kellementology

life according to me

Tag: Memories

  • Dust Motes and Have To Tasks

    I’m remembering the days when I was finishing my degree. I used to settle in at the kitchen table, spread all my books and class notes around me and plan to spend an entire evening or Saturday getting ahead of things. It all sounded so grand and I imagined that all would be good at the end of it.

    But then I’d notice the dust ball under the coffee table.

    And the cobweb above the front door.

    Or the smudges on the kitchen cupboards.

    And wait!  Wasn’t that the microscopic Lego piece the boys were trawling through their toy chest for that I told them I didn’t have time to help them find?

    Oh, and then there were the dust motes.  They drifted down from wherever they began in their dissent to the floor, just waiting for me to purse my lips and puff in their direction to watch their panic.  They were so distracting in the sunlight I wished I could venture out into to do anything but sit and stare at the work in front of me.

    So much for plans.

    And that’s what the past several days have been like. Without the dust motes. Not a dust mote in sight.  It’s not quite as romantic, but replace the dust with the monitor. It’s as distracting. More so.

    The first day, I began my work downstairs. What?  You don’t think I know myself?  I had enough to read and sort through, so I wasn’t worried. But eventually, I had to go upstairs to do more investigating by way of the Internet. Sounds sneaky, doesn’t it?

    It’s true. And so I did.

    But the Internet may as well be a room full of bright and shining objects. A million dust motes reflecting the light of the sun, all determined to keep me from doing what I have to do. I know how children in dull classrooms feel trying to listen to something they have already deemed unworthy of their attention. Email that wasn’t worth glancing at is suddenly my link to an afterlife.  Desktop icons scattered across my screen are calling for my attention, annoyed that I’ve left them to exist in such a state of disarray.  I’m such a failure at this game. I used to be so good at it. I believe I’m used up.  One can only play so long.

    Perhaps the maker of all things has put me in this position so that I will finally make a decision. Or the decision. The one I may have been too naive to make all those years ago. The one I’ve been stepping around for far too long. It’s a game we play, that maker and I.  I’m almost there.  But maybe this project is the cherry on the sundae.  Maybe when I’m done, I’ll actually get to the real task.

    I have gotten some work done, but in memory of those days when my older boys were so young, and I so idealistic, I distract myself from my task with anything bleating for my attention.  Anything.

    It reached the heights of hilarity today when I gathered up my fat, female cat — yes, the Yack-Star — and feeling sorry for the fleas she’s been enduring, lowered her into a sink full of warm water. She was less than happy about this.  Mind you, this was after I had used a regular brush, a flea comb, and a warm sponge on her feet to try and rid the white fur of ugly flea droppings.

    But she outlasted the ordeal with flat ears and howls of horror while the water in the sink turned brown, and then mahogany from the droppings the fleas had left. At one point, I thought there was something wrong with her and that she was leaking.  Or something.

    Afterwards, she purred in the towel as I rubbed her fur and murmured to her that all would be fine. She actually seemed fine, and maybe more comfortable for the effort of it all.  I would not have tried this diversion from my work with my black cat.  It would have been an ugly sight for the MoH to come home to if I had.

    I would think that bathing one’s cat is quite a stretch to take to avoid doing one’s work.

    It’s funny how I’m never distracted by anything when I’m writing here.

    Ever.

    If there was a blogger’s god, she would pay me for this work I put my heart in to.

    Wouldn’t she?

    What if I promise to stay on task, keep my house spotless, and never say bad things about my neighbors again? Eat fish on Friday? Give money to the slackers that beg with signs at the busy intersections around town?

    No?

    Fine. I’ll get back to work tomorrow. And stay on task. No memories. No shiny stuff. Just work.

    I know. Quit whining.

    Whatever.

  • Headaches and Old Photographs

    The RT hasn’t been feeling great lately. I guess “sick” would be an accurate descriptor, and yet he’s trooped through what we’ve had going on. I think this is only the third time he’s ever been ill. Amazing, actually. He had that head-achy, eyeballs hurting when you look one way and then the other kind of sluggish don’t really care about much malaise.

    I have it now.

