Growing…gracefully…

It appears that there is always a push. From behind. Jostled in line, or in a crowd, or just that invisible hand that keeps pushing–“you should be doing something…anything…just get doing it.” Instead I sit and ponder. I’m tired. Sandwiched between the completely elderly and the completely young adult, here I am, in the aging process, and trying to figure it out. The body is growing weary, I look at self-help, my partner says “get out and do something” and my body says “well, maybe, but I just retired and I’m tired.”

Breaking out of the chains that drag me down, I do things. Then a few months later, I get draggy again for one reason or another, mostly the reason being that something else goes wrong with the body. “What? Again?” One more thing.

All of the advisors say, “get out and do more.” But I don’t want to. Not right now. I want to lounge and be happy in my loungers. Okay. Maybe a little bit I can do.

Mostly it’s fun to help a friend out. I helped my girlfriend consolidate, we have done a lot of trading: she buys cookies, we drink coffee. She has a garage sale, I sort for her. I see what I like, she wants to give it to me. So I give back to her, “Look what I found and I think you should have it!” Or something like that. We laugh. Laughter is a fresh breeze.

I was reading last year. I absorbed several John Irving books (my favorite is still A Prayer for Owen Meany). Then I grew tired, subjects became depressed and complicated. Owen was such a breath of fresh air. A Widow for One Year was very uplifting, though complicated, and is my second favorite.

Then I started watching YouTube regarding old rock and roll. I have had a good time with that. Then I’d see them as they are today. They are old too. How did that ever happen?

Young children are helpful, I have found. I take care of grandchildren quite a bit. Not just an overnight usually, but for several days at a time. It’s very tiring, I am a person with the compulsion that I need to entertain these young beings. So, my partner and I do everything with goals in mind. Like taking them up mountains (I have a fear of heights) to see the view, antiquing (my 6 year old grandson’s “favorite” thing to do), and the bedtime stories that I really needed to wrack my brain over as he would gleefully say: “It’s story time!” Then we would go home and I found myself thinking, “oh, this is what there is” and greet my cats, and drop everything! Lots of grandchildren, and all ages. Plays to attend, discussions about life and how they are. Babies that coo, and learn how to sit up, right in front of you! The joys of being young. Then you go home and get back to routine and feel a little bit shell-shocked because you will miss more.

This exercise this morning in writing is because I am feeling lost and a little bit terrified of life. I sit here and I have worried about the holidays (typical for me, this happens every year). I think that this is the main reason why I am sitting here, trying to sort myself out, and my readers get to be the guinea pigs. I am afraid of winter. I had to go out yesterday and slid on a country road so much I ended up turning around and having to seek a different route. Am I old, or just “chicken?”

I suppose the moral of the story needs to be “do what you feel comfortable with, expand a little bit, but don’t be afraid to say “STOP!”

Maybe…

…to be continued…

Rural Dirt

We were heading up to the next town yesterday. It was bright, it was sunny. It wasn’t quite as warm as the day before, or the day before that. The wind had that spring crispiness attached to it! I contemplated this two word statement “rural dirt” and decided it would make a good title for what I am about to say.

We have dirt here. We have mud here. You can’t go down the road without that little cloud following you. If someone is ahead of you, welcome to a world with dust. If you don’t have the quarters in your pocket ($3.00 says a lot when you have to drive up and down the road a lot, as opposed to the credit card and a $10 quick automatic wash), you just get through it! The good news is, you are not alone. Everyone else shares your plight. Oh, once in awhile you can say “Wow! Look at that car! Not a drop of dirt! See how shiny it is?” and then you hold your hand up to shield your eyes, you hope that the dirt doesn’t come off on your pant leg as you get out of your own vehicle in the parking lot.

