, it was from Mother that I mostly learned the true meaning of faith and trust in the Lord, who loves us infinitely and has unfailing interest in our everyday life, and who, if we ask, will help us every day. Although beautiful skin and hair and features are extremely nice to be blessed with, it is love and faith coming from inside that make a person beautiful.

I have known people whose physical appearance was breath-taking, show stopping; yet once I got to know them, some of these were NOT beautiful. And thus I am reminded of Oscar Wilde's classic novel, "The Portrait of Dorian Gray," about the beautiful but rakishly evil and dishonest young man whose vile behavior was reflected only on his face and body as it appeared in his portrait, until his death. (If you've never read it, you should.)

It is not Botox or plastic surgery, I recommend, although I strongly urge the use of sunscreen to preserve the skin. The beauty reflected in one's face needs to comefrom what is inside: from faith, laughter, deep caring for one's fellow man/woman/creatures of this earth, and a true love of and spirit for life.

Instructions---leaving a Permalink

2006-09-24T11:43:00.000-07:00

I had this wonderful idea when I first read the new topic, but it's now Sunday and I am just now getting around to writing it up, so I hope someone else hasn't beaten me to this one. I couldn't think of a better set of instructions to share with Sunday Scribblers than the one passed on to me by my never-met but friend none-the-less, Briliant Donkey. Laini or Megg explained what a permalink was not: your basic blog address. And from that I figured that what I needed to do was go to the right entry in my blog and copy down every letter and punctuation mark on paper then go to Sunday Scribblings and copy it fastidiously into the comment section. But my mentor BD came to my rescue,unasked and unsolicited, just because he is a good guy. I have found so many of those in this blogging "community"; it is a precious serendipity.

So, to those of you, who like me, are relatively new to blogging, those of us who did not cut our teeth on computers or learn our alphabet from the keyboard, let me see if I can help you learn how to "leave your permalink."

1. Write your message and post your new writing to your own blog.
2. Open your blog page and find the "Previous Posts" list of links, which is in the side bar on either the right, or possibly left, side of your posted messages. The new writing should be the name at the top of this list.
3. Click on the name/title of the new writing.
4. Left click on the address which this has brought up in the address bar at the top.
5. Right click and select/highlight the word "copy" from the drop-down menu this has produced.
6. Open the comment section for the new Sunday Scribblings prompt.
7. Put your cursor in the comment box and right click. This time select "paste" from that drop-down menu.
You may put other comments in the comment box either above or below your permalink. But this is the very most important part of what you leave in that box. Then Megg or Laini will be able to link each of our blogs to the master list without headaches or annoyance. And we will all once again enjoy sharing in the profound and delightful writings of our fellow Sunday Scribblers.

PS. Oh, please, Megg and Laini, I hope I have gotten this right and made things easier for y'all and not more difficult. If I have messed it up, please let me know either by email or in the comments and I will do my best to retract and correct.

research it

2006-09-18T11:25:00.000-07:00

I started with quite a diverse list of subjects I would like to know more about related to movies I have enjoyed. I was interested in the history and location where several of my favorite movies were made, interested because I would love to visit these places; I was also interested in what has become of some apparently very talented young actors who disappeared from the Hollywood scene after one or two good movies. I spent hours in research, an hour and a half on Friday evening, 3 hours on Saturday morning and another 2 hours Sunday afternoon. I read lots of interesting information---I enjoyed my reading on Google and wikipedia and particularly on the Somewhere in Time website--- but the specific questions I wanted to answer for myself and write about are still as much a mystery to me as when I began.

