Category Archives: life

Rage against the dying of the light

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Swallowtail-Butterfly-on-Lilac-Blossom

The perfect evening sky

is painted by the swaying branches

that continue to brush blue into the waning day.

A cool breeze

carries the scent of the lilacs.

 Dusk approaches,

but day fights for its last moments

before the fireflies seize the night.

 Leaves dance in the wind,

laughing as they are tickled by the currents of spring.

A lone butterfly

floats on the updrafts,

silently raging against the dying of the light.

The sun pulls up the blanket of the horizon,

golds and yellows caress the trees one last time

and the day succumbs

to the sleep of night.

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I am my mother’s daughter

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Admittedly, I am a creature of habit.  I am predictable to a fault and I enjoy the lack of spontaneity in my routine.  It is how I am comfortable and it is how I live my life.  But recently I have done and said a few things that make me look at myself in the mirror and think “who are you, and what have you done with the real me?”.

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As my mother used to say, I was once a girl who wouldn’t say shit if her mouth was full of it.   But somewhere along the path that has carved its way through my life, thankfully I have learned to be much more vocal when it comes to standing up for myself.  I used to let emotions fester under the surface, bringing themselves to a boiling point before I finally exploded from the pressure of not dealing with things as they happened.  I am no longer that person.

I’m not sure if I have slowly developed an unseen confidence over the years or if I am simply sick of feeling like my opinions don’t matter.  Whatever the reason, I truly appreciate my newly found voice.  Perhaps it is a wisdom that really does come with age.  Or maybe there comes a time in everyone’s life that you just realize the stress of keeping things to yourself just isn’t worth it.

Whatever the reason, I’m going to hang on to this new part of me and let it free the old me who was afraid to speak up.  It may take a while to expunge the record of my reticence, but I’m willing to do it one comment at a time!

 

The Devil finds work for idle hands

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The Devil may have toyed slightly with my resolve as I lay in bed yesterday morning, reluctant to put my feet on the cold floor, but I slipped out of his grasp as I began my day and didn’t give myself a moment for a second thought.

I have never been an idle person.  Sure, I went through moments of lethargy and reluctance as a teenager, but who didn’t?  Yesterday was a glaring reminder of that part of myself, that stubborn fragment of my psyche, that doesn’t allow me a full day to just be passive and enjoy watching life go by.

If I were being honest, I would have to admit that I enjoy being busy.  And thankfully I have many hobbies that I can choose from that can occupy a significant part of my day as well as the daily and weekly chores that come with living on my own.

Among the housekeeping and maintenance duties that come with being a home owner, today I finally finished a project that helped me feel like I fully restored the identity I had before I was married.  My new sign at the end of my driveway, painted by me, proudly displays the family name I was born with and am proud to reclaim once again.

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Yesterday the Devil realized his time is better spent elsewhere.  The house is clean, the floors are mopped, the shopping is done, the dump run was completed, two new soups were made, the dog was walked twice, the sign was painted and hung and I even had a few spare moments to watch some golf.  I don’t think I have to worry about my hands ever being idle.

 

The writing on the wall

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robert frost

Life is full of itself,

simply and purely.

It doesn’t grant extra time for our worries

and it doesn’t allow further moments to dry our tears.

It evolves,

it moves forward,

never forgetting the past,

embracing all of its successes

and hopefully learning from its mistakes.

Although happiness sometimes turns to regret,

and smiles turn into frowns,

life does goes on.

And somewhere,

beyond confusion and pain,

in each life lies a new road,

paved with promises,

traveled by souls who have understood

the sign on the shoulder that reads

“it goes on”.

~~

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My catnaps are something completely different

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It was a marginally illegal happenstance born of complete innocence.  Our Chef made the familiar turn onto our road and noticed the owner’s cat in the woods about a kilometer from their house.  He did what anyone else would do in his situation and he put Lulu in his car to bring her home.

Although the cat seemed mildly disoriented, she seemed to settle back in relatively quickly and made her way to Nanny and Poppa’s house.  Having just returned from south of the border, they were happy to see Lulu and reached into the treat bag they kept at the house.  The cat seemed content to stay there for a couple of days but was finally taken back to her home.   Upon putting the cat on the porch outside of the sliding glass door, Nanny realized that Lulu was inside the house staring back at her doppelgänger on the other side of the door.  Both cats immediately puffed up to twice their size and the interloper was brought back down to the lodge for her own safety.

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The new cat, who I affectionately referred to as RuPaul, lived the Life of Riley for the next few days.  She sauntered around the property, drank lake water while standing on the sandy beach, joined a young conference who had an outdoor meeting session on the lawn and became one of the group.  She was fed, loved and seemed like she would fit right in.

It wasn’t until the next morning that I found out how RuPaul had come to the resort.  We realized the error that our Chef had made by erroneously abducting our neighbor’s cat and she was then returned to the property from where she had been cat-napped.

When the owner realized that Snipey had returned she called her husband immediately, commenting on how well the cat looked and that Snipey wasn’t even hungry.  After reading my message to her on Facebook, Sue called our resort and I told her the story of how her Lulu-lookalike became a part of our lodge family for a few days.  She was a great sport about the story and was extremely happy to have her cat-napped family member home safe and sound.

From now on, we’ll just have to make sure that our Chef sticks with the cat naps that I am used to and not the ones that can get him in to trouble with the neighbors!

 

Are there therapy groups for an addiction to Pinterest?

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I thought I was over it.  It had been months since I had really even thought about it.  But like a recurring rash, my obsession with Pinterest flared up again with no warning, not even the smallest hint, that it was coming back.  It’s like taking a bite of a deliciously crisp pickle.  Once the salty goodness of that fermented cucumber awakens your taste buds, you can’t just put it down.