There are worse things. For this rural gal, my list is: we don’t have (much) traffic! Our 5 o’clock rush hour isn’t nearly what urbanites experience anytime after 3 p.m. We have cows. We smell the farm. They spread manure. But, it isn’t exhaust from automobiles and trucks. Oh I know the findings: cows emit gas. They’ve done it throughout history. But they also provide us with essentials: our dairy products, our beef. Their excrement provides the earth with fertilizer for those fields that yield gardens and crops. And yes, we can argue that it’s better to eat plant based burgers. But, man was a carnivore for many years. He will continue that, despite what the civilized world wants, which it appears, basically, to shut out the meat eaters and make everyone eat vegetarian style. (There goes the animal world.) I digress. This is not what this essay should be about. It’s about dirt. And the freedom it brings. The happiness of a child, playing in her mud pies. The cat, who appreciates the warmer weather, and celebrates by bringing in at least one mouse a day. Some of them are still alive, we took one back down to the old church building and let it go. “Hope the poor little guy makes it,” my (retired) farmer said. I had to laugh. “Listen to us! We tell others that mice are dirty, their feces contain parasites, they can chew through wires and cause fires, and we hope ‘the poor little fellow’ makes it.”

Spring is upon us, the grass is slowly starting to green up. My one succulent is popping up above the ground, seeking sun. I trimmed back the mums and others that died in the autumn of 2020, so new growth can occur. That is the nice thing about spring. Along with the niceties of spring come everything else, but I keep reading that you take the good with the bad, you control what you can, accept even what you don’t want (I did see one yellow jacket–or was it a wasp–whizz by as I was wiping down my porch).

Let us welcome it all.

Days of our (Isolated) Lives

I really meant to write on a daily basis, but the days have become mundane creatures and we are now trying to figure out which one of us is eligible to go to the grocery store, before giving up and saying “well, maybe we will go tomorrow.”  Let me add right up front that I enjoy living a rural life.  Less people (until trying to go out midday and almost collapsing from fright at the number of people out there that certainly don’t look like they are isolating, but probably are, you all are just out at the same time.)

Meanwhile, I have been doing essential things for my employer while at home.  It helps to be useful, and essential!  Sitting for 5 hours at a time (every once in awhile taking a trip around the living room and kitchen), before I need the break.  But I have been doing very well (reaching around and straining here to pat myself on the back) at being consistent in rising, exercising, showering and getting onto the computer at 8 a.m.!

The cats (or as we call them “the kids”) keep wondering why I float around the house.  I actually pulled a padded stool next to the computer desk so they can participate in “take your child to work” (IOW be petted).  The games they play.  Morning they hear him going to make the bed and race in to jump up to “help.”  The evening I go back to turn on the bedroom light in the corner (a sign it is evening for me) and they race in and jump on the bed, they are READY to go night-night.  No, not yet.

Afternoons are a little bit different, life can get very boring.  Yes, I could use this time to reflect, read, play computer games. Actually, the computer games are sort of in hiatus.  I can only do so much before losing my mind.  I tried to post on YouTube how to play Double Deck solitaire.  It needs revision badly.  But every time I attempt to do the video I have to dump all pictures from the cloud and the phone, because it takes too much memory.  Don’t worry, those of you solitaire enthusiasts,  I will get there, maybe this weekend!  I do pepper afternoons sometimes listening to old music on YouTube.  John Denver happens to be my go-to, but I do enjoy anything British Invasion!  I tried to YouTube learning sign language, only to discover I don’t have that kind of patience.  I always thought I did.  Maybe, just not today.

