65

I am about to have a birthday -- my 65th -- and the prescription my doctor gave me for the next few days (actually a week) is to do whatever creative thing I can think of to celebrate it for the landmark it is. This  is a part  of it.   I've put off some of the things I need to do that are important --she tells me they will keep for a week more. I close my eyes and hope that is so.

So what creative gems can I do during this prescribed respite?  I am copying as many of my CDs (I  guess the proper word is "ripping") and learning as I go along -- which is how I seemed to have learned most of what knowledge I have accumulated over the years.  I've made a lot of mistakes getting here --fortunately, most of them only once.

I guess now  would be a great time to make a bucket list...(no particular  order)

• compile all my poetry and find a way to get it into print
• take care of some personal correspondence
• fit into at least a size 10 again
• go fishing
• go barefoot along the river
• see Doug again and play Scrabble again
• get  lightly toasted on a glass of wine or two
• get lightly toasted on a goodly Scotch
• vacuum my apartment and clean the carpet
• visit what is left of my friends in Florida
• get close enough to someone with whom I can share stories and learn that I am not so different after all
• pass on to my family what I can about where they came from.  Not all of it is good  and they should know that...
• to be continued......

From the "Finish Reading This" Shelf of Books

Anyone who has been to my apartment or helped me move knows I love books, read books, collect books, and even the Kindle Taran gave me (many many thanks!) hasn't lessened the enjoyment I get from holding a book, the feel of it, the weight of it. So I have shelves of them, organized in my own way, complete with a shelf or two of  books begun but not yet finished -- for whatever reason -- that I fully intend to read all the way through.


Today's choice was a 1986 Judith Viorst book,  Necessary Losses. I don't know why I stopped reading at the point I did, but there was a sticky-note marking that place with the my words,
"Government Regulations -
Abortion
Assisted Suicide
Drugs/Alcohol/Tobacco/Etc.Restrictions"


On the page, just before I marked a paragraph, was a discussion of psychopathic personalities.  What I marked read, "But we don't have to be a psychopath to allow some person or group  to stand in the way of our individual conscience. And yet this too can lead to deficient guilt. For when we relinquish to others our sense of moral responsibility, we may become free of central moral constraints. This giving over of conscience can turn ordinary people into lynch mobs and operators of crematoria. And it may enable any of us to act a certain ways which on our own we would surely regard as unthinkable."


These days of social media and the decreased size of the planet due to the expansion of media from everywhere on the globe, most people are allowing their own morality and conscience to be led by others - and with no second thought, these misled continue mislead their own children and those with whom whey come into contact.  There is something very wrong here.
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The more control and regulations we allow, the less our consciences and our own morality diminish. We become "sheeples" -- and defend our right to be so.  Ethics never enter the picture.  


Later in the book I found an eight line strip of paper I wrote those years ago inserted into the chapter, "Love and Hate in the Married State" that reads, " This is the time of knowing. Not knowing is expensive adolescence and inappropriate for a grown-up. Choices require knowing, and ignorance of the law  stopped being an excuse when we were ten." 

Applying the latter to the former, the message is clear: Each of us us responsible for her own morality, ethics and morals.  We develop these, not by reading current media or listening to what our well-meaning friends tell us.  It means doing the work ourselves, the fact finding, the research, the  comparisons and thinking --really thinking -- developing set of morals and ethics with which we lead our lives, an example for our children.  


And now back to Judith Viorst.  I think in this case I will go back to the beginning.

Political Postings...

I am feeling knocked down and trod upon by all the political bombs flying through the air.  That doesn't mean I'm not going to haul myself back up and do my part, but I find my part is becoming more difficult.  There are so many slurs, so much to check up on, so many lies to defend  and so much to be defused.  Politics never used to be so complicated, but we are now using more media and posting more personal viewpoints than even 4 years ago.  Sometimes I just have to back away from it all and try to get a more clear viewpoint.  I call myself an Independent -- because there are buffoons on both sides, and I am not about to vote a straight party line on either side.  There are too many legitimate arguments, and I have to find my place among them, back those I can understand and agree with, and base my opinions on what I learn by myself to be the truth.  If you comment on my pages - here or on Facebook, please cite your information - I will be checking it.  I don't want to hear tea party rhetoric without facts, nor religious baby food trying to reduce humanity to whatever beliefs you hold at the time.  I have my own set of standards and ethics, and I won't be trying to change yours to meet mine.  I ask the same of posters on my pages.