So I found myself, eyes glazed, clicking incessantly through the plethora of recipes and pictures of food porn.  I love to cook.  I’m pretty sure I have already established that on this blog but I have just begun a weight loss challenge with some friends and I was looking for new ideas that may be slightly more appealing than salad-in-a-jar.  And then I saw it….and the angels sang…..and a rainbow appeared over my computer.  Okay, those last two things didn’t happen, but the feeling I had would have mirrored the same happiness had those things actually occurred.

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A grain bowl – the newest rage on Pinterest.  This was my lunch yesterday, and most likely will be my lunch today.  It is a Mediterranean grain bowl with quinoa, cucumber, avocado, black olives, feta and a roasted red pepper sauce.  And as pleasing as it was to the eye, it was more pleasing to the palate.  It was absolutely delicious….and filling.

Looking at it from another perspective, perhaps my Pinterest addiction has benefits that far outweigh the burdens of my slight obsession.  At least, that is my story and I’m sticking to it!

 

Physics: The Laws of Motion, Part B, Subsection 2C

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I vaguely remember my high school Physics classes.  I’m sure I was busy writing a poem on the back of my binder or doodling my latest crush’s last name following my first name to see how they looked together.  I do recall a brief outline of Sir Isaac Newton’s law of motion saying something about an object at rest tended to remain at rest but the continuation of that class lecture began to sound more like the teacher in the Peanuts cartoons and I lost the ability to follow along.

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There must have been a day in class that my head was so high in the clouds that I missed the fine print of Newton’s law that said: an object at rest for longer than six months will undergo much trauma and discomfort when it finally gets off its ass.

I’ll admit, apart from walking my dog a couple of times a day, for the past six months I have been quite sedentary.  This became glaringly obvious over this past weekend as I  crawled out of my cushy office life and breached the inner sanctum of our dining room and kitchen.  I don’t mind serving tables.  It gives me the wonderful opportunity to engage with our guests far beyond just checking them into their rooms.  My body, however, disagrees entirely with that philosophy.

I came home from work tonight with a sore back and aching feet, begrudgingly walked my dog and finally hobbled over to my couch.  My body turned, my back aimed towards the couch and I lowered myself to a more agreeable angle.  Similar to how my grandfather used to look getting into our Lazy boy recliner, I simply let gravity take over and allowed myself to fall the rest of the way on to the couch.  It wasn’t pretty but it got the job done.  Thankfully my arms and fingers did not take the brunt of my weekend activities or I would have been typing this post with a pencil in my mouth and banging the tiny eraser onto the letters of my keyboard.

Once I become acclimated to being an object in motion I will be fine.  Either that or I will be starting a Go-Fund-Me account to be able to afford an Indego Exoskeleton to keep me upright.  Either way, I have an afternoon off today and I will enjoying being an object at rest for a few extra hours.

 

A Simple Reminder

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All friendships have an energy, a momentum that carries with it an implied understanding.  The bonds of those friendships can be stretched taut like an elastic band but, when the tension is finally released, that friendship continues to maintain its original integrity and strength.

I am fortunate that I have several of those friendships in my life.  As circumstances have occasionally dictated, some of the parameters of those friendships have been forced to change but the feelings contained within that framework have always remained the same.

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When you find a pearl in a sea of oysters, you grab it and you never let it go. I don’t need to have a lot of friends in my life but I do need to have real friends, friends who know that my silence speaks louder than my voice, friends who laugh with me because they share my humor and friends who know that they will never have to search for my heart because they will always find it on my sleeve.

Friendships don’t happen by accident.  We are drawn to people who are meant to be in our lives because they teach us things about ourselves. I will never underestimate the power of a true friendship.  And, though I try to tell my friends as often as possible that I love them, a simple reminder never hurts.

Dirty little secrets

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Muted secrets,

poignantly apparent,

bereft of understanding.

Walls painted in silence,

ceiling fans churning the absence of dialogue.

Silence is not always golden.

The reticence can stain.

Neglect is a dirty color.

But silence breaks,

and whispers become a symphony of sound.

microstories263

Yes, I can see it. No, I’m not neurotic.

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I’m a cloud watcher.  I can only sunbathe for so long before I feel like I will spontaneously combust (thank you blood pressure medication) so I move my overheated body under the canopy of my deck umbrella and watch the clouds go by.  They never cease to amaze me.  Whether it is the pattern in their wisps or the shapes I see in their billowy contours, I can cloud gaze for hours.

I have not been able to watch the clouds lately,  however, because the sky has been a solid, monochromatic grey.  Perhaps because I am so accustomed to looking beyond what I really see, recently I have been seeing faces in the strangest locations.

This morning I rolled over, still shaking off the remnants of my slumber, and faced my closet.  A shirt that was at the top of the laundry basket was piled in such a way that the aged face of a man stared back at me from the shirt’s folded elbow.  For some reason, I couldn’t avert his keen focus on me and I stared back with the same intensity.

He seemed familiar to me.  And this is not the first time I have discovered a genial visage in a random place.  It happens more frequently than I should probably admit.

I have since discovered that this phenomenon has a name – Pareidolia.  There are many people, like me, who have the ability to see faces or animals in a benign object.  An extreme example is the woman who sold a 10-year old grilled cheese on eBay for $28,000.00 because it supposedly had the image of the Virgin Mary on it.  Some people see a cinnamon bun below, others see Mother Teresa.

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Whatever the reasoning behind this strangely named anomaly, the writer in me enjoys the visits from these odd characters.  I’m sure one day they will insert themselves into a story line somewhere along my writing journey and I will be grateful for their intrusion into my reality.

Time for audience participation – cinnamon bun or Mother Teresa?