Our house has finally been approved for occupancy!  This has been a very long time coming!  The construction company we went through kept telling us six weeks, and we were silly enough to believe them.  How about “6+ weeks!”  The lesson learned is to a) read your contract thoroughly, and b) insist on a finished product date.  My partner keeps telling me “yes, but things do come up” and I sit here imagining my breath coming through my nostrils like the bull in the cartoon, as he is getting ready to CHARGE.  Anyway, disaster averted, it is April 10th.  April 8th we were approved.  So, you’d think we’d be running our stuff right over into the new house, right?  Wrong!  Major cleaning has been in the works (oh my goodness, so much to clean).  Dark laminate flooring.  Bad move on my part.  Shows literally EVERY FOOT PRINT.  But it is really really beautiful!  I will commit to a world of Swiffer mops when all is said and done.  But, and this is the big BUT at the moment, we are living in a world of April mud.  Having no lawn after this past winter of mild winter makes no difference in the condition of the current lawn status.  So, instead of walking across the lawn yesterday with a chair (so we can sit and take off our shoes at the entrance), I took the long way and walked down the road, into the graveled driveway and then there were only 10 steps in mud, as opposed to 20 (we really do need temporary stepping stones, you think?).  In conclusion on this moving in topic, it is a good activity for me and him.  We put the new antique sleigh bed together.  No mattress yet, we aren’t ready for that step (and besides, what if it gets dropped into the vat of mud we call a yard?).

Entertainment.  I don’t do so well with drama, television is supposed to be entertaining and, therefore, I am entertained, I choose comedy, life is short, after all.  So, after the Evening News with Norah O’Donnell (“Breaking News” ALWAYS), I gather the highlights from ET and it’s onto my Apple Box, where we have found apps with television we love:  our choices currently run:  Cheers (watching it from beginning to end, we just started and are still in Season 1), The Good Place (this is a new one too for us–a bit more mindless than Cheers, but a Ted Danson show as well, which we get a kick out of), and then, for “serious” we are in Season 3 of “Once Upon A Time.”  Friday night we take a break and go in search of a movie.  Randomly, “Flipped” was very very good, and more recently “Lars and the Real Girl.”  Simple, poignant.  Well done, in my opinion.

BREAKING NEWS!  I just heard on the news (it is 5:56 a.m. Friday April 10, 2020) that air pollution is down 30% due to the COVID-19 shut down.  Maybe this is what the earth has needed.  

Running on and on, I will close this off for now.  Stay tuned.  I am doing Inner Work and that should be a good topic:  first lesson is on expectations.  See you later…

 

Yes this is for You

A Young Girl’s Dreams

“I will never be able to marry Peter Tork now,” were the words that climbed out of my brain and through the process of thought.

Why did I think that?  I am a 62 year old woman now.  Those are the thoughts of the sweet pre-teen, as she teeny-bopped her way into the world to become the teen, and a child with lights in her eyes, and hope in her heart.

The truth is, I’m really not as old as I look.  I’m still 13.  I’m still 14.  I still have those wishful thoughts, the brightness in my mind’s eye, of a life that is idealistic and full of hope.

The days of youth–the crush on the latest star of television, watching The Dating Game, The Newlywed Game, all with dreams in our eyes.  The beautiful face of youth, the beehive hairdo and the thick eyelashes only made by Maybelline or Max Factor.

Songs that brought us daydreams by The Seekers, The Beach Boys, The Everly Brothers.  Ryan O’Neal and Ali McGraw’s eternal vow that Love means you never have to say you’re sorry.

We all were going to go to California and walk the streets of San Francisco.  Become a beach baby and, like Annette Funicello, have our Frankie fall in love with us.

The young girls’ dream.  Of convertibles, sunshine, movie stars, and living happily ever after.

Well, I have made to the living and the happily ever after is right where it’s at, even though I still have my young girl’s dream.

Fanning My Flame

Surrounded by the comforts of my ancestors, words from the philosophies of Emerson and Thoreau, I am reminded of who I am and where my soul thrives. All of the outside world fades, for just this brief moment of time, and I fan the flame called my soul, into a roaring fire that drives me forward into 2019 and shows me that happiness is right here, inside of me.

Mary Poppins is My Middle Name

I have chosen this because I somehow believe that I am “practically perfect in every way!”

Nonsense.  Push it aside and you find an older woman (not even middle aged by definition, although I still consider myself in that age range) who tries so much to be practically perfect and be it to everyone.  STILL.

