Category Archives: musings

Got Milk?

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For the greater part of my life I have lived in a small town.  I branched out into the bustling metropolis for a few years to attend college but the pull of our tight-knit community was too strong to ignore and I came home.  Much to the chagrin of my city dwelling friends, I have never regretted that decision.

There is something comforting about seeing the same people on a day-to-day basis.  It may feel a little too close for comfort at times when they know more about your life than you do but it has become the safety blanket of my existence.  The community that began as a collection of strangers rapidly transformed into an extended family and I take solace in the fact that I could knock on any door and receive the same warm welcome from any one of them.

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The milk of human kindness flows more freely in a small town – at least that has been my experience.  And in the summer of 2013 that lesson was inked into my skin in colors more vivid than any tattoo.   My mother had a slight episode while on her scooter as she was making her way home from her shopping excursion.  Her dog had broken free from her collar and, in the chaos that ensued, my mother had toppled from her scooter and lay on her back on the pavement.  As fate would have it I was driving through town just as the mishap occurred and I was able to pull over and help.

In the time it took for me to pull over, a handful of people were already either assisting my mother or madly looking for the frenzied dog that was dodging parked cars and moving vehicles.  It was controlled chaos but in the end my mom was fine and the dog was recovered without incident.

There is an overwhelmingly consolatory feeling knowing that if I had not been there my mother would have been just as vigilantly attended to and things would have still ended well.  Knowing that the milk of human kindness flows freely through the veins of my community makes me glad that I made the decision to carve my life into the growing trunk of the tree in this rural atmosphere.

There may be moments of my life that I will look back on with regret but choosing to live my life in this town and the community of people I share it with is not one of them.

My only wish, especially now, is that the kindness we experience here could be broadcast on a much grander level.  Whatever happens in this world, we must not let the anger and hatred of the few be able to quell the kindness that resides in the many.   Fight hate with love and keep your hearts open.  The more we hate, the more they win.

 

Party on Weight! Party on Girth!

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wayne and garth

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I am not skinny.  I have never touted the pretense that I ever was skinny and by no means do I think I ever will be skinny.  I am not built that way and, after my many trips around the sun on this planet, I have come to accept that and be okay with it.  It’s who I am and I happily embrace who I am.  I have many other attributes I am proud of without having to slip into size zero pants.  And I am hoping I will remain this secure when the newest clothing lines are introduced and size “minus-ten” becomes the newest “in thing”.

But that is not saying that I have not made valiant attempts to become healthier by decreasing the caloric sums that enter my digestive system.  I am not a victim of fad diets.  I merely try to cook and eat whole, natural foods that consist of ingredients I can pronounce.  Chicken is a very easy item to cook with because it contains, well, chicken.  I try to avoid fast-food at all costs and hope the only processed foods I eat are ones I have processed myself so I can easily articulate the components of the nutrition that I am consuming.

In the process of communicating with my fat cells, the message was clearly not concise enough for them to understand – when I lose you, I don’t want you to come back and bring your friends!  “Weight” and “Girth” have been partying like rock stars in the Aurora, Illinois basement of my viscera and it’s time to pull the plug on the amp and shut this party down.

When I sat down and had a chat with those fat cells and told them the plan, I could swear I heard Mike Myers voices saying, “No Whey!”  Yes, Mike, “Whey…..because I’ve been told it’s good for you!”

 

What the world needs now

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I am feeling very reflective today, about life and the way people treat each other and this quote seems to sum up my mood completely.

audrey

For attractive lips, speak words of kindness. For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people. For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry. For beautiful hair, let a child run his / her hands through it once a day. For poise, walk with the knowledge that you never walk alone. People, more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed, never throw out anyone. Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you will find one at the end of each of your arms. As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands; one for helping yourself, and the other for helping others. Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind, don’t matter and those who matter, don’t mind.”

~ Audrey Hepburn

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The colors of my memories

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My umbrella could not protect me

from the rain that would come.

Like a tsunami of emotion,

sadness hit me with a fury,

threatening to pull me into its current

and drown me in its torrents.

Some days the emotion feels heavy, oppressive,

like wax dripping on canvas,

and the thin veil of my resolve is not enough

to shield me from the pain of loss.

wax on canvas

But on the good days,

I can bathe in the colors of that storm.

I am the black and white character

wading into a flushed prism of good memories

and I no longer feel alone.

Although you are not physically here with me,

your brush still adds a splash of life to my canvas

and those hues make me feel connected again.

How good it feels

to walk through the reminiscence of you.

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Turns out I’m not the biggest loser

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For the past month I have been diligently somewhat enthusiastically following a strict regimen of caloric intake to participate in a weight loss challenge (#wlc) with my best friend and her husband.  I have made many sacrifices and changed my shopping lists multiple times to adhere to the necessary guidelines of not eating food I should not be eating.  After thirty days, we have all weighed in and, although I am proud of my accomplishment, Daniel won the battle.

The deal going in was that the “losers” had to eat what the victor had been using as nourishment during the challenge.  Daniel decided to change the rules and we had to succumb, I’ll admit enthusiastically, to a double cheeseburger today.  Once the arbitrary new guideline had been established, I hungrily began making my shopping list for dinner.  I already had frozen burger patties in my freezer but the necessary garnishes were required to complete my meal.

I felt like a thief, looking over my shoulder across the parking lot, as I smuggled my contraband ingredients to my car.  The jar of pickles, processed cheese slices and bun lay hidden in my grocery store bag as I tried to conceal my guilt on the way to my car.  I have been known to cook several very upscale meals but, when it comes to my burger, my cheese of choice is synthetic Kraft Singles and nothing else will do!

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The burgers were cooked perfectly.  The pickles were just as salty as I remembered and the almost-real cheese dripped from the burger patties just as it should have.  My dinner was delicious and the anticipated two extra pounds were worth it.