    What is it about being sick in the summer that makes it seems so much worse than just generally feeling like crap? It must be the warmth, and all that happy sunshine. You can’t exactly cozy up in a comforter, or languish in bed all day. It’s too warm.  So I’ve been up, but not as early as I would have liked since I could feel the drum pounding in my skull at what must have been two or three o’clock this morning with the idea of a cup of hot tea wafting through my delirium.

    The decadent chocolate fudge cake with cream and strawberries left over from the RT’s birthday get together yesterday perked me up a bit while I was reading the paper, but the idea of eating the rest of it just to keep myself perked up didn’t seem too logical. So here I am with you guys. I employed a new technique to claim my seat at the computer this morning by sitting in the chair in the corner of the office, casually looking at the Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements for Teens book I got the RT for his birthday. You do know that book is really for me, right? Sitting in the room while the RT was surfing only lasted about 10 minutes, and then he moseyed into another room, leaving me to think. Scary when my head feels like it’s filling up with something more dense than my brain today.  All those thoughts crashing into each other, making me wince each time I move my head.

    Montage It is a good day to think about all the family photographs my mother has been bringing to our house over the past several weeks with nudgings of, “Go through these when you get a chance and keep the ones you want. Then you can ship the rest to me in Virginia after I’m there.” There are so many of them. So many years, so many people whom I’m related to in some way or another, and so many memories that aren’t always pleasant.

    I’ve wandered past the growing stack of boxes taking the time to move some of them to the landing on the stairs where they wouldn’t be such a reminder of something I need to do that I’m not always especially fond of doing. Even the good memories are tinged with a bit of sadness now that so much time that has passed. So many changes have occurred in a face, or in one’s smile — eyes that had a different kind of wistfulness than they do today. It’s hard for me to look and to not notice. To sort and choose. And to ache a bit for what used to be, or could have been.

    So I’m going to treat my heavy head to Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir edited by William Zinsser whose books on writing have been favorites of mine over the years. Books like On Writing Well, and Writing to Learn. No, this book isn’t one of those on my stack. It doesn’t count because it isn’t fiction, and I don’t read nonfiction the same way. I scan the titles, notice the contributing authors — Anne Dillard, Frank McCourt — and skim until I settle on something that catches my eye.

    Reading what others have to say about memoir will take up time. Call it avoiding setting about the task myself. You can imagine that if it’s challenging for me to look at years of pictures, that writing about what’s behind some of those pictures will be something I have to force myself to do.

    With respect to memoir, Zinsser writes:

    A good memoir requires two elements — one of art, the other of craft. The first element is integrity of intention. Memoir is the best search mechanism that writers are given. Memoir is how we try to make sense of who we are, who we once were, and what values and heritage shaped us. If a writer seriously embarks on that quest, readers will be nourished by the journey, bringing along many associations with quests of their own.

    Who we are, indeed.  Inventing the Truth

    In my time deciding how to go about starting, or at least think about starting, I’m sure I’ll return to Phillip Lopate’s The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present. James Baldwin’s “Alas, Poor Richard” begins this way:

    Unless a writer is extremely old when he dies, in which case he has probably become a neglected institution, his death must always seem untimely. This is because a real writer is always shifting and changing and searching. The world has many labels for him, of which the most treacherous is the label of Success. But the man behind the label knows defeat far more intimately than he knows triumph. He can never be absolutely certain that he has achieved his intention.

    So what would my actual intention be to write down all that I’ve kept in my head for so long? To purge myself of it? I wouldn’t want that, because it has become part of me, and not holding onto it would be similar to cutting a hole in the center of me. So then might it be so others can understand? If so, what might they understand? That you can choose to either dwell on what happens to you in life and let it mark you, or acknowledge that it’s now a part of who you are, and turn it into something you can leap from inventing yourself.

    That would be a good place to begin.

