Category: Gratitude



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Per Linda:

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “wire.” Use “wire” as a noun or a verb or any way you’d like. Enjoy!

More slipper socks finished. Yay!

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And the snow is falling. About an inch in an hour. Here’s the latest of my porch banister that was just wet and brown an hour ago:

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(revised edit: two inches now at the finish of the blog)

That is the peaceful scene I wished for in December or January. Here we are early spring and I wanted to start getting out for walks. But I guess it is helping all of us stay inside and meditate our lives.

You know at any moment we all could have died. Let’s say by accident or gunshot or our own stupidity. I guess the risk-takers would have been more prone to death than those who live from a cautious point of view. It’s all according to how we are wired.

Heck, we have enough coyote-to-roadrunner ratio here that we could have been hit by:

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The loss of life from any or all those incidences are devastating. Yet, they happen every day, bar the anvil. We try to protect ourselves as best we can from any of these, yet our thoughts don’t stray to or remain on the what-ifs.

Our new shared reality is built of constant worry on top of the regular worries of paying bills and surviving winter.

Some of us are wired to be gregarious. We must be around people at all times. Others of us are more of quiet wiring. Many taught to greet with a hug or handshake are shaken to bows or not even meeting people. Besides, who has toilet paper these days? You don’t want to shake that hand!

This is a time for the introverts to enjoy not feeling guilty for staying home, enjoying our own company. This is a time to reflect on how death has always been just around the corner. But facing that it may or may not be your own is hard to grab onto.

We came into this thinking it one more hoax, one more conspiracy. A joke. But even if so, life has come to a halt. Many I know are finding people they know have the virus. Many have it that can’t be tested. It is fear upon fear.

It is like we just opened a new book and we find ourselves in The Walking Dead or something like it. Panic is our worst enemy. Take a lesson from the disaster movies. Stay put and use your time to ponder.

I am finding it hard to listen to the constant fears of others. I’m 70 after all! I have lived a wonderful life. I have a great extended family and fantastic friends. I would hate, at any point in my life to have lost any of them.

At the same time, I have been the young mother as my young children romped about me. I chose not to take my children to see grandparents if any of us were even the slightest bit ill. So I don’t believe in my heart I cause their demise. Yet, at my age, I have lost many I have loved. This is something you never get used to. I assume if it happens on a large scale the loss will be overwhelming. Let’s hope that that doesn’t happen.

Meanwhile, what if we only have a few days to be alive? A few days to enjoy the amount of health we do have? Why spend our last moments worrying. Outside of proper precaution, what more can we do? I’m not saying ‘eat, drink, and be merry,’ I’m saying love your people. Spend as much time as you can by connecting in the ways earlier pandemics didn’t have: Skype, FaceTime, google chat. Talk on the phone if you can handle it. Write out your thoughts, email. If you are so inclined: write letters. I don’t know if sending the letters is advisable as others will have to touch and handle the mail to their detriment. But once this passes, and it will pass, there will be ways to reach out or remember each other.

I do believe we are wired to LOVE.

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Sad Sunday


I love it when family and friends come to visit. I absolutely turn to jello and can’t find my keys to the new-to-me car I’m so sad.

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Then I spend the ride home thinking about the good feelings of no bra, no shoes, and sweatpants. And fish and chips. And a wonderful newish car. I look at it and even though I am comfortable and self-soothed, and Kali snuggles, I miss the daylights out of my family and friends. Even the recommended Daylight Savings Time nap didn’t take away that sad.

Back to life as we know it. Watching Doc Martin season 9 while knitting and snuggles. I am feeling grateful for all the love, happiness, and health that surrounds me. I wish it for all of you, too!

One-Liner Wednesday


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Another day, another walk.

Nope, that’s not us. Hubby and I have on hats. The dog is Kali, white with spots. No walking sticks. No trees. Just desert.

 

One-Liner Wednesday is a prompt by Linda G. Hill.

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Sunny Day


Some days all you want to do is walk around the yard with the dog and sit and absorb all the sun you can.

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Kali and I had a lazy day enjoying the sun!

Rorschach Test


When I was young and spent the night with my grandparents I felt so lucky. First of all, because my mother’s parents and my father’s parents lived two doors down from each other. Even my other cousins weren’t this lucky. And on this road, I had a great aunt or two. The second fun part of this convenience was that if my folks were visiting the one set of grandparents I could run and be at the other grandparents’ home.

Both of my grandfathers were carpenters. Mom’s dad was more of a cabinet maker. But when mom was young he actually built a wooden roller coaster and a Ferris wheel. There were pictures in the local paper with mom and my aunt as girls in these rides.

My dad’s dad was more of a home builder. When these two close families moved from ‘back east’ they bought land near each other and mom’s dad copied nearly every nail strike from my dad’s dad. Thereby their homes were very similar. I can still see and smell those two homes. Mom’s parents’ home smelled of cedar. Dad’s parents’ just smelled clean like wind-dried laundry. Mmmmm!

