The Thief in the Night

I spent a couple of nights at my sister's house recently. I luckily had some time to take off from work and I just wanted to get away from the smell of paint and wood stain (hubby is fixing up one of the bedrooms). It is almost always a nice retreat. She treats me so well, leaves me alone if I need it, talks if I don't want to, listens when I do. Their home is inhabited with my brother-in-law, a generous, super-intelligent, bookish sort and his dog. It is not and will never be her dog. She resented the animal from the moment it entered their living space and even though he has mellowed over time, she still resents him. Although, there are cracks in the grumbling lately. He will follow her up to her office occasionally and she will let him stay while she clacks away on the computer keys, figuring out ways to help people communicate.

I have never really had a problem with the dog. He was a little high strung at first, rambunctious and rowdy. He has an unnerving habit of "smiling" at you, curling back his lips to show you his canines. He doesn't growl when he does this. But I've never seen another dog do that without the growl and snap of jaws immediately following, so this expression usually stops me from petting him for a moment or two. Her husband thinks the dog is wonderful. He also assumes that he is smarter than he is, the dog not the man. Evidence to the contrary abound, but, my intelligent BIL just doesn't see it. One thing the dog used to do was grab things off horizontal surfaces and drag them under a coffee table in another room. There he would rip, shred and demolish whatever it was, mostly eating it at the same time. It didn't matter if it was edible or considered food. My sister despaired of ever deterring this  behavior, and in her husband's defense he didn't like it either (maybe because he lost a pair of sunglasses or two) They tried lots of things to make him stop:  squirting him with a foul smelling substance whenever he did this, yelling, whacking, and eventually just moving everything they thought he wouldn't be able to wrest from the surfaces to another place. Because he's older now, he doesn't do this with any regularity. He has taken this habit though to a different level. As an example, I was sitting on the couch reading. I had taken off my shoes and curled my feet under a throw to keep them warm. The dog came over for a pet or two, which I obliged, but I decided that I was done and commanded him to "go lie down." You don't say please to a dog, it confuses him, or at least this dog. Anyway, before shuffling off to lie down, he reached down, picked up one of my sneakers in his mouth and shuffled off with it in his mouth. Depositing it in front of him after laying down under the coffee table. He didn't maul the shoe. He simply put it down and looked up at me as I stood to retrieve it. I took the shoe back and placed it next to the mate, but he didn't come back for it. He just made his point.

In the morning the following day, I was getting myself ready to go downstairs and realized one of my slippers had vanished. It was next to my suitcase on the floor when I crawled off to bed the night before. I opened the door to the guest bedroom and saw the slipper next to the door. Sure enough, my sister told me the dog had entered the room while I was sleeping, picked up the slipper and taken it downstairs and placed it under the coffee table. Not mauled, not shredded or mutilated. Just placed there to be found the next morning. The next day I was packing to leave. I had placed my pajamas on top of my suitcase and gone into the bathroom to brush my teeth. I came back in the guest room and the bottom pants of the pjs were no where to be found. I walked downstairs to the coffee table and there in a lump were my pj pants. I appreciated his not ripping them or otherwise damaging them, they are one of my favorites. I marveled at his kleptomaniac tendencies and how they had evolved. No longer destructive, just sort of benign attention getting. I could live with that and evidently they are. After all he's still there, under the coffee table, looking out.

The Girl Within, The Woman Without

I had the opportunity to sit in on a discussion with some young ladies the other day. It was enlightening and yet not. Some things never change. Some dorky big guy guffaws his way through class making fun or putting down the feminine species. It's just a big joke to them. The put downs. But their comments can hurt. And what is truly amazing is that it doesn't dawn on these Neanderthals that these young ladies will remember the name calling and the dismissive snort far longer than they will remember doing it. They will remember and the guys better hope one of these smart, funny, savvy people doesn't become their boss, or well, let's just say payback is not always a pleasant thing.