    I like the jaunty tone of Wendy Lesser, though in “Overture,” the first of her pieces in The Amateur: An Independent Life of Letters. She writes in a pointed, but less pedantic way of the choices we make in life, and who we are as a result of them:

    The autobiographical mode implies the justification of a life, but that is rather hard to do when one is still in the midst of living it. Also, it is not clear exactly what in the life could justify it. The plan you conceived and executed? A laughable chimera, believable only when you are nineteen years old and deciding on a college major. The choices you made? But if they turned out well, you don’t necessarily deserve the credit, and if you try to take it, you will merely sound foolish or smut. Do you, in any case, make the important choices, or are they thrust on you?

    Thrust? A more gentle word than I may use for some of what I am compelled to write.

    Subjected to? Withstood.

    Never resigned.

    I need to go lay my fat head down before I topple out of this chair. My eyeballs ache. But if I stare straight ahead at my books, quietly reading, it’s not so bad. And then I can read and think about writing, instead of writing.

    Instead of sorting through those photos.

  • That Simple Green Scent

    Okay, so I know this is ugly right now.  But at least notice the effects I learned how to create with Photoshop on the palm tree up there. Yes, I also know there are two boxes above that are supposed to be for ads.  I’m not game on the ads above my header, so I have to figure out how to get them off.  The serious bummer is that I spent a lot of time working on the “kellementology” piece and it doesn’t show up on this stoopid laptop.  I know.  I’m not supposed to have fun with the fonts, but jeez.  I get tired of the boring verdana, helvitica crap.  Life’s seriously more interesting with swirls. 

    I know this (blob transition) is wearing me out (yah, right) because I actually cleaned my house today instead of writing first thing like I always do.  Trying to write when my blog is a mess is like trying to relax when the house is a mess.  Wait.  Blogging usually is relaxing, which is why my house stays messy.

    Does it count as being messy when I have to use Simple Green straight up to get the catfood off the laundry room floor?  Or the catfood out of the laundry sink that has stuck to the sides after I’ve rinsed out the can in the morning?  Messy vs. dirty?  Hmmm…I know.  Gross.  But it’s clean now.  And laundry is swirling around in the dryer, the fresh scent of the RT’s whites wafting up the stairs near the garage — a marked improvement from the odor that was emanating from his bedroom yesterday morning.

    And I’m noticing our motley crew of pets is very content because they got their first dose of warm weather “flea medicine.”  No more Presh-Ass Yack Star Flea in-cu-bus lounging over the cable box and creating more tiny flea eggs than I’ve ever seen in my lifetime of owning cats.  Totally gross.  Biggity, our dog, is snoozing in the family room on the clean couch.  The one that the MoH stripped of its cover last weekend because it was sour smelling and covered with lick stains — a by product of the Big’s obsessive compulsivness.  We haven’t caught her licking it again — yet — but I’m sure it’s only a matter of time.  It’s a drag sitting on the wet spot…

    And I could bore you even more than I already have to explain the condition of our carpet, beyond cleaning or repair because of the animals.  Yes.  The animals.  I don’t know what’s worse — the stains from the nocturnal hairball launchings, or the cleaning that happens afterwards.  Either way, I’m sick of the whole mess.  I know you’re sick of me ranting about it, but you have no idea how hard I’ve worked to avoid writing about the record size of some of the hairballs I’ve seen lately.  Guiness should have been contacted.  Somehow, taking a picture of a hairball seems a tad bit whacked.  Don’t you think?  Think about the poor RT. 

    “What does your mother do for a living? 

    “Takes pictures of cat hairballs to post them on her blog.”

    Uhhh…nope.  You’ll just have to wonder.  Or not. 

     I’m more convinced than ever that, even though I couldn’t live without them at times, that I have been thinking about how it might be “without them.”  The deal with kids is that they grow up.  Whatever “messes” they make sort of follow in line with their developmental progress.  But even if they’re completely slovenly as my gorgeous and loving sons have been, they grow up, go to college and/or gain relationships with others, and move out of your house.  The animals, the darlins — they stay.  And our house has definitely accomodated our animals.  Cat litter tracked up the stairs, dog “gifts” left on the patio, and rinsed down the drain outside.  Jeez.  It’s more work sometimes than I remember taking care of my two older boys who are only 17 months apart.  Way more work.