The closest thing JR and I had to a honeymoon was our R&R from his tour in Vietnam. We spent the week after our 1st anniversary in Hawaii. On the recommendation of a very dear and special friend who had also R&R'd there, I made our reservations at a truly fabulous place called the Hanalei Plantation at the north end of the highway around Kauai, "the Garden Isle." Supposedly the movie South Pacific (with Mitzi Gaynor; 1958, I think)was filmed there. The place was truly a paradise. I have always thought someday we would go back there again. Well, according to my research, we may go back to Kauai, but we will never go back to the Hanalei Plantation, because it doesn't seem to exist anymore. I researched the island of Kauai numerous places. Wikipedia was generally informative but not useful for what I wanted. Googling "movie locations" didn't help either, for altho South Pacific was listed, there was apparently no link. Finally I sent JR to the AAA office to get me a tour book and map. Hanalei Bay and its beach are still there, and now there is a town of Hanalei. The AAA guidebook does mention "the small beach along Hanalei Bay where Mitzi Gaynor sudsed her way through 'I'm gonna wash that man right outta my hair' in 'South Pacific'." But most of AAA's limited number of lodging options are condominiums. The very few hotels listed are good name chains. We actually stayed 2 places on Kauai, because our final night we moved to Lihue, to be close to the island's then only airport for our early morning flight back to Ohau. We stayed in another fancy, uniquely Hawaiian hotel that night, the Koko Palms. It doesn't seem to be there anymore either.

Next I worked on discovering whatever happened to the young actors who played Jem and Scout Finch, children of Gregory Peck's character Atticus in "To Kill a Mockingbird." Phillip Alford and Mary Badham didn't even have pictures listed. Each had done very few other things at all, Phillip more than Mary but all when he was still quite young. She,it seemed, had done some kind of an old/older woman role withing the last 10 or 12 years but it was a minor character in a movie I had never heard of and no information was given about her part but the character's name. But what I really wanted about both or either of them was a semi-current short bio. If such a thing is available, I never found it.

Finally, and with ever so slightly more success, I sought information on the Grand Hotel on Mackinac (sp?) Island, Michigan(?)where "Somewhere in Time" with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour was filmed. I found a fascinating 10 to 15 page journal entry by a lady who stumbled into a job as an extra on the movie and more than a passing acquaintance with its cast. I delighted in reading every page of her journal. But I basically found out zero about the history of that hotel which had been the true purpose for my research. The reason for my curiosity is that 3 weekends ago with a group of good friends, I stayed at the Bellview Biltmore Hotel in Clearwater, Florida. No one who has seen "Somewhere in Time" can fail to be reminded of Mackinac's Grand when you visit and explore this Bellview Biltmore, built in 1896 by Henry B. Plant, the railroad magnate (sp?). This lovely, but somewhat the worse for wear and recent hurricanes, wooden structure claims to be the largest all wood building in constant use for over 100 years. I also claims ghosts. I just really wanted to read and make my own comparisons between the two lovely romantic and historical hotels, with the focus of having stayed now at the one, planning a visit and exploration of the other.

I truly tried to do this assignment. I, also, enjoyed most of my research; although I must admit to being significantly frustrated. Probably if I were younger and more familiar with research on the internet, or with the internet in general, I could have found more. I hope what I have shared is interesting to some of you and teaches you something about subjects new to you. But, truly, I didn't learn much new.

never write--right!

2006-09-12T17:24:00.000-07:00

Sorry Sunday Scribblings. Everything I tried to write that I would never write made it that much clearer why I would never write it. I couldn't right it.

Fortune cookies

2006-09-01T19:32:00.000-07:00

While mentally playing with the Fortune Cookie idea, I remembered a poem I heard and loved and memorized when I was in elementary school. It mostly came back to me and although I have no idea to whom credit is due (I will try to Google it or see if I can check some other way before I finally post). I shall share it anyway but take no credit for its creation.
Three Wishes
I keep three wishes ready
Lest I should chance to meet
Any day, a fairy
Coming down the street.

I'd hate to have to stammar
And have to think them out
For it's very hard to think things up
When a fairy is about.

I'd hate to lose my wishes
For fairies fly away
And perhaps I'd never have a chance
On any other day.

So, I keep three wishes ready
Lest I should chance to meet
Any day, a fairy
Coming down the street.