The other thing I noticed is this:  although I am significantly older than these young ladies, we all had kind of an aura around us which was obviously learned from somewhere that we are not the power holders. We are the power seekers. We strive and strain and lurch our way to some goal feeling all the while that we have to be better, faster, more somehow, than our male counterparts. Why is this? Who taught us this? Where did this model come from. My mother, a product of the '50's mentality, had this as part and parcel of her upbringing, but I don't remember her beating it into me. I grew up with Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinheim and bra burning. I am woman, hear me roar, remember those words? We sang them with gusto. We believed them! Then we got older and it was harder to live up to those ideals and promises. We had careers but we may have stopped to raise kids, or we raised kids and kept the career and there we were being pulled so many different ways that we even forgot there was something we were striving to do! How did that happen? You can let someone have power over you, we were told, or we could show our own power and shove back. Are we shoving back? Not so's you can tell. The power still seems to be in someone else's court. And the bullying, blathering big guy with the big mouth is still leading. I don't like it, I don't like it at all. Something's got to change. We need a new Helen Reddy with a new anthem. Something to move these young ladies to go forward. Something we older women can get behind and push for them. What do we have? I don't know. I'm still looking around. And I'm not feeling hopeful at the moment.

Reading the Obits

It's Saturday morning and hubby and I are perusing the papers. He is reading the sports. I am reading the comics. Perhaps this is symbolic? I don't know, its just how it is. Anyway, after looking at the sports he goes on to look at the local happenings and then the world stage. I will go on to read the advice columns, the entertainment news and then on to the obituaries. I don't read them with hope of seeing someone there, honest! I read them for lots of reasons. I scan them first to see if any names pop out at me, people I know who have been very sick or I haven't seen for a long time. I look at the small section that lists people who are famous or at least seminally so, to see if I recognize their accomplishments. I don't study them and usually don't read any in depth unless there is a particularly long or flowery one. Sometimes it seems like the paper will group them into geographical regions, I'll see more on one side of the river than on the other some days. I never asked if this was the case, I'm not obsessed with obits, after all. Just curious. I could branch out at this point and begin to wonder what it was like when the deceased "crossed over", but that isn't the direction I wanted to go in today.

I saw a name I recognized today. I lived in a small town growing up. It bordered another small town, but this one boasted the area high school that my siblings and their friends and my husband and his siblings all went to. If you lived in either of these small towns you went to this high school. You dated people from this area and I know many people never left the area, settling permanently with their spouses to raise children who would also go to this high school. I took the road less traveled and attended the vocational school during my high school years. But the guys from the next town were the available guys to date, so even though I didn't go to school with them, I dated some of them. One of those guys lost in memory...his father passed away. I saw the name, read the obituary and was transported some 45 years back to a time when I knew the son. Knew his wavy brown hair and luscious chocolate brown eyes. Knew that when he smiled, there was a little dimple in his cheek. Knew the roguish twinkle in his eyes and knew NOT to be alone with him in the next room, tempting though it might be. How could one name bring all that back with such clarity? I have no idea. It's happened on more than one occasion. This guy and two of his other compatriots were part of a sphere of my adolescence that changed me from the young girl in elementary school to the young lady of high school. They didn't do anything special, there wasn't some breakthrough moment or some heart-rending tragedy which embedded these guys in my brain. They were just there, helping me without knowing it, to be part of growing up in a small town. I felt sorry for this guy I used to know. My own dad passed away about 25 years ago and it's not an easy thing to lose your father. Of course, being me, I thought I should send a card. But really? A card? From someone in this guys very distant past who probably wouldn't recognize the name even if I signed it with my maiden name. No, a card was a dumb idea. But I offered sympathy in my own way. By writing down my thoughts in this blog.

Sorry for your loss, Vince. Take care. It'll get better.

Winter Doldrums

The air is stale
With the perfumed air
Of poinsettias on the sill
They're drooping you see
From the past revelry
The holiday long been fulfilled.
The plants are distressed
As they peek through the mist
Of the fogged over windows
Of winter
Looking out in the night
 Of the last rays of light
Remembering highlights
Of summer.
The sigh of the plants
With the mistress's rants
The scorning of earlier lamplight
It's hard now to toil
For the scent of the soil
Buried so solid with snow.

