Constant State of Emergency

 

This has been a year when I feel that I’m nearly living in a constant state of emergency. We have had, in our house, some sort of virus affecting one of us almost every month. Add to that an accelerated date of retirement for my husband due to his job being eliminated at the beginning of the year, necessitating quickly figuring out health insurance for each of us, finances, and a huge change in routine all while dealing with illness. The washer broke and had to be replaced, the bathtub was rusting and had to be dealt with, the van needed work and our home health aide was in a motorcycle accident and is not expected to be back before October. It’s a lot of stuff to wade through, but we did it and do it because it’s just life. Through it all we try to maintain a positive attitude and keep moving forward. Sometimes, however, it’s tough when the world seems determined to focus on the negatives.so here are some good things that have happened. I have a brand new washer! It works really well and the man that delivered and installed it could not have been nicer, patiently explaining things and showing us how to set the controls, etc. My bathtub is now rust free and beautiful, and safer as we added safety bars. It’s such a pleasure using it! We had a man come and power wash the outside of our house, decks, and patio and seal all the wood. It looks brand new and we bought a new table and umbrella for the patio, and lovely annuals we put in pots and hanging baskets. We also have a patio garden on wheels that is yielding some zucchini, tomatoes, eggplant and peppers! The extra hot and humid sauna like weather really helped everything grow this year. The van, once repaired has been reliable and took us to visit family in another state for a few days. We had a nice visit in beautiful surroundings. We got home safely and have had some time to relax before resuming attending to the many appointments and responsibilities that are part of life.

So you see, there are many positives in life, and I try to focus on those to counter the negatives that come our way, and the ones that the news casters and social media seem to feel we need to be inundated with on a daily if not hourly basis. I wish you peace.

                                It was a steamy, cloudy morning in the mountains where we were.

   The new bathtub and safety bars.

Flowers on the patio.

          A beautiful sunset sky after a thunderstorm. I love the colors and the way the clouds are.

          The fire in the fire pit at my sister in law’s place, I think the log “ chimney” is so cool!

Suddenly It’s July

Well here we are in July already! I’m not sure how it happened so fast, it seems like it was just the end of May and poof! June is gone!

Happy Birthday, America!

This little goldfinch visited our yard one day. He sat for a few minutes on the shepherd’s hook preening, was joined by his mate, then they both flew away. I’ve been keeping my eye out, hoping they are nesting nearby and will come visit again. They’re so beautiful!

These two pictures of the setting sun were taken a couple weeks apart. It’s so hard to believe that smoke from fires so far away can be affecting us here. Some days we can even smell it! Strange times.

The Smokey sun inspired poetry.

There had been rain the night before and I was outside looking at the plants in our patio garden very early in the day. I thought the raindrops clinging to this leaf was cool so I took a picture, then changed it to black and white for the backdrop to a rhyme.

This is the same picture in color. Not sure if this is a zucchini leaf, or an eggplant leaf. The plants are doing really well this year!

 

May Thoughts 2023

    

  Lately I’ve been thinking about how a year ago I was seriously injured and out of commission for a while. It’s a weird kind of anniversary, but it was a huge learning experience. I had to learn to step back and let others take over doing most everything, including caring for my daughter. Of all the things I could not do for a few months that is the one that gave me the most stress. Thankfully my husband stepped up in a huge way, and we were able to connect with a wonderful caregiver to do the weekday morning “shift” of getting  our girl up and ready for her day habilitation program bus. I also couldn’t drive for a while so had to rely on grocery deliveries and rides to doctor and physical therapy appointments. I’ve always been an independent person and having to rely on others and accept help for everything was quite challenging at first. It helped to remind myself that just as it lifts me up to help others, they were being lifted up to be able to help me. 