I haven't thought of the poem in years, but I know back then I did keep 3 wishes ready---what were they? Who knows? Possibly one was for world peace and another for good health, happiness and riches for all I loved. But I do know the third. The third wish was always for more wishes, or as I believe I expressed it then: a wishing wand. As a child I thought that was really clever; now it sounds selfish, foolish and greedy. Needless to say, I never needed this odd little bit of preparedness. (Always the Girl Scout--then and now.) But I am convinced that had I met that fairy and gotten 3 wishes, my life would not have turned out any better than it has as a result of putting my hand in the hand of God and being let by Him.

Fortune cookies---they are a dime a dozen (almost literally). They are terribly generic and ambiguous. The best part of them now, as it seems to me, are the lottery number suggestions. But I don't use those often either nor have I ever won money on cookie numbers. But sometimes there is a little magic in thinking at the end of a very good day or a very lovely evening, that we ought to stop by the magic market on the way home and buy a lottery ticket. But we usually are tired and don't remember to stop. But I enjoy the little dab of sweet taste and the ubiquitous philosophical platitude at the end of a Chinese meal: the appropriate punctuation. I cannot imagine the meal without the cookie or the cookie without the "fortune."

Is it, maybe, that we keep, in fortune cookies and horoscopes and lottery tickets and wishes on shooting stars, just a tiny little bit of that magic we believed in as children?? If so, I think that's a good enough reason to keep enjoying them.

**********
Oh, fun!! Google gave it to me straight away and I had only missed about 4 words in one phrase (line 11), 'tho I had kept the meaning exactly. Google credits the poem to Annette Wynne. I fixed that line, so it reads as Ms. Wynne intended.

Monsters

2006-08-30T16:40:00.000-07:00

I grew up on 10 acres of wooded land on a lake, ten miles outside of a small town. When Dad & Mom moved us there, we had lots of snakes---rattlers (We lost our collie Lassie to one of those), water moccasins, an occasional coral snake, and a wide variety of harmless (if scary) black snakes, rat snakes, garden snakes and an occasional scarlet king. So it's no leap at all to guess the monster of my childhood was a fear of snakes under the bed. I still remember when we were quite young, anytime my brother or I had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, returning, we would dive back into our separate beds from as far away as we could be sure of landing on the bed, surely 2 feet away always, so we would be on the bed before the snakes could come out and strike/bite our bare feet.
When we got older--high school and college, now in our own separate bedrooms, I would still leap the last 12 or 15 inches to the bed out of habit or reminiscence or who knows... Though probably done with a bit of chagrin, it still seemed the right thing to do.
Mom and Dad are both gone now and none of us has lived there in more than 12 years; but I think probably if I were spending the night there again, I would still return to bed that way in the middle of the night. Then I'd lie there listening to the frogs and the tree toads and the crickets and the whippoorwills singing me to fear-free, snake-free dreams.

Monsters in my adult life--there are few, I'm happy to say. The worst of those is probably procrastination. But Hundred and One did such a superior job of writing that one up, there was very little left to say. Except, as I commented to her, that indeed it is a seductive monster about whom my most common response is the rationalization that I work best under crisis or deadline. But I like myself less for making the excuse and respect myself less because I have never learned to transcend its control over me.

My other deep frustration is the futility I, the original Pollyanna, feel about the direction our world seems to be headed with undivertable, lemming-like focus to somewhere unkind, irresponsible, and unwholesome that makes me want to cry.

Inner life of pets

2006-08-20T12:35:00.000-07:00

The little man (LM) is just turned 5 but he's still active and occasionally rambunctuous. He wears a belled collar because when he was really young he used to pounce on his elderly siblings and we felt it was only fair that they were clued in to his presence before they were fully under attack. He also still occasionally attempts to escape on us for an outdoor "adventure," and since he is mostly black, after dark that makes him nearly impossible to locate. The bell helps us then.

Chubby lady (CL) is, as the epithet suggests, overweight. She's soft as a bunny and doesn't like to have her attention solicited, but if you are nearly asleep on the couch, she dearly loves to gallop silently up and propel her bulk into your solar plexis. If you handle that with aplomb, she will settle down on your chest and stay as long as you can endure the weight.