    Wait.  I am remembering that ugly sculptured and multi-colored brown carpeting we had when the boys were very little.  It was a complete disguise for myriad raisins, flattened beyond all recognition, and requiring scissors to be removed from their attachment.  Okay.  And I also remember the oatmeal I had to chip off the high chair and the wall next to the high chair.  Oh.  And those cookies — the biscuits that babies eat when they’re teething and disolve (the cookies, not the baby) into a disgusting mess on their cherubic faces.  Well, not so cherubic once it dried.

     But you know?  Blathering about our lovelies has really allowed me to avoid looking at the condition of my newest “pet” that seems to take up as much time as the other darlings I’ve had in my life.  So there you go.  It’s all good.  Except for the carpet.

    So I’ve wasted a perfectly good 20 minutes or so saying absolutely nothing.  Yes, my Warholled self will return as soon as I freaking figure out how the H-E-L-L  to modify it, save it, and paste it in the header.  Well, I can’t paste anything with this skin, so whatever.  Just hold your shorts.  I’ll get there. 

    Thanks for your patience while I’m learning about how to adjust fonts styles, colors, and sizes as well.  Like how all that work I did that looks gorgeous on my Mac looks like crap or non-existent on the MoH’s laptop which is what I’m using right now.  How stoopid is that?  Sheesh.  Thanks again to Thought Sparks who always keeps an eye on what’s up and offers assistant.  Very.  Nice.  Person.

    Okay.  Enough boredom.  Off to the store for coq au vin ingredients.  Yum.  Crusty bread.  Salad.  Wine… No party.  Just us.  I love good food.  So a great meal tonight AND tomorrow night will just allow me to avoid the blob for a bit longer.  Right?

    Toots.

  • How did Emily Know?

    I was tagged a week or so ago, and haven’t reciprocated. Well, I have, actually, but I guess you’d have to pick it up by inference. If I remember correctly, the meme had to do with letting people know more about myself through an interview of sorts. I had already done the meme, as I was tagged by someone else first. So, I’ve been constructing a few posts that essentially do the same thing, but not in meme form. So Jo! I’m reciprocating — it’s just may not look like I am.

    Well, I couldn’t ask for a better transition…

    IMG_1850 Last night while we were watching House, one of the characters said, “He’s not afraid to be you, he’s afraid of who you think you are.” I don’t want to get involved in which character said this, or reference about whom. That isn’t the point. Do you like how I’m circumventing that one? Because I probably don’t know their names. I know I should, because I often watch House, but they’re really only fictitional characters, right? So what difference does it make? Like I was saying, that isn’t the point.

    The point is…that I immediately thought of my oldest son. The one who seems to be trudging through life — or flitting, depending on the observer’s perspective. My bets are on trudging, but I’ll get to that later. So what would make me instantly connect to him after hearing the line spoken? Because as a parent who has already raised two children to adulthood, I often wonder whether I did a good job. You know, whether the whole effort of creating two more humans has been a good thing for society. Of course I’m going to say yes immediately, but that’s the easy answer. IMG_1845

    IMG_1848 When my oldest son was about the age of 15 or so, I remember him saying that we — the MoH and I — made working look very difficult. That it was all we did, and that it seemed we weren’t very happy about it. My reaction was a combination of, “Wow, he noticed,” and “Crap, what the hell is that all about and what kind of an example is that to set for your kids?” My oldest son — MoS — is an amazing artist. He draws. He doesn’t sketch, or paint, or sculpt. He draws. He picked up a pencil very early, and just began to draw things he saw. He went through odd phases, where all his drawings were of empty intersections with complicated arrangements of stop lights and light posts. He also developed a very early fascination with how things work — in particular machinery, and buildings. So I probably don’t have to tell you about the number of Leggos we own, right?