A Brief Moment

As so happens, once in a while, a moment in time is arrested and it can be stunning. The instant of time is never anticipated. It's never a documented moment usually (no matter how many You Tube videos you see). When you hope for such a second of time, it never happens. You could wait years, and it suddenly, serendipitously just occurs. Usually in those brief milliseconds there is an underlying truth revealed, either about yourself or a circumstance you have resigned yourself to. Suddenly, anything is possible. Now, just as suddenly, the next second, you find reality is standing next to you shaking it's head and whispering that this shining moment of clarity was an illusion. And most of the time your inner self believes it and the next breath you take is the same old, stale air you've been sucking down for the last millennium. Only occasionally, do you dare to ignore reality, and believe the impossible. And when you do that, life is forever changed.

I'm Not as Young as I Used to be, But Still

It's snowing once again in the Bubble. This time, though it's that heavier, slushy stuff. It's been spewing the white stuff since 8:00 am this morning. I do believe that it's slowing down, now though. Running out of--steam? That doesn't sound like the right word. Running out of moisture. This winter so far, we've had more snow falls than any other. Sometimes I like hearing about records being broken, like in the Olympics. Snow fall is not a record I care to beat. I was outside clearing off the deck and front steps a little while ago. Because it rained before changing over there is about an inch of slush you're lifting along with the white stuff. As I grunted with the effort, I thought of the neighbors around us. There was a time when we were the "new kids on the block". Our kids and the neighbors down the street grew up together. But that isn't true any longer. Our kids are grown up and have moved away now. There are new families with young children and I realized, we're the old people! We're the folks the younger ones look after (we do that in our neighborhood). The youngsters wave to us, ask us if we need anything, and blessedly, shovel our walk without asking for money! The nice young man with the snow blower came out when he saw me, fired up the machine and cleared a path out front in no time at all. Last snow, I gave him money for the gas for his machine. This time I just thanked him profusely and went inside to watch him. Of course, my hubby was slightly insulted that some younger guy came over and did the sidewalk. "I'm going to do it when it finally stops," he huffed. I just patted him on the arm and told him he could still do the long driveway full of stones. And I thought, "we're the old people on the block now." And it's still snowing.

Noise is Everywhere, I guess

I'm going to vent. But before I do, some disclaimers. We are empty-nesters, hubby and I. We make very little noise since no one is here to hear it. We go about our everyday chores and hobbies with an occasional crossing of paths, but really, he's retired, I'm not, so we are companionable in our separate paths for the most part. Also, you should know that I like this most of the time. I enjoy our solitude pockets. When we do sit down to a meal or to watch the television (even if I'm reading and he's watching basketball), we converse and make jokes intermittently.

But he has to have noise. Almost all the time. If he's working on a project, he has the radio on. If he's eating a meal, he has to have music on.  He listens to the local news station as if his life depended upon hearing the same weather, traffic/transit (he isn't going to work, why does he care the traffic conditions?), and top stories every few minutes. I'm not here most of the time, so it doesn't matter, really. But this is his modus operandi at all times of the day. For some reason though, Saturdays are the worst. For the past bazillion years he turns on some station that plays weird music. Scat stuff or new wave cacophony. Saxophone symphonies. Clarinet and piano pieces that go all over the map. Sometimes I catch a melody from some old song, but most times it just goes on and on until suddenly it stops and something else comes on to mutate before our ears. Our routine on Saturdays is that we get up basically before 8:30 and I make eggs and Spam. As we eat, we look over the papers from the morning. But I have to say some Saturday mornings, it's all I can do to not stand up and throw his iPad through the window. He enjoys this noise I know. He looks forward to Saturday mornings with anticipation. Why don't you turn off your hearing aids, I hear you ask. Well, remember that conversation piece I told you about while watching TV? It's the same for reading the paper. We share snippets of things we saw of interest, or funny things we've read. I don't want to miss the conversation, which I would if the electronic ears were off. But I really hate this sound in the morning,  mornings are when I am my most grumpy, uncommunicative and cranky. He doesn't understand some days when I go into the living room to sit in the blessed quiet while the radio continues to blather on and on. I have explained my annoyance with this radio station, but he likes it, you see. And well, we do live together and have for 35 or more years. He doesn't ask for much. He isn't a mean person or vindictive. It's a small price to pay once a week to be in his company with something he so obviously enjoys. And so here I am in the living room writing on the blog waiting for the crinkling of the newspaper to cease and the never-ending noise to stop as he realizes that I'm no longer sitting across from him. He'll go upstairs to get dressed and our routines will continue as they have for years. And its quiet now. Until the next time he turns on the radio.