Grumpy old lady (GOL) is our oldest, but newest resident cat. Although she has been with us more than a year and a half, she doesn't "play well with others." I believe this has to do with the fact that at her previous residence, she was a spoiled only darling; and, I believe, was truly totally clueless to the fact that she was something other that a much smaller, much hairier human. Having to face felinity has not come easy to her at all, and although I think she has come to accept she is one of "those" instead of one of the humans, she still will not deign to have ANY positive interaction with them at all. She hardly leaves our back bedroom/bathroom area where she has her own litter box and her own food and water bowls. Because my husband's work schedule requires him to sleep in the daytime, that room remains dark most of the day, so we also sometimes refer to her as "Bat Girl" and she squints at real daylight.

CL (dancing with delight in the hall outside the master bedroom at 6:30 am)----Meow! Meow! Oh, joy, I hear Mom's alarm clock, it's breakfast time. I know she loves encouragement and welcome to the new day. Meow, Meow, Mom, it's breakfast time, breakfast time, breakfast time! Come on, Mom, we're starving, not sure how we made it through the night. Come on Mom, pick up the bowls, I'll show you the way to the kitchen. Do you really have to pee? Underpants now, Mom?? Really! Who cares?? The kitchen is this way, Mom! It's breakfast time! Oh,joy! Oh, joy! It's breakfast time! Come on, LM, help me hurry Mom. She just keeps getting side tracked. Doesn't she know this is one of the 2 best times of the day??

LM---Okay, Mom, I'm ready to come in off the porch. You're the best, Mom. It's so nice to see you (as he repeatedly rubs his face on my ankles). Sure, eating now seems like a good plan. It'll get CL to shut up and you can finish getting yourself ready for school. You're the best, Mom. Thanks.

So it goes til all 3 are fed and shut in their separate eating rooms. Each also has his/her own sandbox, but those (as you know if you have cats)are not exclusive. As a matter of fact, it seems to be some accepted form of sibling rivalry to befoul each other's sand boxes. Little Man usually finishes eating first, and depending on his mood, goes back out on the porch or strolls off down the hallway to wait to go in to CL's bedroom when she comes out, to see if she has left any breakfast (FAT chance!) or to use her sandbox. While he is checking out her space, she runs, belly swaying from side to side, to the laundry room to see if Mom has been careful enough to pick his bowl up and put it on the washing machine where she can't reach it, becaus LM almost always leaves just a little bit in his bowl for a mid-morning snack later. But if CL gets to that bowl before Mom does, the snack is gone, Hoovered up, as it were. It's hard to speculate on CL's inner life. We have serious doubts about whether she has one beyond the 2 high spots of every day: breakfast and dinner, except the spectacular thrill she has when she is able to "score" an extra ration from one of her siblings. Sometimes Dad carelessly leaves the master bedroom door open without thinking about GOL's full food dish and sometimes Mom doesn't get it fully latched and one gentle head butt will get it open. OH, Joy!! Extra chow!

GOL is a picky eater and a snarky sibling. She wants to graze all day, or turn up her nose at what's offered all day. But whether the bowl is empty or hardly touched, when it's time for the next meal, she wants it to be her own decision; and if she catches one of the other two trying to eat her food--whether she plans to eat it or not--the sounds coming from the back bedroom indicate the wisdom of approaching with a whip and a chair. She puts up with Mom, cuz Mom's the feeder, but Dad is "the Man." She waits up for him to get home from work, then climbs on his chest and snuggles under his chin, rubbing her face on his beard; then stares lovingly into his eyes (which revives him with a start because it causes her wiskers to go up inside his nose). Living in the dark bedroom and sleeping "swing shift" hours has her eyes permanently dialated, so when she does venture into the rest of the house or, very infrenquently, out into the normally-considered-delightful screened porch, she squints, which makes her look grumpier than usual.

LM, altho the youngest and neutered, is the alpha cat. He, pretty much goes where he wants, in spite of slow and grumpy siblings. He spends most of his days on the porch, watching squirrels and birds, especially occasional cattle egrets, in his back yard. He still plays with toys and loses his finishing school manners about occasional "people food" treats. But he is about as good natured as a bored little boy in a house of "old lady" siblings can be; and when he does occasionally stalk or jump one of them, it's just because "I was just bored, Mom, and they need the exercise. They are just NO fun!"