As I say my “White Rabbit” three times tonight at the stroke of midnight, I can only hope luck will find me once again this month and continue the trend of shedding pounds.  I may not be the biggest loser but I’m still a loser, and I’m okay with that.

A little blood on Halloween seems almost redundant

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I used to love carving pumpkins.  I was one of those weirdos hoping to have the most creative pumpkin on the block, so I bought a carving kit and some patterns and locked myself in a room to avoid distraction.

Walls were spattered with stringy pieces of eviscerated pumpkin.  Elongated strings of profuse verbiage slithered under the doorway, assaulting the ears on the other side of the door, and small drops of minor arterial spray infused themselves into the paint on the wall.  But at the end of the painstaking process I achieved success!  The copious amount of band-aids, blood loss and light-headedness were worth the effort.  My pumpkins were the talk of the town.  My then-boyfriend’s children (who I still refer to as my step-children) were even proud to acknowledge the creativity on our front doorstep.

After my first attempt, I became a little less guarded when it came to the carving process and the whole family would get involved.  Where there were originally only two arms covered in pumpkin guts, eight sticky arms reveled in the joy of dissecting the large gourds and separating the seeds from the gooey mess.  Each of us skilfully created our masterpieces and sat back with a smile as the toothy pumpkins returned our stares.

The house would begin to smell of the roasting pumpkin seeds and, after a massive clean up, we would light our pumpkins and snack on the seeds in the darkened living room.  The memories of those nights of laughter and camaraderie are the ones I still hold close.

As the eve of Halloween approaches, I am slightly saddened that those years are so far behind me.  I live on a street where no children trick-or-treat so there is no need to create any more scary faces.  Perhaps this year I should take advantage of the fact that my digits are all still intact and drag out the carving tools once again.  I’m sure my dog would like to sit in the dark with me staring at faces like these:

pumpkin

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Happy Halloween everyone!

It was a bad math exam

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I lived through a very tumultuous marriage.  It was a great lesson for me but, in mathematical terms, the product of my relationship was divided by the sum of our differences and eventually created a result that lacked a remainder.   There were so many variables and so few constants that our bond was doomed from the beginning.  I should have been the operator but, instead, I felt like a fraction of my true self.

The formula for a successful bond relies on a form of symmetry.  The arrangement of the most fundamental parts of our lives need to align to create a true collaborative bond.  You cannot expect to live a happy life in a paradox.  You cannot create an answerable question without supplying the linear equation that gives you those answers.  All of the pieces of your life need to make you happy, not just the sum of the happy parts.  Going through the motions and cancelling out the negative parts of the bigger picture subtracts from the value of each day.  Sure you will make mistakes along the way, but those mistakes should add to your education and not take away from your self-worth.

I lived that equation.  The perfect number may exist in the glossary of mathematical terms but it does not thrive in real life.  Perfection takes effort and, at the end of the exam, all of the negatives never added up to a positive for me.  I was in the wrong equation and it was glaringly evident.  It was time to subtract myself and cut my losses.

math equation

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Once my math exam was over I learned to breathe freely again and I felt empowered by my freedom.  I learned to enjoy my own company more than I ever had and it was liberating.  What I currently perceive as solitude some would call loneliness but they don’t have the numbers to back up their hypothesis.

I now spend my days knowing that I passed that math test and that my final grade has truly helped me balance my life in a way that I never thought possible.  And now that I have erased the errors of my past, I am free to create a new formula for my happiness.  I can choose to remain constant or I can choose to add or subtract the things that will bring me the most happiness.  Regardless of what I choose, I know I will only add the people who fill the gaps in my life and not those who subtract from my bliss.

When the world seems silent, the heart still has a voice.

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The whisper of real love

tickled my ears so long ago

and feels like a long forgotten conversation.

Those words,

those sweet nothings,

sadly,

no longer seem to be in my vocabulary.

But the book of love

still has music in it and

every so often I open that book.

Those notes play melodies on my heart-strings.

The familiar phrases of love,

the notes on the scales of romance,

still exist

and play wistfully in my memory.

Perhaps I am meant to hear that music again.

Just maybe the songs I hear from that book

are heard by someone else

and we haven’t yet had a chance to listen to them together.

For just a moment,

 I want to close my eyes and really hear the music.

I want the Book of Love

to play a song for me just one more time

and have it be the only song I truly hear

for the rest of my life.

You can’t live a positive life with a negative mind

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I am thankful I have always been a realistic person with a penchant for the optimistic side of the scale.  I have never been one to dwell on the unfavorable circumstances I have lived through but I have chosen to use those unfortunate times as lessons, and there have been many.  I could have opted to wallow in my misery but I continued forward, leaving those inopportune moments to collect dust while I moved on.  Had I allowed myself to exist in those adverse periods of my past, I would be in a very different place in my life today.

I am who I am because things in my life went wrong.  But I am also who I am because of how I handled those things with a positive attitude.  Even the most successful people have endured monumental setbacks.  These moments are how life teaches us to be better people and these moments are why hope exists.  That beacon of light in the darkness of our reality shines to draw us from the negativity that is ready to envelop us if we let it.

Optimistic minds see a glass as half full but truly positive minds will disregard that glass completely and only focus on its contents.  There is no line and, if you take away the glass, there is no halfway mark.  There is only the reality of what was in the glass in the first place.

no glass at all

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We need to embrace the messy, broken glass of our crazy lives and we need to drain every favorable ounce of life out of the remains when the glass is removed.  The substance inside the glass is what we focused on in the first place and, regardless of how it sat in the glass, it remains the positive part of the bigger picture.

Life is unpredictable.  Life will try to dampen your spirits and cloud your skies.  But life will always show you the rainbow if you are willing to see it.