    He began building very complicated buildings with his Leggos by the age of 5. And then he began to invent strange things like those automatic door closers that are mounted up on the frame. So we had those made of Leggos taped to all our doors. We had Leggos everywhere. You do know what it feels like to step on one, right? It’s a very special kind of pain. And sucking them up into the vacuum? You also know that you have to get them out of the vacuum because each freaking piece costs about 25 cents. Plus if that particular piece can’t be found, hours will be spent digging through the box of Leggos. You can hear the sound, right? That “digging in the Leggos” clacking sound. And when the piece isn’t found, the “dumping the entire contents of the Leggo box on the bedroom floor” sound. You know, right? Leggos. Thousands and thousands of them. IMG_1846

    I knew very early that MoS was an artist. So I made sure he had things to be creative with. But something happened along the way. This business of making work look hard caused a problem. Although everyone assumes when someone of MoS’ talent is plopped onto this Earth, that he will most certainly make a life and a living with that gift, sometimes they don’t. In fact, I know that lots of times very talented people are just square pegs in the very round hole that is our society. Especially in this country. MoS’ square pegginess is huge.

    At the age of 15, he took a look at his resident role models and decided that he didn’t want to turn his drawing into study at school and then a career, because he loved to draw. That if it became his living instead of his love, that he wouldn’t enjoy it any longer. It would become work. It would be “hard.” About this time, he became extremely interested in cars as well. Yes, he drew them. Drew the outside, the inside, drew different views, and yes, drew very intricate pictures of their engines as well. Just any car? Nope. Corvairs. Go figure. And he didn’t just draw them. He could take an engine out of one and install another in the same car in less than three hours, and drive off to enjoy an afternoon. Really. He’s truly amazing.

    IMG_1847 So if he isn’t drawing, then is he working on cars? Nope. He still does both these things in his “spare” time. He has very little spare time because he is in school — finally — I think. We’re never sure. And he’s paying for it himself. We think. But we’re not sure about that, either. Because he works between 40 and 50 hours a week managing a pizza restaurant franchise for someone who is no longer interested in running the business. I know how hard it is to go to school and work, and I wonder if he’s making it. Remember what I said about trudging? Are you convinced? He spends ridiculous amounts of time hiring and firing extremely undependable high-school and college-aged kids, filling in for them when they don’t show up for their shifts, and loaning them his car for deliveries, because they wrecked theirs, or don’t have one, or?

    What’s he studying in school? Architecture. What he was put on this earth to do. Draw. But we aren’t ever sure he’ll actually finish. He’s so busy making sure the damn pizza place doesn’t burn down, he barely has time for anything else. Maybe the problem is if he quits the pizza place, he’ll have to dedicate himself more seriously to school and therein lies the rub. He’s not afraid to be me, he’s afraid of who I think I am.

    What did Emily Dickinson say?

    I’m nobody! Who are you?

    Are you nobody, too?

    Then there’s a pair of us — don’t tell!

    They’d advertise — you know!

    How dreary to be somebody!

    How public like a frog

    To tell one’s name the livelong day

    To an admiring bog!

    He’s not afraid to be me — a hard-working, serious nose to the ever-lovin’ grindstone kinda human. Never say die — just occasionally gasp for air — He’s afraid of who I think I am — nobody. Well, somebody, of course, but always trying to just be beige. At least that’s what I think I am. No?

    Wow. That’s sobering.

  • Twenty Years and Blinking

    Nice guy that he is, the MoH gently reminded me that I had carpool responsibilities this morning. It’s Tuesday already, and not Monday, so perhaps I was in a Monday frame of mind. The RT and I slunk to the car, I put ‘er in reverse and sat outside The Princess’ house for a few minutes until she graced us with her flowery scented presence. “Good morning,” I began, as usual, attempting to present an image of one who, although wearing pajamas and a rank sweatshirt, was chipper and ready to take the week by the horns. “How was your weekend?”

    Umbrella

    “Ohmygodyesterdaywasthemostbeautifulday,” she trilled, her eyes wide as I sneaked a look in the rear view mirror. “We went to the beach and everything was just perfect and you know how there are little sand places between the rocks? Well the four of us fit right in there, and well, it’s kind of a coveted location, so when we were ready to leave people were right there ready to take our spot,” she continued, rapt in her recollection of what I remembered was a pleasant day, but not that special. Oh, that’s right. I went outside late in the afternoon to pretend like I was going to finish my book, and ended up lazing in the sun, nodding off occasionally to make up for two late nights in a row. “Only 15 days of school left,” she finished, the non sequitur ending her atypical morning liveliness.