Who else can I still be....

2006-08-14T19:16:00.000-07:00

I keep wanting to try poetry on one of these Sunday Scribblings, but my brain just isn't cooperating. The closest I managed this time resulted from my thinking just how many of my goals I have actually reached in this life. I ended up with a couple of lines from Frank Sinatra's "That's Life."
"I've been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn and a king.
I've been up and down and over and out, and I know one thing:
Each time I find myself, flat on my face, I just pick myself up
And get back in the race."
I haven't been all those things he mentions, but I don't think those are really things I have wanted to be. However, all in all, that's a terrific philosophy of life. We all have been a few things (like a pauper and probably a puppet) that we really wouldn't have chosen to be....but the truth is, it's hard to properly appreciate the "ups" in our life if there aren't "downs" to create contrast. Yet, through it all, we learn and benefit most if we just "pick [ourselves] up and get back in the race."

Please feel free to skip this next paragraph, because now that I have written it out it seems offensively saccharine and immodest; but I needed to list goals reached in order to arrive at what else I would still like to be and do.

Dreams reached---Roles held:
I am a wife and a mother and a Christian. These perhaps have enriched me most. I was a loving and I believe good daughter and sibling. I have had at least five deep, long, true friendships and those are treasures beyond price. I have had a long and fulfilling career. I have been, on a limited scale, a musical and theatrical performer. I've learned to play the piano (after I was an adult), although I never reached the level of success at it that I'd hoped for. I have drawn true delight and enlightenment from travel abroad, a dream of my girlhood, because I loved Mother's fabulous stories of her one trip to Paris. This was a dream I had almost given up hope of ever realizing when an unexpected window opened for me and I was able to go not once but about 11 times, taking students and sharing the experience with them. I have touched the lives of young people, predominantly, I pray, in a positive way; have shared my knowledge, my love of and enthusiasm for literature, music and theater, and, I believe, in some way have shared my faith, as well. In many areas I have had the good fortune to be appreciated; and, realizing how great that feels, I've tried to make others feel loved and appreciated too.
As I review the goals of my life that I have reached, I am awed by how blessed my life has been. And, I fear I am probably naseauating with my litany those of you kind enough to read this post.

If you skipped, you can start again here:
What else can I still be??

There aren't a lot of goals I still have on my list, and they sound quite selfish and not specifically noble and humanitarian, like I think was intended by the prompt of the week.
1. I'd like to see my child(ren)happily married.
2. I want to share Europe with my husband and help us both stay healthy enough to enjoy our retirement years.
3. Because of my love of reading and sharing literature with others, I'd like to pick up retirement spending money by reading "books on tape."

What else will I still be? I guess I really can say, "The Lord only knows."

Because I am really not very proud of this as a writing, I think I shan't post it to Sunday Scribblings. But, because I made a commitment to myself to write something every week for the SS prompt; because I worked hard on it, and find it, in a way, deeply satisfying; and because this is, after all, MY Blog, I shall leave it here at my published blogspot for anyone who wants to come and find it.

Who I might have been....

2006-08-06T15:18:00.000-07:00

I met the love of my life in college many long years ago. After we actually admitted that we were more than a simple infatuation--all we allowed ourselves to say for the first six months or so was "I'm crazy about you" or "I adore you"---for each other, and that we probably were NOT going to go our separate ways just because we were from separate states and his parents were not willing to pay out-of-state tuition another year, and we decided that we were not only going to find some way to be in school together for another year but were also probably going to have some kind of a future together, my love said to me, "Y'know, Cynce, if you get out of here with a degree in English literature, you're going to be an educated unemployable." Sorta sounded like a social disease.