Christmas Stays The Same

I am inundated with Christmas songs! Growing up with Frank and Bing and Ella and even Burl Ives singing songs of the season, they helped to shape my "music appreciation". But I like Buble and Barenaked Ladies and even the Chipmunks. Especially the Chipmunks! Music is the icing on the cake of the holiday. Hymns are hummed and jingles are jolly and my cd player in the car is on from the moment I climb behind the wheel to the destination and even just to sit in the garage and listen. 

A few years ago, I can't even remember where I heard it first, someone played the song, Christmas Stays the Same sung by Linda Eder. I liked her voice and I thought I kind of liked the lyrics, but I wasn't sure what they were. I had to look them up. The are below. You really can't appreciate the song unless you hear her sing it. Really. It just doesn't do justice to the lyrics until you hear her phrasing. It has become one of the most favorite of my Christmas songs. It makes me yearn for the days of baking in the kitchen with my mother and dancing with my father in the living room. It makes me want to be that kid again, just for a minute or two. Give it a listen if you get a chance. It's haunting!

Santa Claus and mistletoe, carols by the fire
Send a card and spread a little Christmas cheer
Silent night a fall of snow listen to the choir
Everyone is happy that it's here

For we all remember, some past December
Of tinsel and holly and people we love
Put the angel on the tree then enjoy the view
Wait until the children are asleep and then

Put together all the toys, hide a gift or two
Wishing you were just a kid again

For we all remember, some past December
Of train sets that whistled and dolls we could name
Oh, the years may change
But Christmas stays the same

Turkey and gravy and hams full of honey
Cousins you see once a year
Fathers who scold you then slip you some money
And roofs full of tiny reindeer

Yes, we all remember some past December
Of grandmas and kitchens with kettles aflame
Oh, the years may change
But Christmas stays the same

Songs of the Season, Part I

Christmas songs play in my head almost all year long. There are certain songs that seem appropriate for almost any occasion. I'm not a singer, so those around me are not tortured with my vocal renderings of these songs. Jingle Bells pops up with alarming frequency in the strangest of circumstances (in a line of traffic, in a line at the grocery store, in fact any place I have to wait for a period of time). Most of these songs I have heard a bazillion times throughout my life. I recall as a child hearing on our little transistor radios a Christmas song or two interspersed with the rock n'roll stuff blaring in our ears constantly. Christmas Eve was the time when our dad would put on his radio station in the living room and we would be inundated with renditions of holiday favorites sung by Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Perry Como and the like. His radio station went 24 hours with Christmas songs and was only one of a few that did it. I even remember a TV station that showed a picture of a log perpetually burning in a fireplace as the holiday songs filled the airwaves. No commercials. It was amazing.

My husbands eclectic collection of holiday songs includes things from Dr. Demento with vocal renderings from the Three Stooges to Adam Sandler (and some Hanukkah songs as well--nothing is sacred to that man!). But songs like, "White Christmas", "The Holly and The Ivy", and yes, even "Jingle Bells" are still the ones I listen to again and again. My daughter has a lovely tradition she has started (and I hope continues, hint, hint) of creating compilations of holiday songs. It's a gift I look forward to every year as these CDs follow me in my car from place to place. They are varied and contain old and new artists, old and new songs, funny and serious. She has a lovely ear for music and weaves these treasures with a sure hand and good computer filled with thousands of songs. I usually pop in the one from the previous year (or sometimes more than a few years back) while traveling to stores and even to her house to refresh my memory of the tunes she's added or subtracted. Her selections fill my head (and heart) as soon as Thanksgiving draws near and well into January, I'm still playing them.

In the next few weeks, I hope to select some songs that bring the holidays into focus for me. I hope you will hum along with my words as I wander about the season.