    Only fifteen days left. That’s always significant if you are in any way connected to school: you’re a student; your kids are in school; or, if like me, an erstwhile educator who recognized that the countdown to summer posted on the board would get you some points from your students, whether my principal liked it or not — thinking it “negative.” Uhhhh…what rock did she crawl out from under? Doesn’t everyone look forward to summer? Why act like that isn’t the case? Ahhh….summer. The Beach Boys and “No more homework, no more books.

    Dirty Looks

    No more teachers’ ‘dirty looks’” or whatever the words of that schoolyard chant are. Vacation. Ten. Whole. Weeks. Of sleeping in. Of lazing around the house. Of re-runs on television and sweet oblivion.

    It’s a bit strange now since I am only marginally connected to this annual ritual that has been a part of my life in some way for about 40 years. Yes — I know. Longer than some of you have been alive. Through my childhood and college years, my two older boys’ school years, my re-entry to college, and then finally my career in education. Nearly my entire life has been filled with the peculiar ebb and flow of time related to school years. The RT is of course still connected, and will be for many years even after we pack him up kicking and screaming, and throw him on a train and off to college.

    It was 20 years ago that I was beginning my career as a teacher. It’s pretty frightening how quickly 20 years can fly by. In 1987, I was ready to take on my first class of Third Graders, and finally do what I had always longed to do: teach. It was exhilarating after waiting so long. From the time I was in junior high, school counselors had gently tried to talk me out of the profession. Really. I’ve tried to remember the details of those conversations, but it was so long ago, it’s difficult. Besides, do adolescents really listen the way we want and need them to when we are gifting them with our experienced advice? Do pigs fly? Does a chicken have lips? Like I said — difficult. And now I don’t need the details, because I recognize their quiet words as something designed to open different worlds to a young person — one more exotic, more glamorous, and most likely, less practical. Perhaps they were at a point where they imagined something different for themselves, so that yearning influenced their words to me.

    Regardless, I heeded their advice, and went off to college declaring my major to be Family Studies and Consumer Sciences in order to become a Therapeutic Dietitian. Why this? I had to choose a different, but still practical something to replace my dream of wanting to become a teacher, and I had read something in Time magazine about careers in the health industry, so that made sense. Why not? Are hospitals and schools all that different? Um…never mind. You don’t even want to know what I think about that one.

    I never became a dietitian. In fact, I changed my major to Library Science because I really did want to be involved in education on some level. And there were very few jobs available for teachers then, so why not be a Librarian? I loved books, after all, and if I couldn’t be a teacher, I could hover in their vicinity. But I ended up leaving school.

    The part time job I had was paying more than what first year teachers made, so it was easy to leave the books and the routines to get married and have two boys. Easy until I felt my brain begin to rot with inactivity. So I finally found myself back in college to pick up where I left off with two young children in tow, the same part time job, and an ex-husband left somewhere in the dust — an unfortunate casualty of someone who should have stayed the school course to begin with. But my two boys were the silver lining of that detour, and they are worth it.

    Completing a degree and a credentialing program with kids in tow was crazy on several levels, but lots of people do it today. What was gruelling was subjecting my kids to the insane rigors of a new teaching assignment in an inner city school, and master’s degree work all at the same time. That’s why I have such a high regard for the MoH. He helped all three of us survive those years.

    “Kids come out, summer has arrived” by broma on flickr

    Twenty years. Don’t blink. You may miss them. Now, I’ll have to live vicariously through the RT’s last few days of school wondering if he’s as ecstatic as I would be if I was still counting down to summer.

    I know. I’ll post it on the fridge.