I had never really worried about that. In truth, I went to college because at my house it was a given. Dad had his PhD and Mother, although she was one of 11 children, like 7 others of the 11, had worked (and paid) her own way through the university and had a Bachelor's degree. Where I went to school was my own choice as was what I studied, but that I would go to and finish college was "writ rite thare" in an invisible contract somewhere. Oh, I had played with a number of ideas. I loved English--reading and writing, music, and drama. However, I was honest enough to admit I was probably not talented enough at any of my beloved interests to make a living as a performing artist in any of them. I also knew the true committed calling in my life was to be a wife and mother---boy, does that make me sound "Donna Reed" and "Harriet Nelson." Also, I really understood that performer's lives and even business women's (I played in my head with being an interior decorator or a fashion designer, too) were not the kind of careers that could really be put on hold just any time to have children and raise them and then picked up again at will. So teaching had always played in the back of my mind because teachers of music and acting and writing have to be able to DO in order to teach how, and there would always be a need for teachers, and you could slip out and have kids and slip back in. But I always ended these verbal meanderings with a firm and often vociferous declaration that I'd never be a teacher because there was just too much paper work! I knew I wanted to travel--travel all over the world---so becoming an airline hostess was another of the things I considered. Dental hygeniest (good thing I didn't chose that since I don't seem to be able to spell it correctly) was my back-up possibility.

But at this point, with this wonderful man in my sights and the life of my dreams beginning to gel, his suggestion that I pick up the block of classes needed to be certified to teach which would give me a double minor sounded perfectly plausable and more that a little wise. I actually enjoyed the classes I had to take; and when I went into the classroom to do my intern teaching, I KNEW I was doing what I was supposed to be doing!!

Who might I have been if things had been different? I don't have any idea because, altho my life has not been perfect--nobody's is--there are NO major aspects of it that I would want changed. He came into my psych class late, after the professor had already made the seating chart. I had kept an empty seat beside me to put my books in. He was gorgeous---divers often are; and I decided I would rather put my books on the floor and have him sitting next to me all quarter. He helped me decide to become a teacher, and that and marrying him have surely been the determining decisions in where my life has gone.

For his own reasons, he chose to enter the Army before we married. We married on a military base while he finished Special Forces training. When we'd been married only 6 months he was deployed to Vietnam. What if he hadn't come back at all? What if hadn't come home whole both physically or mentally? Those things would have changed my life completely. But they didn't. It wasn't easy when he first came back, but between diligent effort and circumstances,we got through that. What if we hadn't? I would be different, perhaps I would not be around, it was the only time in my life I even mused on that awful option. But we worked through it and are still together and in love, so many years down the road.

What I guess I am trying to say is that altho predestination is not actually a part of the religious faith I have been a part of all my life, I believe it is part of my deep individual faith, that the Lord is involved in my personal life; that I don't want to play around with who I might have been because I am who I am supposed to be. Things happened and people came into my life that I might have the life and be the person I have become. I have certainly screwed up some of the minor decisions, but in the larger "flannel board" of life, I am who I am, doing what I do, living THIS life, because it is where God has led me to be. And, I like my life.

Thief....Who stole...

2006-07-23T18:48:00.000-07:00

Who stole the America I grew up in???

A favorite recirculating email for those of us over 45 reminds us of a time when we didn't need hermetically sealed aspirin and vitamin and drink bottles because no one had yet tried to poison a total stranger. It was a time when kids often went out to play in the morning and might be gone 'til suppertime, but didn't carry a cell phone and Mom felt no need to worry. If you fell from your bike or roller skates and skinned yourself up or even broke a bone, it was just an accident, your own carelessness, but it was your own fault, your own responsibility, (Now there's a concept: my fault! What has happened to teaching all people a sense of responsibility?) and the thought of suing anyone,especially the bike or skate company, never crossed anyone's mind.

But something, some philosophy or ideology, has robbed us of that responsible freedom. It has taken over gradually, stealthily, under the guise of giving freedom to everyone, of accepting everything---we've called it "political correctness" and "individual rights"---but along the way it was decided that the rights of the aggressor, the repeat attacker, even the criminal are equal or perhaps even more than equally in need of protection than those of the innocent, the "average," citizen. Our children are growing up believing that there really is no absolute right and wrong--"Anything goes"--so how does one know when and how to make a stand. Who can say what we should stand against or for? On any issue, someone will stand for the opposite side.