A Difference in Temperature

I'm doing a first this weekend; I'm visiting my daughter overnight. I came down yesterday with bag in hand and a sense of anticipation. I haven't done this before in her new house. I was looking forward to hearing about her recent experiences camping with students and not having to rush home. We had a leisurely dinner, did a little shopping and came back to her place to watch the kitties have "Wrestlemania" , which they apparently do most nights. The weather was due to change overnight as a cold front was pushing through. My daughter, ever mindful of my propensity to freeze easily, loaded up my bed with not one but two quilts. When we went to bed, I was confident of being warm and cozy.  I woke up several times so warm I thought I was as done as a turkey on Thanksgiving. I rearranged the quilts and tried to go back to sleep. That's when I noticed how dark it was. Really dark. I'm used to street lights or even neighbors house lights. Not here. It was dark. And suddenly I felt cold. So I turned the light on and rearranged the quilts again. But now I wasn't sleepy. I grabbed my trusty iPad next to the bed and read for a while. I nodded off at some point and realized I was at 400 degrees again. I again, flipped the topmost quilt off and turned off the light and tried to sleep. It was really quiet out here. And did I mention dark? I lay there for a while staring at the window. I began to feel drowsy. I turned over and tucked my arms under the quilt, it was cold. Should I grab the other quilt again? At this point I think I was just too tired, so I drifted off to sleep dreaming of winter. My daughter and her husband like their house cooler than I am used to, but it was not artic by any means. I guess the blood just doesn't flood as fast or something.

I awoke earlier than she and watched the sun coming up over the trees which surround her backyard. It was a restful and pretty sight and I'm glad I was here in the morning to see it. Next time I think I'll bring long sleeved pjs with me and maybe a night light.

Menacing Mailbox

At what size does a spider become a menace? No, really, this is a real question. Yesterday there was an innocuous little arachnid on the pristine wall of the bathroom. Really small, like less than a millimeter-the whole thing, legs, body everything. I took the hair dryer I was blowing my hair with and turned it on him to blow him somewhere else, where I wouldn’t have to look at him. He didn’t creep me out. Didn’t make my flesh pop out in goosebumps. Nothing. I saw this same spider again this morning. Same thing. Now, I admit, there was a time when I would have handled this a little less calmly. I would have gone straight to the “smoosh” mode. But I’ve matured. I’ve come to not get hysterical just because something has 8 legs and is walking on the wall.

BUT, also this morning, I went out to retrieve the morning paper. Upon coming back to the front door, I realized that there was one of those gauzy spider webs on the mailbox attached to the wood next to the front door. It  has been there before and I keep knocking the web down with the broom and it keeps coming back. The mailman yesterday informed me he thought it was part of the Halloween decorations. It isn’t. I would never use even fake spider webs to decorate anything. It’s not in me, sorry. Anyway, seeing this creepy wispy web on the mailbox again and I began to make a pass with the paper picked up, you know, brushing it away again. But I was arrested with a sudden glimpse of a leg. One of eight. It was brown and significantly longer than the millimeter shortstuff in the bathroom. It was not a “daddy long legs” spider, which I don’t seem to have a problem with either. Nope, this was a junior tarantula. I stood stock still at the size of the thing. There was another leg visible as I got closer to the door. It seemed enormous. Those goosebumps I didn’t have with the guy in the bathroom, they leap all over me. This thing could eat me for breakfast I thought.

In all honesty, it could not. It would run away, right? It wouldn’t run up the broom handle (which I did see a spider do in one of those stupid documentaries about spiders—this kind lived in the jungle—not in suburbia). It wouldn’t jump out and attack me, right? But of course, it could. You know animals do protect their territory. It could come at me, menacingly.

So I’m left with the question. Why did the little one in the bathroom not bother me, but the gargantuan on the mailbox make me want to go to the back door to get back in the house rather than confront it? What size becomes menacing? I’d really like to know.

The autumn of my discontent

I really don't know what the matter is really. A general sense of life going by plodding as well as streaking--how is that possible? Each day I am done at work, I gratefully come home, put my feet  and play a few computer games and suddenly it's time for dinner, then clean up, then fussing with the next days wardrobe, then blissful sleep. Only to awaken the next morning to get ready for work, go there and begin the cycle again. It's not taxing, it's is sort of mind numbing. All of a sudden a week has passed! Plodding and streaking, see whatnI mean? I decided I needed a new hobby, something to occupy my mind. I began reading up about it and voila it was time to go to bed and then back to work, and, well, you get the idea. I'm still hoping for a new hobby or outlook or something. But right now? I'll just sit here and read or play a few games. It's not dinner time, yet, is it?