  • gratitude = sum of the parts > the whole

    We used to live in a house 25 miles east of Paradise. Yes, still Paradise, but worlds away from here for all kinds of reasons. It was about as beautiful as the suburbs could be in a place that should still be a desert covered with scrubby bushes and hillsides speckled with strangely rounded boulders instead of houses and neighborhood malls. We were fortunate enough to happen upon this house at a time in our lives when we needed more space: my two older boys were just entering their adolescence, our youngest was still not one, and my mom was getting pretty tired of her life and wanted a change. Only one family had lived in this house before us — a family of three. The man had died 10 years earlier, so the woman had stayed until she could no longer care for herself and was moved to a care facility somewhere near her daughter on the East Coast. For the longest time, the house still felt as if it belonged to her. Her child had grown up in the house, and they had lived there for almost 50 years.

    Rain

    One of the things I loved about the house was the view. Nearly every window provided a pleasant treescape, or views of distant hills that, if you woke up early enough, afforded a gorgeous sunrise. And I was up early quite a bit in those days, because 6-month-old babies do wake up earlier than most of us want them to.

    As my life became more crowded with the kinds of things we all grapple with, I found myself feeling put upon, and frazzled. At times, I swore that I could feel the person I was supposed to be sinking farther and farther away, as if drowning. Before bed each night most often after everyone else had long since retired, I’d quietly venture out into the yard and look into the dark sky to say my penance for spending so much of my day being dissatisfied with what I had.

    Moon

    I knew there had to be something up there willing to hear me list all the things I acknowledged I was thankful for — because I didn’t want to give the wrong impression. “I love my kids, I love my husband, I have a job, I have a nice house, we’re all healthy, we have food…” the litany went each night, attempting to seal in what I was thankful for.

    Although I remember this with tiny shards of sadness, I reluctantly drag it to the surface as a sort of measuring stick. So much is different now. Time has a way of doing that. But time isn’t enough. Many other factors must be considered to acknowledge what I am truly grateful for without it being an apology to the night sky. I realize that if I hadn’t lived those days, I would be less than who I am now. It all adds up. So this is my contribution. Thanks to Dave for passing on the opportunity to convey my gratitude, although perhaps not as eloquently expressed as his.

    So if you are someone who finds your cup a bit empty instead of full, take the time to make your own list. And if you’re someone who likes to create two lists — one with plusses, and one with minuses, I guarantee you’ll never get to the minus side of things if you always start with the plusses. Come on. Pay it forward. Do it now. There. I nodded in your direction.

    I have gratitude for my family — but specifically my boys.

    Men Men Men

    Mmmm….b-o-y-z. I love my men, men, men, men…because they are just flat out different. Refreshingly not like me. They just don’t get caught up in all the total crap that females do. They make life so much easier unless I want a reason to get worked up, and then they’re really good at being the reason I get worked up — because they’re not like me. You get that, right?

    I’m thankful — so very thankful for the relationship that the MoH and the RT have.

    Time Flies

    They truly like one another. The MoH still gets warm & fuzzy attention from the RT who is very comfortable with hug & love stuff. The MoH and I must have done some pretty effective modeling in our spare time. I didn’t have a relationship with a father, and didn’t get to observe my brother having one, either, so I’m curious about the whole Dad thing. Curious — which is different than wanting, needing, or wishing. Or hoping. And put a cork in the guilt while you’re reading this, Mom because that’s a complete waste of time. Ahem…moving right along…

    Though my intensity would rival that of a laser, I’m grateful for my ability to notice small things

    Wall

    that bring me to a screeching halt long enough to breathe and wonder about nothing in particular —

    Leaf light

    — like the way sun comes in to brighten up the house after so many days of grey.

    Blinds

    Things sparkle, shine, and amazing shadows emerge for just a minute or two, and then are gone.

    Golden Reflection

    Somebody has to notice those things and share them with others, right? So I guess my tiny digital camera gets the nod as well. Now if I could only figure out the macro thing, I’d be set.

    I’m grateful for that old Betty Crocker cookbook and a mom who shoved a cast iron skillet in my hand and said, “Make dinner for the family,” when I was still pretty young. I never cease to find pleasure in thinking about food, cooking food, serving food, and eating food. Oh — and the people who eat my food. Mmmmm…..food. I absolutely love it — and them for enjoying it.