     May is a month of celebration and commemoration. It is both my husband’s father’s and my mother’s birth month, Mother’s Day, my father’s death date, and Memorial Day. That is many events to reflect on and memories to go over. It can make me a little sad when I think about how I will never again share birthday cake with my father-in-law or my mother in May. Never again will I see my mother’s delight at a flower to plant in her yard or piece of jewelry to wear for her birthday or Mothers Day. Sometimes when I’m out shopping I see a blouse or necklace and think, “Mom would have liked that”. I miss picking out those birthday cards. I think about my father’s passing 3 days after my mother’s birthday, and how unexpected it was. I miss his quiet, gentle presence and dry sense of humor. I often think of him when I hear songs on the radio that we listened to together in his car when he drove me to my boyfriend’s house in high school. I remember how tenderly he held my babies and sitting on his knee as he read “The Three Billy Goats Gruff” and other fairy tales to me when I was a small child. We miss him, we miss them all.

     Memorial Day is how we end this month, and we generally mark it with the first cookout of the summer season, although it is still technically spring. We used to get together at my parents’ house every year for “burgers and dogs”. Mom made potato and macaroni salads, and we had a good time in the back yard all afternoon. Now I have a cookout at my house, with pretty much the same menu— why change a good thing? I look forward to it every year. I remember my senior year of high school and I was on the drill team with the marching band; we twirled the flags as we marched in front of the band. For Memorial Day that year instead of our usual uniforms we wore denim shorts, white tee shirts and white canvas shoes. We were very happy about that! It’s funny the things we remember.

     I hope you have a May filled with memories of good times and loved ones

April Poems & Pictures

I’m making an effort this month to pen a few more poems. Pictures mostly are my writing prompts for these.

Poetry Month

 

I do love poetry month! It gives me an excuse to pen some ditties, (not that I really need an excuse, but still!), and challenges me to try for one a day. I don’t share them all, some I keep just for me. I do like to share them on Facebook and Instagram as my friends and family seem to enjoy them almost as much as I enjoy writing them. I also really like to take a photo of something and use it as a background for a poem. Sometimes the picture makes me think of the poem and other times I go looking for something to snap a picture of that will suit my verse. I’ve always liked sing-songy rhyming poems. I was remembering today how I spent an afternoon in my childhood with my friend Susie O. at her babysitter’s house and we wrote a rather long rhyming song like poem about the sitter’s basset hound whose name was Billy Jo. I wish I had that poem, or was still in touch with Susie. I remember how it began: “Oh Billy Jo, I just don’t know, about your toe, Oh! in the garden, I’ll beg your pardon….” Isn’t that silly? I think we were probably about 9 years old. She lived up the hill and around the corner and about half a block down from me. I recall being at her house one summer afternoon and a thunderstorm came. Her mother drove me home in her little Volkswagen Beetle. I remember both her mother and mine being angry because I didn’t run home when I heard the thunder before the rain started, it was torrential rain, too. Shortly after that, her mother remarried, her last name changed, and she moved away. It’s funny the things we remember.

This is something I am not likely to forget! Last week on Monday morning I looked out my kitchen window and was very surprised by what I saw in the branches of the Rose of Sharon—it looked like a submarine sandwich or a hot dog. Looking through the window screen it was hard to tell so I went outside and stood beneath it and saw that it was a half eaten baguette!  I took pictures and called my husband out to be a witness to the phenomenon, lest anyone think I was losing my mind and making up fantastic stories. He was just as flummoxed as I by it. We went about our errands and by the time we returned home it was gone. I still don’t know how it got there, or where it went, we assume a squirrel might be responsible, but I guess a large bird might be responsible. Of course I had to write a poem about it after one of my friends issued a challenge!

The background of this one is the Pequest River at our favorite hot dog spot, Hot Dog Johnny’s. It’s nice sitting watching the river and munching on arguably the best hotdogs ever. The Pequest feeds into the Delaware River, also there is a fish hatchery nearby, I’m pretty sure I went there with my daughter’s class when she was in elementary school. They breed the fish to stock the lakes and rivers for fishing season.

Sometimes the moon is quite bright even before the sun has completely set, and pictures never do it justice. Still, I liked the way it was framed by the lacy branches of the soon to be leaf covered Maple trees, and inspired this short verse that was liked by many of my friends. I think we all feel a bit pensive when gazing up at the moon.

So happy poetry month!