I have a sense of humor, and I do allow some leeway there, but only if it is not mean spirited or perhaps too far toward one side of the other.  Bear  in mind it is the office that holds the respect, not the being who happens to occupy that office, and we'll get through this upcoming bombardment just fine...

Life Lessons Just Keep on Coming

I don't care how old you are , how well or unwell you may be, there is always some life lesson lurking around the corner...sometimes not even in the shape or form of a lesson -- just something you realize that you should have known before, and something that will be good to remember in the  future. 

It was some years ago I dumbfounded a counselor by giving him my idea of paranoia -- that the paranoid person was actually an egoist. Who else would believe that he/she was so very important that a person (or persons) had nothing better to do than make things miserable for that egoist?   

Remembering that, the lesson for today was to remember that -- which I still believe -- and realize nobody meant to hurt me. It has nothing to do with how important I am to anyone, it was not a deliberate slight, and certainly nothing anyone knows about but me ...but I was hurt nonetheless.

Tomorrow will come and everything in the world will be the same and I suppose I will feel better  than I do at the moment, but it is good now and then to reflect on these things lest grudges form or hard feelings develop where there is no room for calluses.

The last place this belongs is on Facebook, as it is a personal lesson, but this blog is set as "close friends" and I will share it with them because it may happen to them and maybe it can help.   Nobody goes out of his or her way to hurt us unless we have somehow become an enemy -- and then the surprise that precedes the hurt is missing, because we do know where are enemies are.  

Goodnight, then.  Tomorrow will be better.

Kids and Eggs and Family

Okay, so my family does things a  bit differently.  We held off the Easter celebration for a week, hoping to accommodate a wounded granddaughter and her three kids who wasn't able to make it on the actual date.   As it turned out, she still couldn't make it (Missed you and the gang, Nikki!) but the rest gathered for a feast and a very lively egg hunt in Aubrey's back yard.  With kids ranging from 10 - 18 months, it was really fun to watch.  I have photos I will add once I get all  the stuff hooked up to upload and edit my photos , but for now just imagine -- imagine! -- kids running all over a sizable back yard  helter-skelter.  The bigger kids were told to leave the really obvious eggs in the center of the yard for the youngest one to find and he proved very good at spotting them.  The older kids had it a little harder.  Some of the eggs were hidden under things and up in trees.  If you haven't been to a good Easter egg hunt lately, you might consider it for next year.  

In fact, now might be the best time to plan one.  Jaime and Aubrey (and Jinger) used plastic eggs that they filled with small toys, coins, small candies --treasures for the kids to find. But not satisfied with that, the girls decided to have an adult egg hunt in the front yard.  We had larger eggs to find, each containing a lottery ticket with one with a currency prize.  I didn't find a single egg.  Not one out of ten -- but I was given one to open -- and it was a dud ticket.  Still -- it was fun looking and laughing with my family -- which, as I said, does things a bit differently.  
 
The feast was really good,too -- the ham roasted and the gravy made by Josh, who learned the recipe from his grandmother back when she was 82 years old.  It was spectacular.  Various kitchens contributed to our dinner; this time nothing from my own was needed, so I just enjoyed everything!  Even Jinger's peeps  cake was wonderful.  


Aubrey had filled a jar with jellybeans and everyone was given a chance to guess.  By some happenstance, Taran won that, but didn't want the jellybean jar prize and the games began as to who would get them...and I still don't know where they eventually ended up!  


Not every family does things the same way -- but my family is full of surprises and fun, and all I can say is that I am glad they're mine!



    