     

    So that leads to gratitude for my developing relationship with my scale, and the respect I have for my control or lack of control, which can be pretty powerful. Boy that’s a constant argument I have with myself. To have more, or not to have more…simply more…More tasty is working better than just more…Having a brain that processes this factors in here somewhere.

    And I’m grateful for people like this who make me smile on my less than exciting walks,

     

    because I just wonder, “What were they thinking?” and then have to be even more grateful that I could never be as hateful as the person who then threw something corrosive on her driveway and ruined the prettiness she was so proud of, and not wanting people to spoil with their “turning around in her driveway” tires.

    And I would be even more grateful if people like that didn’t exist. But that’s asking too much, right? Because we’re all supposed to be thankful we aren’t them. But cockroaches are small enough to step on, so someone could have figured out how to rid us of the mean folk.

    In my next life, I would like to hope and wish to be grateful for patience. If there’s a line for that somewhere, help me make sure I get in it.

  • Curling Up with Old Movie Stars

    When I cook, if no one else is at home, I like to watch movies I’ve seen before. Usually, it’s a movie I’ve seen so many times, I only have to look up on the very best parts; when the music swells, or a dissonant chord lets me know that something important is going to happen. Now, these movies are more current, and popped in with a DVD that I choose from my “feel good” collection of sappy chic films. You know, the kind that you grin through, sigh about, and avoid telling your friends you really like? Like Sleepless in Seattle, Notting Hill, or Cousins with Isabella Rossellini. But the real films I long to see are the ones I spent my adolescence watching on our first color TV. Hilarious when you think about it, because most of these old movies were in black and white. Cable shopping channels, and craft shows were nonexistent, so local channels ran old movies. In the summertime, or late at night and on weekends, I could watch one movie after the other in blissful, non-thinking, oblivion. I could fry my impressionable young self on Esther Williams, who was my authority on smiling under water, or holding breath even longer than Houdini, or Rock the Hunk Hudson and Humphrey Bogart. They’re more difficult to find these days, though. If I took the time in my not so busy life, I could check the guides for Turner Classic Movies or American Movie Classics and maybe I’d get lucky. But I don’t. I rot my brain with this blog now, instead.

    Unfortunately, these two movie channels, although continuing to show “classic” films, also show… ahem…classics like Conan the Barbarian, Halloween, and Basic Instinct. Huh? Oh, I get it. Someone in ratings land thinks thirty-somethings wax prolifically for films like this to re-live the great days of their adolescence. Sharon Stone’s shadowy nether regions? Classic? Uh…Nope.

    What I want to watch are those glorious black and white movies that that loser Ted Turner colorized thinking he could dupe those less fortunate from a younger generation into watching. It’s sort of an “oooh — look at the pretty colors” concept instead of think about the films themselves, because, well, it’s all about making money, right? He should have been arrested for that.

    The really good films are ones you just want to curl up in bed with on a cloudy day. They’re even too good to cook by, because although you’ve seen them what seems like a million times, you don’t want to miss anything. Films like The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, the most haunting love story you’ll ever see. Or Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window — yes that creepy guy is really Raymond Burr, the old Perry Mason and can you believe how great Grace Kelly and James Stewart are together? I never could see what that whole go to Monaco and marry that prince guy was all about. Any movie with that hunky Cary Grant, and especially North by Northwest, the ultimate twisting chase movie, is worth watching. Or The Philadelphia Story, or Laura. Does anyone even know who Gene Tierney is anymore? You should have seen her in Leave her to Heaven. Or any and all of the Frank Capra films — especially if Carole Lombard was in them.

    Who? I know. You’ve never heard of her. This is Carol Lombard with Jimmy Stewart who were both in another fabulous film, Made for Each Other.

    I’m not sure about why I’ve always had this love affair with movies in general, but old films and movie stars in particular. Maybe it’s the result of spending about five years of my early childhood living without television. We went to the movies instead. Watching all those gorgeous people on that huge screen was the ultimate fairyland for a little girl who wanted to be as gorgeous as Audrey Hepburn was in Roman Holiday, sing like there was no tomorrow, and clack across an enormous stage just like Fred and Ginger.

    Life just looked so grand. And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t dance by myself like that in our living room.