I actually chose the title of this article today because my great striving this holiday season is to go see the newest Mary Poppins movie.  I love Mary Poppins.  I want to be Mary Poppins.  Mary Poppins has every hair in place.  She wears wonderful hats.  She has a carpet bag that houses a mirror, a large plant, and all things magic.  She has an image that competes with her in the mirror!  Mary Poppins jumps into chalk drawings and creates an adventure. Mary Poppins sees the humor, and rolling her eyes, joins in as eccentric Uncle Albert rolls with laughter on the ceiling.   Mary Poppins spouts wisdom.  Mary Poppins looks at adults and says things like “supercalifragilisticexpialidoscus.”   Nonsense that no one understands, but eventually accept  and not grudgingly.  I want to dance on chimney tops with my Bert (yes, my Bert and I actually DO ballroom dancing)!

I love my grandchildren and want to be their Mary Poppins.  I want to look at their parents–my children–and have them see a crazy old woman who zips up and down staircases with their children, doles out sweet tasting goodies that are good for you to awe those little children into thinking their grandma is magical, when really she is just a crusty old lady with acceptance issues!  But the crusty old lady thinks her grandchildren are the cats’ meow and will do anything to love and entertain them.  Anything to leave her mark on their lives.  Anything to become a historical creature, without doing anything illegal, of course.  And when I leave, whether temporarily through the clouds, sporting my umbrella, or forever on that day, I want to be remembered.

That’s why I do the things that I do.  I write letters that I hope my children (and grands) read, I write journals, so they know who is living in the hyphen, and I become an historical person that actually LIVED, not a vague name on an ancestry listing.  I may never be a national figure, or international figure like Mary Poppins, I will never be a notorious queen, such as Mary, Queen of Scots, or poor Ann, who lost her head over Henry VIII’s whim.  But for what I am hoping is that, for two generations to come, I am.

So let me strip that Mary Poppins middle name from the title, and be Grandma.  Perfect in every way.  And not even practically!

Kitten Tales

She touches my calf gently.  “Don’t forget…”

I won’t.  As I high power jump my morning with grinding my coffee beans and filling the pot, she reminds me, she is hungry….

We left  these two, we call “our kids,” to do some Thanksgiving travel.  Unforgotten, they were served by the neighbor, but did not become cat-like and ignore us once we arrived back home late Saturday night.  Peppa, the white kittycat (yes, they are still kittens until their birthday March 15), snuggled between us, placing her paw protectively on my cheek (have to laugh at that one).  Ginger, just HAD to be OUT, so we had to open the bathroom window for just a little while, as this is their exit/entrance routine.

Quite honestly, I never thought I’d own another pet.  As lovely as they can be, and for the love they bestow upon us, they do come with a monetary obligation.  As well they come with an emotional one.  My father, who is 87, has had to choose to not have another pet.  Last Christmas he had to put his cat down.  He sleeps with her picture beneath his pillow and kisses it.  We have spoken to him about Peppa, the cat who loves to jump into our arms and hug.  She would do him well, but he feels he cannot meet the obligation.  She will meet his need for a love connection (and yes, I can do this.  I love my cat, but I love my father and am willing to share that love).

I guess, what I am saying, is don’t snub the cat.  Don’t snub the dog.  They are created and just as useful in their own way, to this world.  Even my barn cats have their need for love and compassion, even though they shrink to the idea that I am gentle.  (More on them another writing.)

Journal Update October 2018

I wonder and wander.  I worry.  All the signs of growing older, deep sigh.  I should be writing in a notebook, instead of complaining to my fans.  But maybe my fans feel the same way and I need to reach out and touch someone with these random thoughts.

I have felt better since I got back to my exercise regimen as well (thanks to eBay, I found the routine that they took off YouTube recently, leaving me high and dry and without a workout that helped my aching back).

