Life’s a Traveling Circus
Life’s a Traveling Circus
“My door is always open. My house is safe. Coffee can be on in minutes, and the kitchen table is a place of peace and non-judgment. Anyone who needs to chat is welcome. It’s no good suffering in silence. We have food in the fridge, coffee and tea in the cupboard, and listening ears, shoulders to cry on and prayer to share. This is an old value that has been lost to technology … a text, FaceTime, or emoji is not the equivalent of making time for those we love or care about!”
“When a day passes it is no longer there. What remains of it? Nothing more than a story. If stories weren’t told or books weren’t written, man would live like the beasts, only for the day. The whole world, all human life is one long story.”
(Isaac Bashevis Singer)
When did stories become so dangerous that they can no longer be allowed to be told? Why is your story of vital importance, while mine should never be allowed to be spoken or, heaven forbid, written?
I feel quite like Dr. Frankenstein. I have a creature growing in my kitchen, formed from flour and water (which we called paste when I was in kindergarten). It’s now known as ‘sourdough starter’, and, after a few weeks and a few failures, I have managed to make mine live. As one master sourdough breadmaker referred to it in his web how-to, I’ve created a ‘pet’ which can exist in my refrigerator forever. Yeah. We’ll see how that goes.
Well, I’m grumpy. I’ve got a back molar that has needed a root canal since the end of September, and I can’t get it fixed until the end of this month. (Totally my fault; a tale of fear and loathing at the dentist office. Terrifying!) Thankfully the pain is now gone, and I’m praying that there’ll be a cancellation so I can get in sooner and just get it done with.
I got to do something on Monday and Tuesday that I’ve wanted to do since about 1982; attend the Round Top Texas Antiques Show and Sale. I used to read about it all the time in Country Living magazine (one of my favorite magazines) but since I lived in Northern California the possibility of going just didn’t exist. Even when we moved to Texas it didn’t occur to me until this spring. I was watching the weather on the local news while we were having heavy rainstorms, and lo and behold! I happened to see Round Top on the weather map. Turns out it’s about 90 miles from here. I called my daughter Libby and asked her if she might want to go to the fall show, so when the time came she took two days of vacation and we headed out.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”(Matthew 5:4)
Six months ago I lost my beloved husband, the awesomest man I’ve ever known. September 1st would have been our 43rd wedding anniversary. My birthday a couple weeks ago was the first in 45 years that he was not there.
I hate flying. Thomas Harris (the guy who wrote the Hannibal Lecter books) said “the price of imagination is fear”, and, in the context of MY psyche, that is so true! One of the (minor) reasons I was happy to move to Texas was because I knew I would never again have to set foot on an airplane in order to visit my kids and grandkids.
Well, in checking out the on-line amnesty news last night, it appears that us conservatives have been bent over yet once more. I’m so reminded of the old saying, “those who forget history are doomed to repeat it”. Maybe that’s why our public education system teaches so much revisionist stuff these days? Because the people coming up after us old folks won’t have a clue, and so will repeat all the errors and tyrannies over and over again.
It’s that time of year! No, sorry, not Happy Thanksgiving or Merry Christmas. It’s Horrific Health(care?) sign-up time!
For all my friends of the progressive persuasion, let me assure you that Obamacare, which you rhapsodized over, is the most dismal of failures. (And it’s coming for you, too.) Allow me to relate the short version of my experience. We had, my husband and I, great insurance, until the idiots in government decided to improve healthcare for all of us poor saps.
(The title of this post is a not-so-subtle play on all the “for Dummies” books proliferating in the publishing world.)
Boy, the more I try to get organized and post on a regular basis, the more delayed I become! However, we’ve moved into our new house, pretty much everything is unpacked and in place, it’s beginning to seem like home, so I really have to quit making excuses!
Well, howdy, y’all! We survived our move from Northern California to Austin, Texas; I think for Mike and I both, this is the first time ever that we’ve actually chosen to make a life instead of letting life make us.
Four days driving, straight through, over eighteen hundred miles; stopped for one night in Tucson where they were preparing for monsoon rains and flash flooding (!) the next two days from Hurricane Odile that blistered through Northern Mexico. We were lucky enough to leave early the next morning and outran the remnants of it until just as we got into Austin, then we unloaded the U-Haul in pouring rain.
Short post today, and I’m (kind of) cheating: this is something I wrote years ago after attending Landmark Education’sThe Forum. They were big on opening your mind to all the possibilities inherent in life. I found it while going through my office sorting out stuff to pack, which is what I’ve been doing for the last two weeks; packing for a major move. Who knew you could accumulate so much STUFF living 38 years in the same place? Anyway, here it is, and I still think it has meaning for me:
Today I have been married for 41 years. And to the same man! That’s pretty unusual for my generation.
Imagine:
This poor man has had the fortitude to put up with me for all that time. He says that’s why his hair is silver. We married when we were toddlers.
Let me begin by saying I have always been very interested in personal improvement of the mental sort. I had a conversation some years ago with my little brother and he asked me why I was always trying to make myself better. He said, “I’m an a$$*&le and I know it, and I don’t care who thinks so”. My reply was that I would be mortified if people thought I was an a$$*&le. He thinks I’m crazy, and I think he’s an a$$*&le. There you go.
“Creativity is intelligence having fun.”
I love that quote! It’s from Albert Einstein. I have never had more fun than when I’m in the process of creating something, when I’m trying to transport the picture in my mind through the fingers on my hands. With my music blasting, it’s the only time in my life that I can say without a doubt I’m completely in the present moment.
It’s cold this morning. Not at all like preliminary summer. I can see the wind trembling the pine needles and tossing the oak branches. The dog’s asleep on the bed. And this is my husband’s second full day without a job. It’s the second day in 46 years, barring a bout with pneumonia, a broken arm, torn knee ligaments, and sparse vacations, that he hasn’t gotten up at 5:30 in the morning and gone to work.