Remembering Mom

Even before I moved here, Granddaughter Jaime was telling me how, once I got here, we would plan a trip to go see her great grandmother - my mother - upstate from here in River Falls.  One thing led to another and another, and we got the call, just before we were finally planning the trip, that Mother had passed away.  We postponed the trip a few days to make it for the Memorial Service to be held in her honor the following Tuesday.  It was Chet and Jaime's wedding in 2004 that had brought us all together the last time.  Chet had gone to school closer to Gran-Gran than to home, and they had made the side trip to see her once, but pretty much the upstate family stayed to itself, the downstate to itself and our relationship  was loosely knit.  Invariably one of us wold call the other sometime during "Birthday Week" -- the days surrounding her birthday and mine in July, 4 days apart (plus 20 years, 4 days.) And once on the phone we had one of those talk-until-your-ears-hurt hours long conversations, covering any and all topics you can imagine.  But we didn't write, seldom sent cards or gifts, yet -- she loved me and I her in our own way.  I always felt "out" of he life, though she told me, in our infrequent conversations, all about the people who were in it and the events going on in her life.  Nevertheless, I never felt a part of her life.  I was part of her "former life," a child of her first marriage -- I think there are 12 years between me and my next younger brother. I didn't fit.  I never felt I'd fit.  But that was my problem -- actually, likely the root of many. 

Before my brother's wedding in April, 1990-something, I hadn't seen Mom since 1980, when the going plan was that we would be moving out of the country. Taran and I made the trip to see her from our Ohio home.  She remembered that trip -- we had a great time.  She gave Taran a new mint-in-the-box talking Flip Wilson doll and asked me often over the years if he still had it (He didn't.  He didn't even remember it -- and I understand it commands a high price these days to collectors -- but he did move out of the country for a number of years so I assured her he did.) I remember she made my favorite fried chicken (no one makes it like she did!) and we laughed a lot.  Only the twins were left at home, and somewhere I have photos of them they will never forgive me for taking. 


I knew Mom wasn't well.  What I wasn't prepared for was the phone call I'd made to her the week before she died. She was so angry!  Not with me, not with any of the kids around her or those who cared for her daily - but with God himself.  She had been getting progressively worse over several years - heart failure and Myasthenia Gravis -- and , she told me, several weeks before her doctor had told her she had about 2 weeks, on the outside.  She'd gone about her business, making sure everything was taken care of
and she was ready, she told me.  She was ready and she was still here!  She was furious at that!  Another reminder that a person can love someone (God) and still be angry with him.  Before we could get up there, she was gone.  


No one will call me Princess anymore.  I am glad she was able to know at least some of what I call "my" family downstate from where she lived.  I am also grae

From Here

I am about to go into my third Wisconsin winter - my landing here happening in the first of October, 2009. I have wonderful windows and my apartment is placed in such a way that the elements don't bother me much inside. Mostly I can look at them. In the summer it's quite nice -- I rarely have to close my windows and turn on the


air conditioner, and when the granddaughters call or post on Facebook how hot is is, I wonder where I am. I manage to get the shadows from large trees and often a breeze, so I feel quite insulated.

From here, I stay in touch with some of my artsy friends from Florida via Facebook, and I get very lonely for that sort of involvement. Just as my daughter knows how to drag me out of the house when I have isolated myself too much, my friends in Florida knew how to pry me out of my cocoon when I was there. Of course, it was much easier then - I could jump in my car and go, whereas here I am dependent on a bus system that shuts down at 6PM. It is on my list of "to do" things to get another car, but finances being what they are, it's nothing that is going to happen very soon. Still, the savings jar is getting its share of attention, but here comes the holiday season and I have gifts to buy and extra food to prepare for the activities finishing out the year.

I suppose I should start thinking more permanently about this place -- it's just that my life is so different here. Comparisons are inevitable. While on a museum walk with Jinger and GGrand Xavier many months ago, I learned that there is a place where I can actually take art lessons for a reasonable fee...but I have lost the details and couldn't get there anyway. Somehow Jinger knows about the void I feel -- she's given me a great set of watercolors that come with instructions, and I intend to make good use of them (perhaps illustrating my next book?) but I am looking for an easel or at least I need to locate that stand I have that will hold the work at an angle so I can see and paint at the same time. I know I have more adjustments to make, and it isn't just stubbornness. Some are just too darn hard at this point.

As it is, while things are shaping up nicely in this apartment, I don't have all my art on the wall yet (I am still determining where some of it will go) and I am still fine-tuning. Still, I have a comfortable home, and it is just the maintenance that I have to keep up with. Aubrey is just OCD enough to have helped get things started, and I am just OCD enough to fill in where she missed and do the upkeep. But I defer, as usual, to Miss Liberty, as this is her home that I am allowed to live in, and her mark is everywhere.

With such grumpy inspiration, work on Future Past Tense Poems continues... I don't know when I will be satisfied with it, or if it will ever be complete. More to come .....