The Other Side

The above phrase can mean a host of things, can't it? It can mean the opposite of something, but usually said, "on the other hand." It has been used to mean the other side of life, or merely a side different from ours. It's a great balancing statement--looking at both sides of an issue can either bring clarity or confusion. I'm using it geographically today, though. I'm onthe other side of the country than my usual dwelling place. A place different from my everyday experiences. A place with a bunch of new circumstances and well, challenges. Adventures even! When we got here it was tiring, but exciting to see new places and see loved ones. The challenge comes in remembering all the things necessary now for the everyday-ness to seep into the new day, so we can enjoy everything on this other side.

Ther are medicines to take, foods to avoid, routines that are now a part of that life that we live on the "other side" that have to translate to the situations here and now. We didn't have to do that before. "The againg process" hubby is fond of calling it. Oh, well. I'll be posting more later, unless I get too busy from the Other Side.

Twenty Seven Years ago tomorrow

I developed a playlist not too long ago for my iPhone. It has some of my most favorite songs on it (and very few musical numbers, I might add). They are songs that make my feet tap and bring a smile to my face. Once I learned how to manipulate the music portion of the iPhone, I was ecstatic about being able to bring this music with me. I think I will post about some of the songs as I go along on this blog, but today I zeroed in on one of the songs that came up while listening. I was so flooded with memories of my son as an infant hearing that song, I almost couldn't see the keyboard. He's a young man now. Accomplished and smart. And living far away. Unless you have had children and had them move farther than a couple hours away, you really can't know that ache that assaults you from time to time. You long for them even though you know they are well fed, sheltered and surrounded by friends.

To get back to the song, though...picture if you will a mom with two kids. The little girl, a delight, really, as she loves life and everything she encounters, is out somewhere. Can't remember where, probably following the neighbor around peppering her with questions. This mom, me, is doing those things that mommies need to do throughout the day especially since there is another child who  is still an infant. He's probably a few months old, maybe 5 months, still in those little onesie things with feet and snaps. He is a different baby from the sister. He doesn't want to sleep very much. When walking him around he prefers to be face out instead of snuggled beneath the chin. He is not cranky as much as awake and aware of things.  He observes. He smiles and waves, if you wave first. The mommy is futzing around with things in the house when she decides she would like to listen to some music. She had purchased an album by John Denver and there are some good songs on it which might make the cleaning and other chores pass a little more quickly, so she puts on the album, listening sort of half way to the tunes. The little boy is fussy in his infant seat, so Mom picks him up to determine what the problem could be. He doesn't need to be changed, he burped after feeding so that can't be it. She begins the dialog with him as always, "what's going on, sweetie? What's the matter?" Except its not a dialog, since he can't talk. She faces him out the way he likes, but still he seems restless. She sits on the couch, bouncing him on her knee a little, thinking this will help. John Denver begins singing a song that sort of rocks along and is sort of "waltzy", has that 1,2,3 beat pause thing going on. She, on impulse, picks him up to dance, facing in this time. He fits so sweetly under her chin. His little hand clings to her fingers as she waltzes around the living room and soon, before the last strains of the song are done he has settled. He's not quite asleep, but so content (as is she) with their slow dance. The mom quickly turns off the music and places him in the crib for perhaps a few quiet minutes of sleep. But that dance is forever in her mind. And so is that music.

I have loved the song, "Cool and Green Shady" since that morning. And it brings back a few precious memory of a little boy and a mom who danced with her favorite little boy tucked on so gently under her chin.


Happy Birthday Son. Love you always.

Summertime

Think back, if you can to the days of childhood, when summer was endless. From the time school let out until the time you were fitted for pinching shoes and crinkly crinolines, the golden days were yours to master. Running, jumping, spitting, roller-skating, bike riding or laying in the grass and watching the bulbous clouds form make-believe animals, they were endless. Stretching out into the horizon like riding a wave of ribbon with no end to the spool. From the time you woke up in the morning, energized in a way that was impossible all the rest of the year, to the time you crashed back on the pillow; there were things to see, do, inspect, watch for hours at a time. Time was all we had to worry about. And there is the thing that eludes us as we, the adult have six million things to worry about during the summer and beyond. We don't have those endless days anymore. We have endless worries, problems, situations, concerns. They string along like beads on that endless ribbon we rode so carefree as children.