Where are the people who, if they saw anyone being bullied by a bigger kid or several kids, would go to the aid of the bullied one? Okay, if there haven't been many of those around for quite a while, what if the one being bullied is a friend, even a friend already defending himself? Wouldn't most of us still, if not jump into the middle, at least cover his back? Protect that friend from a second attacker from behind? This was definitely a part of my "America the beautiful" "land of the free and home of the brave."

Now, I did grow up in small town America, but as I remember it, nobody really much "hated" others, not gut-level hated. You might despise someone, never want to see that person again, but if you ever really wished harm to someone, it was a momentary thing, possibly even blurted out, but soon forgotten and never really planned or plotted. If you didn't like someone's ways or attitudes, you might just tell him so directly, but the opposing side was allowed to directly verbalize its opinions or defense too. There might be honest, if hostile, debate; then you might change your opinion, or compromise, or agree to disagree; but usually, you treated the other viewpoint with enough courtesy to listen.

I am rambling, and I am not sure how to get where I wanted to go. I wanted to say that the America I grew up in, and love to the very core of my being, is getting harder and harder for me to find.

Israel is the only democracy and America's only true ally in the mideast. Try for just a few minutes to consider an ally as a friend, or at least as a friendly personal acquaintance, one with whom you've had a positive working relationship. While this "friend" was defending herself and her own against a terrorist kidnapping by Hamas from the Gaza strip (recently returned in a gesture of peace), Hezbollah (Lebanese terrorists) attacked her from behind (her opposite border, less than 50 miles from the previous attack). She (Israel) responded with air and artillary operations in her own defense.

We have not gone to her aid. But there are people, an appalling number of American citizens, who want our President to tell Israel NOT TO DEFEND HERSELF. I don't understand!!!! It is, without question, a touchy political situation; but I cannot understand how anyone, much less lots of people, can object to Israel's defending herself, much less suggest that we ask her not to do so, but to surrender herself to annihilation.

Will it take a thief to steal America's freedom or will we simply hand it over? How far down the road might it then be, before these same whiney, politically correct "take care of us all, but don't rock the boat; and DON'T ASK ME to stand a post" American impersonators voice feelings that they would be happier and more comfortable if we didn't do any fighting here either--not even to defend ourselves. Because we don't want to offend ANYBODY, and surely, everyone ought to be able to live however he or she wants, as long as WE all keep getting what WE want.

But, in truth, it just really doesn't work that way! There is great truth and wisdom and a warning in the words of Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would trade liberty for security deserve neither liberty nor security."

"with Baggage"

2006-07-16T16:59:00.000-07:00

I have mulled this new topic over for almost 48 hours now and I really don't have much to say on this subject. Prewriting branched in 3 directions, none of which I was much motivated toward. I tried poetry, but it WASN'T; it wasn't even good free verse. So let me simply record some observations and conclusions I reached about baggage.
Some "baggage" is a part of every person's make up. Some baggage is physical and obvious---excessive height or the opposite, excessive weight and the reasons behind it (not so obvious), handicaps or physical dexterity, beauty or deformity; sometimes negative attitudes; sometimes lots of relatives; sometimes lots of "stuff."
Other "baggage" cannot be seen. Undoubtedly this invisible baggage is the more fearsome and intimidating kind. This is the kind of baggage that often shapes one's behavior and can cause unpredictable responses and apparently unfounded fears.