That doesn’t include all the food smells. Mom’s mother specialized in pies and cakes. Dad’s mom was best at meats and dumplings. Not to say they both weren’t great cooks! My mouth is watering at this vision.

But back to spending the night. The walls of both grandparents’ homes were textured with stucco, a kind of relief feeling and then painted. I remember laying on their beds and finding pictures in the textures.

As a mom of four, we had a house that had a bathroom with fake marble lined the wall. As you would sit on the ‘throne’ you could see ‘angry dad’. Beard, mustache and all. Yes, he was an angry cuss at times back then. (Not my current husband.)

Here in this house, I have found another set of Rorschach tests in this bathroom. One in the fake wood panel of the door. The others are from spackle patches that we still need to paint over.

Anyway, here are cell photos of the muses.20200213_235910(0)

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The only picture with true color is the wooden door one. These other two are white on sky-blue. I don’t know why they turned gray.

Anyway, do you see pictures? I have been meaning to capture these by drawing and seeing what characters I feel as I draw. Here are my first renditions.

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Those were only quickie sketches. But for some reason, I felt nearly obligated to draw them out. It is like they want to be in a story or something.

Does this happen to you? Do you see pictures in tree-bark or leaf patterns against the sky? Do you feel they call to you to be represented? What do you suppose it means?

 

Bus Ride


Well, today was fun and different. My honey and I got to go to the senior lunch in the little town of Summerlake. Town? Well, maybe smaller than a hamlet. It is only half an hour from our place, and it is beautiful. The ride itself is gorgeous.

Though this isn’t our bus. It is similar. We have a couple little busses like this to give rides to “town” an hour and a half to two hours from here for doctor appointments or grocery shopping. These busses are for seniors or the poor or disabled. Our town is small and comes under the county rule. There is a lot of political garbage that goes on that seems to imply that Christmas Valley is nothing but the red-headed stepchild (cliche –I love red hair and stepchildren are valuable people!) that shouldn’t have the significant needs we have.

Still, we do have the busses, and many of us enjoy the driver and her husband and consider them our friends. They help the people getting on and off the bus. That care goes far beyond driving. Once, they even helped us get a television when ours gave out. They help with food and clothes for those in need when they can. Good people, ya, know? On the bus, they get the conversation started on the long rides and keep us all light and comfortable.

My own disability makes the rides so painful I rarely go. The seats have such little padding that every bump is jarring. I know I am not the only one that finds the ride painful. By the way, on other trips, our driver tried everything she could to help me get comfortable. That touched my heart. I have brought pillows and blankets and my coccyx cushion. But the ride is so long that I just can’t get comfortable.  I prefer to drive our truck when we can afford to take it. It seems our driver’s side is the softer of the two seats. Even still, I have to take pain relief and play my music loud to get past the bad roads our county doesn’t find it necessary to fix.

Ah, but I stray from the point. Today’s ride was bearable partly because of the company on the bus. (And did I mention it was a short trip?) Our driver was fun and kept the conversation going. The lunch itself was exceptional. I am the only vegetarian, and the team that set up the lunch made sure there was food just for me. Wow! I was so touched!

We didn’t know most of the people at this lunch. But everyone was friendly and fun. At the end of the lunch, when we thought we were going to get up and ride home, a guy got up and made a loud whistle. That got our attention. What a fun speaker, this character with a long beard. The bin held the items of his stories.

Okay, don’t judge. From this angle, I can see how it sounds a little hokey. But we do live in the country so…  The bin contained furs. The vegetarian in me just shuddered. But it was more like the informative campfire talks we used to go to on our family camping vacations. I loved those. I learned a lot about nature’s fauna and flora from those talks. Our speaker made it a bit of a contest as to who’s fur is this. He’d hold up the coat and treated us like he did the school kids where he did the same talks. There were stories included to keep it going. He was delightful, and it made a fun day even better.

Because this restaurant was so close, my pain levels weren’t nearly as high. It helped to get out and enjoy our beautiful scenery and camaraderie.

And when we got back, I got to go to my favorite place in town, the library. I renewed my card and turned in my knitted donations and yarn cakes. That was the icing on my day. I couldn’t say cake because they were yarn, you see?


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I wish good health to all my friends!

 

Just Jot It January and One-Liner Wednesday are brought to us by Linda G. Hill.

 


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via Working On Us- Passive Suicidal Ideation 

This is worth the read. If my computer were less glitchy I’d add to the responses. Meanwhile, read my friend, Sadje’s response.

One-Liner Wednesday


My favorite day of the week, month, year, is the day I get to see my family and friends!

 

That’s my one-liner for One-Liner Wednesday.

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