But we get blips now and then, wrinkles in the ribbon, in between the beads. Those nights of balmy, breezy, soft summer nights. When you laugh with friends, share a good bottle of wine or beer, listen to the katydids and for one chunk of time, just be. Eating ice cream (or frozen yogurt) and remember how it was to just enjoy the summer, on a nice summer night.

Retirement Day

We knew this day was coming. It had been planned for weeks and weeks and weeks. The replacement person is in place, the desk has been emptied of all of his traces. The pinging of the Blackberry will trouble his sleep no more. I tried to observe how he was taking his last day of work, since asking rarely evinces a response. He seemed the same as he always is. He did say it will be a shorter work day. After the exit interview there is no reason to stay. He is a practical man, when all is said and done. I took him to the train station this morning as I have done for the last five years and I will pick him up from there whenever he calls to tell me he's on the way. But it is the last day of this ritual for he and I.The funny thing is, even though it's his last day, the computer at home which notifies him of his emails is pinging away as if the world was on fire and he has the only water source. I'm hoping that the constant sound is actually the ringing of endorsements of what a fine man he is and the quality work he has done and he will be missed. I am sure he willed be missed for his sense of humor, his no-nonsense way of working and getting things done, his calmness in the face of a storm (or a bosses anger). I know all these things are true of my hubby. I'm hoping on the last day of employment at his current job, they will recognize and celebrate this about him as well.

I'm Hiding, I'm Hiding

The above is a first line from a children's poem I memorized a very long time ago. Recently, it was on the periphery of thought that hiding seems like a safe alternative to, we'll, just about everything.  As we were so forcefully reminded a couple of days ago, the world is a dangerous place. If we hide out, then no one can "get" us.

When I think of this "lock-down" mentality, it certainly has an appeal. No one can get in, so no one gets hurt. But see, life doesn't work like that. At least mine doesn't. I need to let people in--family, friends, the hurt and lonely. I see people that just need to know that someone--ANYONE--cares. And how do I just sit back and watch them think that?

I'm going to get up on my soapbox now, so you can change the channel anytime you'd like. I think we need to remind each other of the basic good. We get these big knocks on the head about he "bad" people, where's the dink on the head about the good people? We saw such goodness right after the explosions, as the paramedics rushed in, and the police helped out. But how come this caring, good stuff gets celebrated only in disasters? I think most people are walking around basically good. I think people are helping out all the time. Where's the headline about them?  Is it because its so commonplace we don't think it's extraordinary any more? No, it's because, I guess that this bad stuff is so wrong we can't believe it. Believing people are good is easier or something.

I'm not sure of the point I'm making here. I'm still processing my thoughts. But I don't think "I'm hiding, I'm hiding" is the way to go to deal with this.

You Never Know

You never can know who influences things or how things stick in someone else's brain. I had a delightful experience a while back when someone remembered that I used to host a "mother's group" at church. She said it helped her get out of the house and her own head some days. I didn't think it had much of an impact, but it did to someone.

One of the things I do at my work place is have one of those day by day calendars. Just a stock one. Nothing fancy or animated or even in color. But each day I put a quote on the space underneath the date. People visit my desk throughout the day for various reasons, but almost always someone sees that there is a quote there and they read it. Sometimes they get it, sometimes not. We have interesting conversations about the quotes and some who have visited come back later and tell me they read something else by the author and found them to be a) enlightening, b) not as erudite as the quote or c) somewhere in between. I usually don't pay attention to things like the summer solstice or Flag Day and just randomly put the quotes on the days in the order I either found them or like them. There is no rhyme or reason, just whimsy.