But in the final analysis, all people are the sum total of their attributes plus their baggage. When we make a friend, we eventually share with one another at least most of our secret baggage. If the friendship is valuable enough and important enough, we decide to keep that friend, baggage and all. When we fall in love and decide to marry someone, it needs to be with the full understanding that each person's baggage is part and parcel of that person we have come to love. Perhaps it is part of the "for worse" one agrees to accept as part of the traditional wedding vows. Regardless, this is a large part of the reason I deeply believe it is necessary to know a person WELL before marrying him or her, and why it is imperative also to be true friends, preferably before, but certainly in addition to being compatible lovers.

treading time

2006-07-12T10:30:00.000-07:00

just another interim noncynce blog to insure I don't forget how before Laini & Megg post the next Sunday Scribblings prompt. I have certainly discovered how the internet can become so time consuming. This week, Dear Blog (not nearly as alliterative as Dear Diary) I have learned how to successfully make comments on the blogs of others---at least I believe I have, altho I still have minor problems with some. But Monday i was so down. I read the Scribblings of about 15 other writers and made nice, specific, and not always brief comments on about 8 of them, only to discover when I checked back that none of my comments posted. Two days later, i have finally succeeded in about 90% of attempts. I have also discovered how nice it is to receive comments. I am also amazed to discover how many people who have traveled have fantastic and special memories of Paris, as i do.

2006-07-03T20:13:00.000-07:00

voila!!! and unreal!!! I has taken me 24 hour of reading and looking and clicking and screaming to figure out how to get back in here to add more and fix things --- the help notes were amazingly clear and to the point, they just assumed more technical or perhaps just vernacular knowledge than I had. I so did not want to pitifully beg for help from the young people I knew would know--I wanted to do it on my own. This was my last attempt and I was going to bed furiously frustrated, then I clicked on this one last unlikely word and it was "open sesame (Iknow that's not right)" and Shazam!! --and truthfully, I don't remember what it was---but I think I can find it again. So here I am with nothing real to say....but, hey, I'm a baby blogger, or a beginning one, or whatever they call the tiny little kid swimmers who are barely out of swim fluggles (sp?), a neophyte--there, that's a bit more dignified. Nite now.

Two peas....

2006-07-02T20:57:00.000-07:00

If I am going to start, I've gotta start somewhere.
Two peas in a pod: 1- identical twins--always thought I'd like to be one, wondered what it would be like, read articles about them with great interest, especially about their telepathic abilities, particularly knowing when each other were in danger or acute need, taught a few in my time; fascinating!
2- my high school best friend and I--did everything together from sixth grade through eleventh, even separate major roles in our junior class play, even lots of double dates, some we never should have accepted. But in 12th grade she made cheerleading and I didn't. That was the beginning of separate paths, although we thought of each other as "best friend" for another 5, maybe 10 years, and at the 20 year reunion, there were still classmates who called me by her name and her by mine.
3- my favorite, but least apparent--my husband and me: together and in love 35+ years--so unalike but so congruous,so copasetic. In so many ways we are opposites. He's a "body risker" and I don't want my challenges to involve life and limb. He's a tosser and I'm a "dyed-in-the-wool" pack rat ---ooh, that one causes lots of trouble. He was a rowdy, a maverick, an out of the house as soon as he finished high school. I'm an original "goody two-shoes" (where the heck does that dumb expression come from anyway?)--went away to college but never lived too far away to be there for Mom & Dad within 12 hours ("A son is a son 'til he takes a wife; a daughter's a daughter all of her life"). Extended family is important to me; yes, a visit to relatives in another state is a vacation. For him immediate family is the only "family" that entails any real obligation, and visiting out of state relatives (any of them)is wasted leave time and is only necessary for weddings and desperately serious illnessess.
But we have such fun together, and we laugh a lot! We enjoy the theater together and get off on road trips and hiking. We have a great time with trivia---I give clues, he gives answers I couldn't have come up with for hundreds of dollars, but as soon as he says them I know that they are exactly what I was trying to say. We love boating; and we love our pets together--laugh when they drive us crazy, and cry together when any one of them reaches the end of life. And, when we can, we exercise together. Our favorite, but not frequent (because of our opposite work schedules) is taking long, brisk walks around the neighborhood. We often hold hands. We always talk. Sometimes he reminds me that he often wondered, before we married, how anyone found anything to talk about after the first 10 or 15 years of marriage. Then he grabs my hand and reassures me that he wants us to take these walks together every day after we retire, so all the joggers and young moms with strollers and people working in their yards will look & wave as we go by and think, "There goes that cute little old couple!" We laugh.
Two peas in a pod---I'd like to think that's us.