Nothing like getting back to routine.  Coffee, notebook writing.  I read in a creative writing book that you should write 3 pages, even if you have nothing to say, keep writing, it will come out.  And it does.  Admittedly, I write every other line, sometimes large into two lines, like when I was a child.  Try it, it’s fun!

I also started a prayer book.  Bought this fantastic little blank journal that reminds me of prayer books of the Tudor queens, and it has been blank, now being slowly filled by me, with the prayers and thoughts of the Divine, and only that.  My traditional college bound lined notebook for normal everyday life.  I have a few prayer books, but they are little $1 notebooks.  It’s always good to review, choose a few, and add to the prayer book.

I digress.

I was scrolling through Facebook.  Ah, Facebook, that random, ever so shallow (my own opinion) social media giant.  I post things to sell, which never sell, I “like” and “love” and end up blocking (some things).  I follow all the recipes that I can never cook as they all contain heavy cream and sugar, things that I need to avoid!  And the politics!  I shudder.  It’s all about divide and conquer and separate us from the love of one another.  I found a post where they are stating the Holocaust never occurred.  Interestingly enough, I was just reading a book last night written by a man who was a mere boy in Hungary, and how no one believed the old man who escaped to tell them to get out, leave while they could.  The community ended up at Auschwitz.  He did not know he would never see his mother again.  His father’s eyes became empty.  I am halfway through this little book, a book of history, so we can learn that human life is valuable after all.

I hate war.  I think it is wrong.  So this really challenges me.  People die at the hands of others constantly.  It cannot be helped because there are crazy people in power and they have insane thoughts about who has the right to live, and who has the right to die.  Soldiers come back, if they come back, and have PTSD (or shell shock they used to call it).  We don’t take care of them.  It’s completely mind boggling.  They kill either themselves or others and sometimes (mostly?) both.

Back to history.  I think we need to leave the books alone.  Write others if you must, but  leave the recordings of the thoughts of others in tact.  They are the history of the human race.  One day most of us will be gone, and those picking up the pieces can find them, if they’ve not rotted away.

Completely different subject but I’m addressing it anyway in my random thoughts.  Plastic.  Get rid of it.  I had a couple of red peppers and put them in a plastic bag to transport home and forgot them.  Next day they had already started to rot as they could not breathe.  They make paper bags out of specially grown paper trees.  Let’s use them!  Or get cloth bags, we have started our own collection of cloth bags for this very purpose.  Meanwhile the garbage barges float in the ocean.  Who knows what chemicals flit through the air.

Me?  I need to go exercise now.  Thanks for reading.  Wouldn’t it be great if all my fans would like this page, comment, and comment well so I can add your comments to this blog.

This old lady rambles!

 

You Pop!

I think I may have had a revelation in the wee hours of this morning.

Now and then I read about slowly waking up and becoming aware of your surroundings. I don’t. I just POP and I’m awake. I never even realize I’m awake, I just am. My thoughts do not idly turn toward the day. They just are. A mile a minute. Then the cats come up to pretend their snuggle, when in reality they want to be fed now. I’ve got to hand it to them, they are shrewd!

Anyway, I’m thinking that this is what happens when you die. You don’t slowly and painfully realize it, you just are. You don’t even arrive bag in hand and say “where am I?” You just are there. It’s so ordinary it’s probably too profound to realize.

I’m guessing that my friend, Ruth, went through that. She had a cold (flu?) and wanted the comfort of her cot by her wood stove. She had her tea and her daughter helped her lay down. She shuffled to become comfortable. She slept. I can just see her now popping up and saying, “oh!” and looking around her. And then she got up and, I don’t know where she went, but assume she resumed her journey into afterlife. It would be nice to run into her and talk about it, but I’m not sure that happens. I know I will find out!

“Oh shoot! I should write about this! Let others know!” are my first thoughts (hence this post). Heck, I bet you don’t need me to tell you that. We will all find out on our own! I’m only letting you know in case you have concern, and just want you to rest easy. It will be okay.