Now tomorrow I will go to a doctor and have a hearing test. It is beyond question, one of the things I most hate to do. Because it will not be a positive test. I'm sure of it. I have nerve deafness. It won't be cured, it won't get better. So each time I have a test it just reminds me that I have something I can't fix in me. Something that is not working that I can't bind up or put antiseptic on or anything else to make it go away. I come home grumpy from these tests ALWAYS. So as I sat at my desk today, readying it for tomorrow morning I looked at my calendar and flipped it over to tomorrow. And there was a quote from someone whom I admire. She is not flamboyant  in her writing or her lifestyle. But she wise and  warm and I found her on-line when my brother suggested I read her blogs. The quote for tomorrow reads:  "Attitude is the only thing you can control. You have a choice every morning when you wake up. That's a gift."

She wrote that after getting shot. Read that again, please. She wrote that after getting shot in Arizona, holding a little girls hand. She is telling me (and by extension everyone who reads her) that I can control my attitude. I may not be able to fix that test result. Or even my ears. But how I react to those things, that's up to me. I can control that. I don't have to whine or cry or beat my chest. I can accept the results whatever they may be with an attitude that suggests this isn't the sum total of who I am. And I can decide that when I wake up tomorrow, it won't matter whether its raining or sunny. Because my attitude will decide the day.

Thanks A/B for the advice, for the wise counsel and for blogging so diligently. I am grateful for your words and your humor and your influence in what otherwise can be a day of regrets.

I Was Done With This...

I had some basal cell cancer removed from my face a few months ago. Lots of people get basal cell, I'm told. Lots of people get it cut out and move on. I've blogged about my experience to some small degree. I had moved on, I thought. It was history. No need to revisit.

Then I went to the dermatologist for a "follow-up". Alright, I was feeling kind of cocky. I thought it  had healed just fine. I thought she would look at me and say, "see you in 6 months." Yeah, well, that was the plan. As it turns out she did not just say, "see you in six months," although she did say that. What she did say was, " I don't like the way that looks," pointing to my scar. She said it should have been flat, but there were little bumps on it instead. They shouldn't have been there. What did I know? I thought it looked fine. So she "numbed" up the area and scraped the bumps off. "We'll send these out for a biopsy." And just like that I'm paranoid all over again. The one word, well, two really--biopsy and cancer--make me weak in the knees. I hear it and think I need to begin planning the funeral service, getting rid of my stuff, contacting the family. I don't like the fact that I feel that way, but there you have it.

The dermatologist called last night to say that the "bumps" were "pre-cancerous." Meaning before cancer. Meaning whatever she cut out of my face before, wasn't the same stuff that's there now. After I talked to her, I really didn't feel anything very much. It's only now the day after that I begin to get the weak in the knees feeling again. The same scurrying in my stomach as I had before wondering what all this will mean. The same "boy-I-don't-want-to-think-about-this" attitude pervading my every thought anyway.

I have friends who have fought a much more scary cancer than this. I have friends who have fought and lost, too. On the scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the scariest), this is probably a 1 compared to major organs. But oh, it still makes me quivery and nervous, even if no one else thinks this is all that bad. And therein lies the rub. I don't want to have anything wrong. Especially not cancer. I really appreciate others saying, well if you're going to get it, this is the kind to get. Making me feel almost like I should be grateful instead of scared. Comforted instead of nervous. I guess that makes me a wimp. I guess that makes me not very brave. Well, it's good to know things about yourself I guess. And I guess knowing that I'm a weakling can help to make me stronger, but I doubt it.

So for now, I have to get some special cream medicine and use it for a few weeks to see what happens next. I really wish nothing happened next. I wish I could erase the phone call from last night, but I can't . Pardon me if I don't look happy for now. But I thought I was done...

Some Snow

Just a little, thank goodness. Not a lot.
Melting already, dripping over eaves
Plonking on sky lights.
Sun shining off the white
Makes sunglasses a necessity.
People sighing relief, no more running
For bread, milk, gas, candles.
We're stocked up for the next one!
Except the supermarkets are bare.
I'm finishing up my writings today
Brushing off the dictionary, the Strunk and Whites
Clacking keys in the warmth of the sun and
Radiators.
Pulling words out of air and fuzzy brains,
Wrapped in the snug sack
Around my feet
Listening to the water drip
Finding ways to write what I see and hear
While the sun shines off the white.